Central Michigan is going to the Bahamas Bowl to play Western Kentucky this year. That's exciting in itself for the Chippewas, since the players now get a free trip to the Bahamas. But the coaching staff decided to make it even more exciting for their team by announcing the bowl bid with a fun video, which also shows players rooting for the Bahamas over all other options.
After watching the video, we thought two things:
- That's very fun.
- That seems like an insane amount of work to put into a bowl announcement.
As it turns out, it was an insane amount of work. CMU head coach Dan Enos asked video coordinator Jay McDowell to do something fun for the announcement that incorporated the logos, and McDowell ran with it.
"He just wanted the logos to pop up and I figured might as well make it more than that," McDowell said. "I actually put together five different videos revealing where we‘d be going, and once they told me we went there, I clicked play on the appropriate one."
FIVE videos. For one fun announcement. McDowell said the extra work didn't bother him.
"I've been doing this job for 20+ years now," he said. "The amount of work going into them, that doesn't faze me."
In the video, the players seemed to be cheering for the Bahamas, and who could blame them? The choice came down to the Bahamas and Detroit, and the Bahamas are warmer, plus many of these players have presumably been to Detroit before. But McDowell swears some of the players were cheering for Detroit, too. There was (unfortunately) no Bahamas vs. Detroit aspect to the video, but it at least made for some fun viewing.
"I honestly didn't even think about it," he said.