University of Tennessee system
Each institution in the system uses different athletic colors but the same academic hood lining pattern from the original University of Tennessee:
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Tennessee
1794
Inspired by the beauty of the daisies that grew on campus, students at the University of Tennessee chose orange and white as their school colors in 1891.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): orange/white (1895-1935)
The Cotrell & Leonard academic costume firm was the depository for the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), and the names of both are mentioned in the same advertisements from the late 1890s and early 1900s. Gardner Cotrell Leonard, one of the partners of Cotrell & Leonard, was also the Director of the Bureau, so it seems likely that when a school ordered academic caps, gowns, and hoods from Cotrell & Leonard, the hood lining colors and heraldic pattern used for the order would be registered with the IBAC. Hood registration dates for schools, therefore, can be estimated as roughly contemporaneous with the first appearance of that school in a Cotrell & Leonard/Intercollegiate Bureau advertisement.
An advertisement of this sort featuring the University of Tennessee first appeared in the 1904 Class Book of Cornell University (indicating an IBAC registration in 1903 or 1904) but the advertisement did not describe the hood pattern assigned by the Intercollegiate Bureau. The first definitive IBAC list with this information was published in 1918, where Tennessee’s hood lining was described as white with an orange chevron. This hood assignment was never modified or changed in later lists from the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume.