As a painter at Minnesota State University for more than 25 years, physical plant employee Sam Salzwedel performs a wide variety of paint and brush related duties.
Parking lot stripes, curbs, crosswalks — in addition to many classroom walls throughout the campus — all fall under his job description.
Salzwedel’s also the man behind the Maverick logo, the 42-foot wide depiction of a somewhat aggressive looking bull that graces Blakeslee Field every year during the football season.
“Sometimes I’d like to put a smile on that rather mad looking thing,” Salzwedel jokes.
As the Maverick logo enters its fourth year, Salzwedel reports that this year has been an especially interesting one. Before the shipment containing all the necessary ingredients to get the logo onto the football field arrived, Salzwedel was anticipating he’d get a group of stencils as he had in the past, one for each color he uses (two different shades of purple and gold plus black). Instead, he was surprised to receive a huge tarp with approximately 700 small half-moon cutouts in it, each cutout corresponding with a different color.
The cutouts first needed to be marked with aerosol paint. Then the tarp was removed and an airless sprayer was utilized to connect the half-moons with the corresponding color. The colored areas were then primed in lighter tones to make the purple and gold more brilliant.
Salzwedel figures that he uses about 12 to 14 gallons of a special field-marking paint on the logo before he’s through. Painting the Maverick logo is initially an all-day job followed by weeks of touchups throughout the remainder of the football season. Touch-ups typically take about three hours to perform, while having to do a total repaint would take five or six hours.
“During no-activity weeks, I make sure the image is kept on the field by highlighting the purple and gold and outlining the black.”
This ensures not having to go through the preliminary process with the tarp again, and saves Salzwedel and his crew a lot of time.
For Salzwedel, the most difficult part of the job is not being able to control the weather when the time comes to put the logo on the field. Since Septembers in southern Minnesota can run the gamut from 90 degrees and humid to frost or even the occasional snowflake, he never knows what he’s going to be up against.
Ideal conditions would be temperatures in the 70 to 75 range, with a slight breeze and no dew. Such conditions would allow the total of two primers and three finish coats to dry more quickly. Happily, this year those conditions were met, he said.
“There was no dew, it was breezy and about 60 degrees when I painted. It was perfect weather.”
At the beginning of the football season, when the grass is growing more rapidly, the MSU grounds people need to mow every two or three days. All that mowing causes Salzwedel’s creation to vanish rapidly. To help him out during this period of frequent touch-ups, Salzwedel carries a pocket-size picture of the logo with him so he has something to refer to.
In addition to painting the logo on Blakeslee Field, Salzwedel has also put it on a conference table insert, projected it in sepia tones on a wall in the Athletic Office, and even put one on a pumpkin one year.
MSU’s Associate Director of Athletics Tim Marshall is pleased with Salzwedel’s work. He believes that the Maverick logo adds a lot of color and spirit to the stadium and is a significant part of the college’s identity.
“The logo is an important part of the game day experience. Sam’s dedication to this project is very much appreciated. He makes it look just right.”
An MSU graduate, the logo man is also a football fan, and if he isn’t at the game, he’s probably listening to it on the radio. He follows most of the Maverick sports and has employed several athletes from the women’s volleyball and basketball teams as well as members of the football team. Teaching his student workers the painting trade has been an aspect of his job that Salzwedel has particularly enjoyed.
“One of my students, Joon Twayana, has worked on the Mav logo many times. I asked her if she was glad to be a part of it and she said, ‘ I am so proud.’ That’s good enough for me,” he said.
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