Nashville, Tennessee (WTVF) – During the regular season, the Tennessee Titans present two memorial balls to the game’s best offensive and defensive players. But tradition changes once the Giants enter the playoffs. If they win, the whole team gets their own assigned ball with their name on it.
That means Signs Now Nashville is on standby to see if they work hard Monday morning. “It’s all on deck,” said Neil Fennell, Signs Now’s COO. “We all grab brushes, grab bits of paint and just start applying paint.” “It’s like a fourth and a goal, yeah.”
Each Titans member, on or off the field, gets a ball – which means they’ve already started buying and drawing 108 balls. “Ryan Tanehill or AJ Brown down to the 53rd guy on the list, everybody gets one,” Fennell said.
Just like the team itself, they have a winning game plan to make it happen. First, they use a thermal printer, older than most current Titans players. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, so we keep using the same device,” he said.
Neil then uses transfer tape to systematically and precisely attach the design to the soccer ball. “You don’t want it to look like a sticker, you want it to look like something that’s precisely applied to a football,” Fennell said.
Then he rubs and warms the ball to keep the ball smooth. “We take the heat gun and heat it up. So we make sure nothing happens in there when they hand it over to the cool people,” he said.
If Neil made it look easy, it was because he had a lot of practice. “Maybe about 3,000 now,” Fennell said.
Neil has been designing custom game balls since the team moved to Nashville, including taking a soccer ball that Eddie George scored at Super Bowl XXXIV and turning it into a custom-designed souvenir. “Being a part of this part of history is kind of cool, it’s kind of a feather in the hood if you will,” he said.
It’s an honor for any professional, but a real thrill for a Titans fan. “Until the coronavirus outbreak, I never missed a game on my home ground, and I always attended every game on the pitch,” Fennell said.
Which is why he’s excited for this weekend’s game, but more so on a very busy Monday morning. “Hopefully we’re covered in paint and footballs and we have no idea how to get it done,” he said. “I’m really doing it. It’s going to be a great problem.”
Perhaps the biggest achievement of Neil’s career: He had three soccer balls that he designed for the Professional Football Hall of Fame in Canton. One honors back-to-back games to Bruce Matthews, and two honors accomplishments are from late kicker Rob Peronas.
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