Leader of the Swag Team
Jun 28, 2023 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
Al Cerbe enters his "workshop" at 7:43 a.m. Located directly across from the Kansas State locker room, the football equipment room has black floors, a 20-foot high ceiling with black duct work, and a pair of 10-foot long tables with light-gray countertops. The equipment room has towering, movable purple compartments as long as the eye can see, and shelves upon shelves of footballs. Twenty-one different K-State helmets, current and old, are mounted upon a purple wall. Phil the Bobcat and the "FAMILY" block of wood occupy a shelf, and antique white cleats sit upon another, along with an official K-State purple jersey. Stitched in white thread the jersey nameplate reads: "SWAG TEAM."
Type-written upon a letter-sized piece of paper reads:
Cerbe is in his 18th season at K-State in 2023 and his 14th as Head Equipment Manager for the football program. He oversees a full-time staff of two — assistant football equipment manager Mikie Schiltz and football equipment assistant Preston Flack — and handles all aspects of equipment and apparel distribution and maintenance. One of the best in the business, Cerbe serves as chair of the education committee for the Athletic Equipment Managers Association.
Today is the official "fitting day" and between 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., 25 freshmen and newcomers enter the equipment room at various times. They are fitted for game pants, game jersey, compression T-shirt, shoulder pads, knee pads, and thigh pads. Most importantly, each player is fitted for his helmet — a scan-to-fit process that is one of the most important and most interesting trends in college football today.
Players have two helmets to choose from. The newest Riddell helmet is called the Axiom helmet, which uses the "Tru-Fit" system and Riddell's Verifyt scanning app to capture a 3D image of an athlete's head, cross references that image with a head shape database, and then customizes a factory-installed performance liner system of pads with thickness, shapes and contours to create a personalized fit. It features no fitting foams and no air adjustments, which had long been used inside helmets. This is not your father's football helmet.
"Today is one of the busier days," Cerbe says. "Anything concerning newcomers is a really busy day."
Orientation day, which arrived earlier in June, involved players choosing gloves and also getting their feet scanned — an exacting process in which the K-State scanner, the same model used by Nike, collects specialized data for each player's foot in order to manufacture a custom-fit football cleat for practice and gameday.
This past week, Cerbe spent entire days filling out purchase orders and invoices. The day before fitting day, he received 350 boxes from Nike, including recovery slides for players, pairs of shoes for the coaches, and long-sleeve shirts for training camp.
"It's busy," Cerbe says, "but it's controlled chaos."
"There's nothing like football season," Cerbe says. "Nine times out of 10 during football season you're eating lunch while you're working on something. As much as its helmet, shoulder pads and cleats, it's also gear.
"This job never gets old. There's always something new thrown at us."
Each game day, Cerbe and his staff have the team prepared.
"Something I absolutely love is setting up the game day locker room," he says. "One of the coolest parts of our job is when we go in there before the team gets in there and every game helmet is shining and every pant is in the same location and ready to roll. We look at every piece and have a checklist. Every manager checks his section and makes sure all the pieces are together. Then they come back into the locker room the morning of game day and check it again. And then we have the triple-check."
This labor of love was born long ago, of course, back when Cerbe was a high school student in Horn Lake, Mississippi, awash in the buzz of football, and he served as a team manager handing out water, loading supplies, and handling equipment and jerseys. As a freshman at Northeast Mississippi Community College in 2004, Cerbe began assembling uniform styles — "We went with gold helmets, black jerseys and gold pants," he says, proudly — among his many duties, which parlayed into an internship with the Memphis Xplorers before he assumed full-time duties as head equipment manager in 2006.
"I knew after that first intern year this is what I wanted to do," he says. "I was ready to live in my car and volunteer for an NFL organization."
Fortunately, that never happened. Instead, he received an internship with the Baltimore Ravens from July 26 to August 26 prior to his junior year — "One of the best months of my life," he says. After spending time at the University of Memphis, Cerbe came to K-State in 2007. He graduated from K-State in 2010. Head coach Bill Snyder promoted Cerbe to head equipment manager prior to the 2011 season.
Al and wife Danielle have three children, Adeline, Asher and Ainslee.
"I'm still rocking and rolling trying to get a little bit better every day," he says. "I have a huge passion to help these coaches, players and support staff. I have that mentality that coaches shouldn't have to worry about equipment. You just let us know what you need and when you need it. I'm blessed to have hard-working kids who care about K-State, and that's awesome. I can trust them because of their work ethic to handle our coaches' game day gear. I entrust students to handle helmet decals."
Because of Cerbe's database, every single K-State football equipment item is accounted for right down to a pair of gloves. His meticulousness always shines .
"Probably the most fun for me is when something is disorganized," he says. "I want to fix it. I love that. Helmets go here, silvers are up front, whites are in the back, and shoulder pads should be over them. Everything needs to be the same way. I go from left to right — it should be a purple practice jersey and then purple game jersey and white game jersey and then cold-weather gear. Same thing I did in high school. I organized that."
One of the more immediate to-do tasks for Cerbe and his staff? Constructing and organizing a new field trunk for the sideline.
"We need it," he says. "We have diagrams of what a new field trunk will look like. It's spreadsheets and to-do lists — 'OK, these things will go into these specific drawers.' What we've had for 15 years is definitely obsolete now."
Cerbe sits behind his dark-wood desk as he talks. His eyes light up. He is truly in his element.
"I think I created seven to-do lists this year, including May, summer, post-bowl, spring practice and post-spring practice," he says. "It's a project I've been wanting to do. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't change. I'm wanting to get into the routine where Monday I just worry about operations and preparing for the next game, then use Tuesday as a budget day, and then Wednesday I can work on Nike stuff all day long. Thursday we review gameday operations plans, and we have eight different operational procedures for a game day.
"I'll put our support staff against tons of support staffs."
1. Silver Powercat helmet
2. Purple jersey
3. Silver pants.
"I'm probably a traditionalist," Cerbe says. "When you turn on a game and see silver helmet, purple jersey and silver pants you know Kansas State is on TV. I love that we're up there with Alabama, USC, Penn State, Texas and OU when you start talking about tradition."
It's a recipe that's seldom been altered.
"When Coach Klieman came in, we used the camo helmet for Fort Riley Day, which was a really cool project," he says. "When we put the white helmet out there, around the second time we wore it, I said, 'Man, white pants would look tremendous with that helmet.' We did a white-purple-white look, and it was still a classic look, utilized our colors, and it was a lot of fun. Then came the 'Cats' script – I threw it on a hoodie and it blew up. It was pretty easy to throw it on a helmet decal. When Coach Snyder was here, guys always joked, 'Let's do a black uniform.'
"The uniform thing is cool. It fits Oregon, Oklahoma State, TCU and some of these programs that back then were trying to garner some flash. Coach Snyder wasn't worried about flash, and Coach Klieman loved our uniform and wanted to remain a traditionalist while doing a couple things."
And there are a couple things Cerbe has no plans of implementing for the football program.
"As a traditionalist, I don't ever want to open a season with anything but a traditional uniform, unless the order comes from (athletic director) Gene Taylor or Coach Klieman," he says. "I will never have us wear anything different for KU. I don't believe in it. I probably won't do anything different against a Texas or OU, or anything else. College football is tough. You can't really say, 'This will be a great game, let's throw out our alternates.' I have tons of ideas. I like our throwback stuff. I'm not going to create a new Wildcat. One big thing is lavender – I love it but it's a basketball thing, and I'm not going step on their toes with lavender uniforms. And I don't want to see lavender on a helmet.
"I love the old-school interlocking 'K-S-U' and some of that history. If I'm ever going to do anything it's going to be dabbling into that kind of stuff. Black is not one of our school colors. It's a great accent color but it's not for uniforms. We're purple and white. And, man, we look good on TV. I want our pants to shine and match our helmets. That's tradition. Somebody want to mess with the stripe on the silver helmet? No. Nobody messes with the silver helmet."
He pauses.
"Going on 18 seasons, I bleed purple, and I love this place. I could talk for hours about the past and the future."
Right now is the present — and it's 3:55 p.m., and time for Cerbe to work on his next task.
"It's a little crazy at this time of year because it's your own schedule," he says. "The coaches will get a little time off, but for us equipment guys, we have to be creative within May, June and July in finding space and getting time off. For us, it might be a four-day weekend or something."
Then it's back to the grind, preparing for football season.
And that's when the real fun begins inside Cerbe's workshop.
Al Cerbe enters his "workshop" at 7:43 a.m. Located directly across from the Kansas State locker room, the football equipment room has black floors, a 20-foot high ceiling with black duct work, and a pair of 10-foot long tables with light-gray countertops. The equipment room has towering, movable purple compartments as long as the eye can see, and shelves upon shelves of footballs. Twenty-one different K-State helmets, current and old, are mounted upon a purple wall. Phil the Bobcat and the "FAMILY" block of wood occupy a shelf, and antique white cleats sit upon another, along with an official K-State purple jersey. Stitched in white thread the jersey nameplate reads: "SWAG TEAM."
Type-written upon a letter-sized piece of paper reads:
KANSAS STATE EQUIPMENT
ACCOUNTABILITY
RESPONSIBILITY
DOMINATE THE DETAILS
ACCOUNTABILITY
RESPONSIBILITY
DOMINATE THE DETAILS
Cerbe is in his 18th season at K-State in 2023 and his 14th as Head Equipment Manager for the football program. He oversees a full-time staff of two — assistant football equipment manager Mikie Schiltz and football equipment assistant Preston Flack — and handles all aspects of equipment and apparel distribution and maintenance. One of the best in the business, Cerbe serves as chair of the education committee for the Athletic Equipment Managers Association.
Today is the official "fitting day" and between 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., 25 freshmen and newcomers enter the equipment room at various times. They are fitted for game pants, game jersey, compression T-shirt, shoulder pads, knee pads, and thigh pads. Most importantly, each player is fitted for his helmet — a scan-to-fit process that is one of the most important and most interesting trends in college football today.
Players have two helmets to choose from. The newest Riddell helmet is called the Axiom helmet, which uses the "Tru-Fit" system and Riddell's Verifyt scanning app to capture a 3D image of an athlete's head, cross references that image with a head shape database, and then customizes a factory-installed performance liner system of pads with thickness, shapes and contours to create a personalized fit. It features no fitting foams and no air adjustments, which had long been used inside helmets. This is not your father's football helmet.
"Today is one of the busier days," Cerbe says. "Anything concerning newcomers is a really busy day."
Orientation day, which arrived earlier in June, involved players choosing gloves and also getting their feet scanned — an exacting process in which the K-State scanner, the same model used by Nike, collects specialized data for each player's foot in order to manufacture a custom-fit football cleat for practice and gameday.
This past week, Cerbe spent entire days filling out purchase orders and invoices. The day before fitting day, he received 350 boxes from Nike, including recovery slides for players, pairs of shoes for the coaches, and long-sleeve shirts for training camp.
"It's busy," Cerbe says, "but it's controlled chaos."
The hours will eventually grow longer as the daylight grows shorter. During the fall, an equipment staff member begins the grind at 5:30 a.m. Usually Cerbe will pull 12-hour days during football season. Besides full-time staff, he also had a staff of 60 student assistants during the 2022 season.Nothing like 250 boxes on a Friday!#KStateSWAG pic.twitter.com/1nP0PjMlfg
— K-State Equipment (@KStateSWAG) June 16, 2023
"There's nothing like football season," Cerbe says. "Nine times out of 10 during football season you're eating lunch while you're working on something. As much as its helmet, shoulder pads and cleats, it's also gear.
"This job never gets old. There's always something new thrown at us."
Each game day, Cerbe and his staff have the team prepared.
"Something I absolutely love is setting up the game day locker room," he says. "One of the coolest parts of our job is when we go in there before the team gets in there and every game helmet is shining and every pant is in the same location and ready to roll. We look at every piece and have a checklist. Every manager checks his section and makes sure all the pieces are together. Then they come back into the locker room the morning of game day and check it again. And then we have the triple-check."
This labor of love was born long ago, of course, back when Cerbe was a high school student in Horn Lake, Mississippi, awash in the buzz of football, and he served as a team manager handing out water, loading supplies, and handling equipment and jerseys. As a freshman at Northeast Mississippi Community College in 2004, Cerbe began assembling uniform styles — "We went with gold helmets, black jerseys and gold pants," he says, proudly — among his many duties, which parlayed into an internship with the Memphis Xplorers before he assumed full-time duties as head equipment manager in 2006.
"I knew after that first intern year this is what I wanted to do," he says. "I was ready to live in my car and volunteer for an NFL organization."
Fortunately, that never happened. Instead, he received an internship with the Baltimore Ravens from July 26 to August 26 prior to his junior year — "One of the best months of my life," he says. After spending time at the University of Memphis, Cerbe came to K-State in 2007. He graduated from K-State in 2010. Head coach Bill Snyder promoted Cerbe to head equipment manager prior to the 2011 season.
Al and wife Danielle have three children, Adeline, Asher and Ainslee.
"I'm still rocking and rolling trying to get a little bit better every day," he says. "I have a huge passion to help these coaches, players and support staff. I have that mentality that coaches shouldn't have to worry about equipment. You just let us know what you need and when you need it. I'm blessed to have hard-working kids who care about K-State, and that's awesome. I can trust them because of their work ethic to handle our coaches' game day gear. I entrust students to handle helmet decals."
Because of Cerbe's database, every single K-State football equipment item is accounted for right down to a pair of gloves. His meticulousness always shines .
"Probably the most fun for me is when something is disorganized," he says. "I want to fix it. I love that. Helmets go here, silvers are up front, whites are in the back, and shoulder pads should be over them. Everything needs to be the same way. I go from left to right — it should be a purple practice jersey and then purple game jersey and white game jersey and then cold-weather gear. Same thing I did in high school. I organized that."
One of the more immediate to-do tasks for Cerbe and his staff? Constructing and organizing a new field trunk for the sideline.
"We need it," he says. "We have diagrams of what a new field trunk will look like. It's spreadsheets and to-do lists — 'OK, these things will go into these specific drawers.' What we've had for 15 years is definitely obsolete now."
Cerbe sits behind his dark-wood desk as he talks. His eyes light up. He is truly in his element.
"I think I created seven to-do lists this year, including May, summer, post-bowl, spring practice and post-spring practice," he says. "It's a project I've been wanting to do. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't change. I'm wanting to get into the routine where Monday I just worry about operations and preparing for the next game, then use Tuesday as a budget day, and then Wednesday I can work on Nike stuff all day long. Thursday we review gameday operations plans, and we have eight different operational procedures for a game day.
"I'll put our support staff against tons of support staffs."
Through it all, three things basically have remained the same:Your Big 12 Equipment Champions . #Big12Championship pic.twitter.com/k1zTydG9DP
— K-State Equipment (@KStateSWAG) December 3, 2022
1. Silver Powercat helmet
2. Purple jersey
3. Silver pants.
"I'm probably a traditionalist," Cerbe says. "When you turn on a game and see silver helmet, purple jersey and silver pants you know Kansas State is on TV. I love that we're up there with Alabama, USC, Penn State, Texas and OU when you start talking about tradition."
It's a recipe that's seldom been altered.
"When Coach Klieman came in, we used the camo helmet for Fort Riley Day, which was a really cool project," he says. "When we put the white helmet out there, around the second time we wore it, I said, 'Man, white pants would look tremendous with that helmet.' We did a white-purple-white look, and it was still a classic look, utilized our colors, and it was a lot of fun. Then came the 'Cats' script – I threw it on a hoodie and it blew up. It was pretty easy to throw it on a helmet decal. When Coach Snyder was here, guys always joked, 'Let's do a black uniform.'
"The uniform thing is cool. It fits Oregon, Oklahoma State, TCU and some of these programs that back then were trying to garner some flash. Coach Snyder wasn't worried about flash, and Coach Klieman loved our uniform and wanted to remain a traditionalist while doing a couple things."
And there are a couple things Cerbe has no plans of implementing for the football program.
"As a traditionalist, I don't ever want to open a season with anything but a traditional uniform, unless the order comes from (athletic director) Gene Taylor or Coach Klieman," he says. "I will never have us wear anything different for KU. I don't believe in it. I probably won't do anything different against a Texas or OU, or anything else. College football is tough. You can't really say, 'This will be a great game, let's throw out our alternates.' I have tons of ideas. I like our throwback stuff. I'm not going to create a new Wildcat. One big thing is lavender – I love it but it's a basketball thing, and I'm not going step on their toes with lavender uniforms. And I don't want to see lavender on a helmet.
"I love the old-school interlocking 'K-S-U' and some of that history. If I'm ever going to do anything it's going to be dabbling into that kind of stuff. Black is not one of our school colors. It's a great accent color but it's not for uniforms. We're purple and white. And, man, we look good on TV. I want our pants to shine and match our helmets. That's tradition. Somebody want to mess with the stripe on the silver helmet? No. Nobody messes with the silver helmet."
He pauses.
"Going on 18 seasons, I bleed purple, and I love this place. I could talk for hours about the past and the future."
Right now is the present — and it's 3:55 p.m., and time for Cerbe to work on his next task.
"It's a little crazy at this time of year because it's your own schedule," he says. "The coaches will get a little time off, but for us equipment guys, we have to be creative within May, June and July in finding space and getting time off. For us, it might be a four-day weekend or something."
Then it's back to the grind, preparing for football season.
And that's when the real fun begins inside Cerbe's workshop.
K-State Men's Basketball | Postgame Press Conference at Colorado
Thursday, February 26
K-State Rowing | Media Day
Tuesday, February 24
K-State Rowing | Weights Practice
Tuesday, February 24
K-State Tennis | Weekend Recap vs Old Dominion & Minnesota
Tuesday, February 24
