The Team Behind The Team: Football Equipment Managers
Daily football operations would not be as seamless without the behind-the-scenes work of the team behind the team: equipment managers. At Colorado State University (CSU), the experience of football operations and the work that goes into every function of the team oftentimes goes unnoticed. Equipment managers play a significant role with the team. It takes an associate head equipment manager, assistant associate equipment manager and eleven student managers to complete daily tasks at a high level. In NCAA college division-I sports, every football team needs an equipment group to fully function.
To be a student equipment manager for CSU football, the student manager must be a full-time student enrolled at CSU. The student managers are at times expected to balance a 40-hour work week with at least a 12-hour class credits schedule with no benefits that athletes are given. This can cause a significant amount of stress performing long workdays both outside and inside the classroom and on and off the field, respectively.
For Brendan Bolan, being around a closely knit group every day has allowed him to be himself and express his bright personality amongst many others. Assistant associate equipment manager, Nick Bergstrom mentioned, “Brendan is a glue guy. When you need a laugh after a serious and intensive practice, he is there to pull everyone together and just take you out of that serious mindset.” The impact that he makes from his fun spirit relieves pressure from the equipment team when considering the difficult situations at times.
Coworker and friend Tristan Greene added, “The practices can be intense and serious at times with all the pressure on us [equipment managers] to pay attention to every little detail. Having a guy like Brendan around is important because we would otherwise be miserable showing up to work every day and only thinking about not wanting to make the big mistake.”
Equipment managers are tasked with setting up any necessary equipment for practices upon coaches’ request. When necessary, equipment personnel must assist players and coaches with setting up and running drills during practices as well.
Defensive line assistant coach Buddha Williams explains, “Without the equipment managers, our practices would last five hours longer than they do already.” Williams later added, “Brendan does everything for me and a lot of times it goes unnoticed but all the guys [defensive lineman] appreciate his hard work so much that they even voluntarily help Brendan carry heavy equipment around, so he doesn’t have to do it all himself.” The job of an equipment manager is to make everything easier for the players and coaches. Let the coaches, coach and the players play; we will handle the rest.
Behind the scenes, managers are tasked with distributing apparel, inspecting, and replacing any torn-up helmet hardware, placing decals in exact position on helmets prior to games, and breaking in footballs. Each of these tasks seem simple but require vigorous attention to detail and significant processes to be followed.
Student equipment manager for CSU football, Brendan Bolan explains, “For me personally, it takes about six hours to completely decal ten player helmets for our Aggie specialty gameday.” Other student managers take around the same time to complete this same task, sometimes even longer. Everything is a process.
On gamedays, locker rooms are to be thoroughly planned out and executed. This includes jerseys being placed tightly on the players’ respective shoulder pads.
The role of student equipment manager is underappreciated at times. However, for a position like this, not being recognized can indicate that the job is being done right. If coaches are caught being distracted or disrupted from a managers’ inability to adhere to player safety or incompetent speed of performance to help in a fast-paced environment, then issues arise. Though these are a few examples of what could go wrong, working for a college football team, coaching staff, other support staff could help create numerous networking opportunities in equipment to further immerse yourself in a future sport career path.
