Screen Printing - February/March 2018 - 27

With the game over and score finalized, printing begins. Left, one of the first backs is printed. Middle, hologram stickers certify the shirts'
authenticity. Right, a completed Crimson Tide championship shirt, complete with all scores from the 2017-2018 season.

The mood isn't quite as grim as I expect it to be when I join
the production crew in the break room to watch the rest of
the game on a big screen TV. Alabama let the Bulldogs score
another touchdown, but then added 10 points themselves
during my ride over (The missing shirts were tracked down in
my absence, so that likely helped lighten the mood.). This is
just enough to make the Georgia fans nervous and the Bama
fans hopeful. In the fourth quarter, the Crimson Tide evens up
the score, only to miss a game-winning, last-second field goal
and push the game into overtime. I've never seen such anxiety,
frustration, and pure excitement over a football game - and
I've been to my share of Big Ten rivalry games.
In overtime, Georgia takes back the lead with a 51-yard
field goal. As everyone in the conference room (and others
around the country) watch with bated breath, Alabama's Tua
Tagovailoa throws a 41-yard touchdown to secure a Bama
victory with a final score of 26-23. Amidst cheers of victory
and yells of disappointment, I run after Smitherman as he
quickly heads to the art department to finalize the Crimson
Tide's artwork and kick off the long night of printing ahead.

TACKLING 14,000 SHIRTS OVERNIGHT
As the production crew starts warming up the presses and
tearing down any Georgia screens, Smitherman fires up his
computer, closes out of the no-longer-needed Bulldogs design,
and confirms the final score online - three times, just to be sure.
"I've seen people who have printed 20,000 shirts with the wrong
team or the wrong score," Scott warned me earlier in the day,
and F&E is careful to circumvent such a costly - and avoidable - mistake. Confident Alabama secured victory by 26 to 23,
Smitherman adds the final score to the lower right corner of the
design to complete Bama's 2017-2018 season, saves the file and
uploads it the server, and hurries out to the screenroom.
We meet Scott at the company's i-Image CTS Imaging
System as the winning design loads and is output and exposed
onto the final screens. Almost dizzyingly fast, the screens go
from the CTS unit to the washout booth to a vacuum and a fan
for drying before they're taped up and loaded onto the presses
running the backs of the shirts: a 16-color M&R Gauntlet III
and 16-color Performer.
The two presses printing left chests are already up and running
out on the shop floor, with production crew members carting

shirts around the shop. I wander over to one of the presses in the
final stages of setup for the 10-color design, where Richard Patiño,
executive VP, is meticulously checking registration marks.
"Everything was set up beforehand except for the last three
screens, so now we just have to line everything up," he says.
Speed may be the name of the game, but for F&E, it comes down
to quality. As Tidwell told me earlier in the day, "Good enough is
not good enough. We want it to be the best."
As it turns out, F&E isn't the only place where these designs
will be printed tonight. A partner print shop about 20 miles
from F&E's facility has also been contracted to print championship shirts onto Cardinal-colored T-shirts, putting additional
emphasis on getting everything right. "Consistency is key," Scott
explains. "I don't want one guy to say, 'Well, I can tell Mario ran
this one.' We want all of it to look exactly the same."
Midnight approaches and printing is now underway on all
four presses. As shirts continue to churn out, are carted from
press to press, and go through the dryer, Bama and Georgia
fans alike start to settle into the groove of things, cranking out
close to 1000 shirts per hour. Finalized T-shirts receive an Officially Licensed Collegiate Product hologram sticker to prove
authenticity and are then folded and moved to the unloading
area to be sorted by size and boxed or bagged up, according
to order. More than 250 separate shipments will be prepared
and picked up by the morning, with the first trucks arriving
to gather their goods around 1:30 a.m. Fans will be arriving at
sporting goods stores in the morning eager to purchase their
Alabama National Champions shirts, so time is of the essence.
Still going strong on the adrenaline rush of a last-minute
victory (or perhaps all the caffeine from the empty Mountain
Dew bottles and cappuccino cups from the breakroom I see
strewn around the shop is starting to kick in), the whole crew
whoops and hollers when someone starts blaring the Alabama
fight song. I can tell it's going to be a long but fun night (or
maybe the more accurate word is "day" since the crew will be
printing until 1 p.m.) of hard work. As the clock edges closer
and closer to 2 a.m., I decide it's time for this journalist to get
some shuteye before the long trip home in a couple hours -
that is, if I can fall asleep after the excitement of the day. One
thing is for certain: I can now count myself among the few
who truly understand just how much work goes into getting
shirts into the hands of consumers the day after a big game.
FEBRUARY / MARCH 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Screen Printing - February/March 2018