Object shows up pink even when selecting and adding material? Im very new to blender and was following this tutorial.

I downloaded the guy's start file to start editing; I had to download the .blend file and textures separately. I don't necessarily want/need to apply the texture, however, without it, no matter what I do, my object shows up pink:



I have tried selecting all faces in Edit Mode or even just 1 face, creating a simple green material and assigning it as in this tutorial, but the material is not applied.

How can I make the object not pink anymore? How can I assign a material or texture?
It's showing up pink because you're actually viewing this model in texture mode, as indicated by this icon.



You can reassign the texture image in the Texture panel, or see the name of the missing image in File->External Data->Report Missing Files.