‘It’s so special’: Meet the man behind Boise State football’s ‘wow’ helmets

Armando Villareal hand paints Boise State helmets. | Idaho Statesman. BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — Armando Villareal has always been drawn to broncos. Growing up in southwest Nebraska, Villareal owned a horse aptly named Bronco. Years later, in the mid-2000s, his father-in-law owned a burnt-orange 1973 Mustang Mach 1 muscle car, and Villareal, using his burgeoning artistic talent, airbrushed a pair of rearing broncos on the side. And now, Villareal is partnering with Boise State to create something never done before in the football program: hand-painted team helmets. Of course, a rearing bronco with deep orange eyes is included in the design for these Broncos. Boise State football announced what is called its Front Porch of Idaho helmet earlier this week, which will be worn in the Broncos’ next home game against App State on Sept. 27. The hand-painted blue helmets are airbrushed with white paint and are adorned with flowing artwork that merges a charging BSU Bronco, the Idaho Capitol set against the Boise Foothills, and The Blue at Albertsons Stadium, complete with a line of trees for the Boise River area. The 208 area code is also displayed on the front of the helmet. The Idaho Capitol was used in the design because of its prominent presence in Boise iconography. The helmet name comes from Boise State Athletic Director Jeramiah Dickey’s saying that BSU is the “front porch of Idaho.” He told the Idaho Statesman in July that the university “represents something bigger than ourselves,” and “we know what our economic value is to our community.” Villareal, who now lives in Imperial, Nebraska, a small town of about 2,000 people, is excited to see his handiwork come to life later this month. Villareal and his family will be in attendance for the game against the Mountaineers. “It’s just so special,” Villareal told the Statesman on Wednesday. “It makes it so worthwhile to get to do something like that, and to get to be part of a team, and you hope the fans just love it. I’m very fortunate.” From gear head to football helmets As you may have guessed, hand-painting helmets — or air-spraying them, specifically — for an entire football team takes time. A whole lot of it. Villareal personally sprayed 158 helmets, sometimes spending upward of 15 hours a day working to get the BSU gear ready on time. But Boise State isn’t Villareal’s first rodeo, and it won’t be his last. Villareal, a former member of the U.S. Army Reserve who was deployed to Kosovo and Iraq, first got into airbrushing after being introduced to it by a high school teacher. Following his return from Iraq for his second deployment, while living in California, Villareal got into painting motorcycles. He was inspired by Orange County Choppers, a custom motorcycle manufacturer made famous from the reality TV show “American Choppers,” and described himself as a “gear head.” He eventually started creating sports art for a company in Los Angeles, and ended up meeting someone from Schutt Sports — a company that makes football helmets, among other protective sports gear — who wanted him to air-spray helmets. Despite initially getting a no from Villareal, Schutt Sports returned to him in 2018 after he’d gone back to Nebraska, asking him to design helmets for Mississippi State. This time, he said yes. His work has taken off since then, leading him to design helmets for other major programs such as Michigan, Tennessee and BYU, among others. By 2022, he quit his job collecting trash for the city and went full time into helmet design. The Bronco painted on the side of the helmet is incredibly similar to a Bronco that Villareal painted on the side of his father-in-law’s Mustang Mach 1 in the 2000s. | Courtesy of Armando Villareal. “I couldn’t work on helmets and work at the city,” Villareal said. “I was not sleeping, and it was just too much. Every year, we normally do one, two, maybe three helmets. And then this year we ended up actually doing four helmets.” Villareal said he’s worked on about 600 helmets this year, including for Boise State and Utah, and other programs he isn’t allowed to announce yet. Villareal works on each helmet individually with the help of his wife, Lora, who’ll help with masking, cutting out vinyls and laying the design on the helmets. For the Boise State helmets, Villareal began working on them around the start of summer. “I’m just living at work, you know, for months on end, and I couldn’t do it without (Lora),” Villareal said. “It is definitely a team effort. I know I get a lot of the credit, but man, she is such a big part of this.” Creating a helmet that’s ‘about Boise’ Villareal first came to the attention of Boise State thanks to Assistant Athletic Director Matt Sterling. Sterling, a former equipment manager at Utah, was aware of Villareal’s work earlier than most. Villareal has created hand-painted helmets for Utah for six years, and although he began doing so after Sterling left the Utes, Sterling was always impressed with Villareal’s work. Following Villareal’s handiwork on Illinois’ faux-leather helmets in the Fighting Illini’s October 2024 win over Michigan, Sterling reached out to his contacts at Utah and eventually got in touch with the artist. “The brand of Boise State is iconic,” Sterling told the Statesman. “And the fan base is passionate and die-hard and loyal beyond belief, and it was just kind of, what can we do that’s special for them?” Sterling, in coordination with Dickey and a brand committee, compiled various Boise iconographies and sent them to Villareal to come up with a design. Some of the options included were the Boise Depot, the Sawtooth mountains and several of the bridges that cross the Boise River. After three different designs, all created by Villareal, the brand committee landed on the helmet that will be worn against App State. The BSU Bronco is similar to the bronco that Villareal painted on the side of his father-in-law’s Mustang two decades earlier, aside from a few changes, such as closing the bronco’s mouth. The state Capitol was included because of the “iconic view” of the building down Capitol Boulevard, Sterling said, while The Blue was included for obvious reasons. “We decided, let’s try to keep it classic to what we are, but adding that flare,” Sterling said. “… What can we do to create an impact, to create that ‘wow’ moment, to create excitement. And it was like, let’s make this about Boise. Let’s make it about Idaho.” Reaction to the helmets has exploded online. Boise State fans love them, but the love has gone beyond Bronco Nation. The helmet has received wide praise on social media across the college football world, while a T-shirt featuring the design almost sold out in 24 hours before being restocked. “It’s so special to see it. By the time you get down to those last helmets, you’re kind of sick of it, honestly,” Villareal said. “You’re painting it so many times and putting so many hours into it, and then you send them away, and a couple of weeks later, you get to see all the players geared up and wearing them, and they’re on the field. And it’s just so special.”The post ‘It’s so special’: Meet the man behind Boise State football’s ‘wow’ helmets appeared first on East Idaho News.
Source: eastidahonews.com