Mountaineer Football Uniforms Revealed
October 27, 2023 01:12 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Each week during the season, West Virginia University's football's creative team produces a short uniform reveal video that is posted on football's social media accounts.They are typically 30 seconds to a minute in length, which is approaching the maximum limits of an 18-year-old's attention span these days. Concepts this year have ranged from a coal mining theme to kick off the season against Penn State to a Gold Rush video tying into West Virginia's Gold Rush game promotion for the Texas Tech game.
The "Country Roads" uniform reveal for the Pitt game was one of the most popular so far and took weeks to plan and prepare.
A few of weeks ago, the creative team actually used the video TCU posted before last year's game as a basis for its uniform reveal video this year.
"The TCU one, we incorporated a video they did last year playing 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' through a radio, and they ended up smashing the radio," Andrew Malewicz, football's assistant director of creative video, said earlier this week. "One of our designers over here mentioned that to me because I wasn't here last year for that."
The creative group, led by football chief of staff Coleman Barnes, came up with many of the concepts before the season began. Other ideas sort of form organically during the week.
"We plan for them in advance, but most of them we do the week of," Malewicz, a Western Michigan graduate, said.
"A few months before the season, we started thinking of ideas based off certain teams and doing research into their school's traditions and what they do," Malewicz added. "The Country Roads uniform reveal was extremely planned out from the precise location and the exact shots that we wanted to do."
Malewicz credits Ross Marra, assistant athletics director for digital media, for coming up with that concept.
This week's uniform reveal video was Barnes' idea. Since UCF is located near the Space Coast and recently unveiled "Space Coast" uniforms, Barnes thought his creative team could tie that into NASA's Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation facility located in nearby Fairmont.
"Coleman Barnes brought up the idea of the NASA facility in Fairmont, named after Katherine Johnson, and we did the research on how it tied into the space theme," Malewicz said. "Once we were there, we got the run down on Katherine Johnson and why that building is named after her."
Of course, it was Johnson's orbital calculations as a NASA mathematician that were critical to the success of the space program's first crewed space flights in the early 1960s. It was her work as one of the pioneering NASA employees that inspired the 2016 movie "Hidden Figures."
Johnson, born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, was among the first Black students at West Virginia University as a graduate student in 1939. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.
So, when UCF came out with its space-themed uniform reveal a few weeks ago, it seemed only natural to tie the two together when the two teams play this Saturday.
"That was a pretty viral video for them and that kind of sparked our minds over here, 'How can we tie their whole space theme into something cool? How can we make our reveal video more than just going to a random location that has no tie to the other school?'" Malewicz said.
Malewicz, Jake Herron, football's associate director of recruiting, Rasheed Marshall, director of player relations, and Learfield employee Mason Tucker drove down to the NASA facility earlier this week to do the shoot.
Herron was responsible for the still photography while Malewicz and Tucker did the shooting; Marshall, because he is still in such great shape, served as the player model. Malewicz did the editing once they returned to Morgantown.
These uniform reveal videos have become so popular that creative departments around the country are paying attention to what each other are doing. Typically, they come out on Thursday or Friday evening before Saturday games.
Malewicz said West Virginia's uniform reveal videos are posted on Mountaineer football's social media accounts at 6:30 p.m. two days before the game.
"The one we are doing next week is even crazier than what we did this week," Malewicz predicted. "It's almost getting hard to come up with a good idea every week."
Occasionally, Malewicz admits that they must dial things back when an idea might be deemed too controversial or offensive.
"We definitely have ideas that we bounce off each other to where, 'Is this going too far?' I think we've done a pretty good job of keeping it pretty level. I think about it from the fan's perspective and it's fun to see how the fans react to it," he concluded.
You can watch this week's uniform reveal and prior reveals on Mountaineer football's social media accounts.
Game 8.
— West Virginia Football (@WVUfootball) October 26, 2023
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