Smokey is the mascot of the University of Tennessee sports teams. These teams, named "The Volunteers" and nicknamed "the Vols", use both a live and a costumed version of Smokey. There is a Bluetick Coonhound mascot who leads the Vols onto the field for football games. Starting with the 2022 NCAA Division I FBS football season, Smokey XI leads the charge. The Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity cares for the hound on the University of Tennessee campus. There is also a costumed mascot that appears at every Vols game and has won several mascot championships. In 1953, the University of Tennessee Pep Club held a contest to select a coonhound, a breed common in Tennessee, to serve as the school's live mascot. Announcements of the contest in local newspapers read, "This can't be an ordinary hound. He must be a 'Houn' Dog' in the best sense of the word." The costumed version of Smokey made his debut in the 1980s. Until the late 1980s, this costume was designed as a cartoon-like orange and white dog that would occasionally wear a white cowboy hat. This version of Smokey would often drink orange juice out of a bottle to cool down, mostly because of the color of the drink.