Michael Watkins went into his room and in his chest of drawers and pulled out a plain white XXL t-shirt and luckily his mom keeps a sharpie in her purse.
“It was a 30-second process,” the 6-3, 315-pound offensive lineman laughed. “I put the shirt down on the table with some paper towels under it so the Sharpie wouldn’t bleed onto the table.”
With a few pen strokes he created the most personalized piece of Washington swag.
He stepped back and admired his handywork: It was perfectly imperfect. There is the family dining room in Glendale, Arizona he’d created his own font, with letters of varying sizes.
The imperfections made it unique and it perfectly symbolized his journey to Washington.
For his signing day “ceremony” with his mom Angela Kail, he put on the plain white t-shirt and signed a paper with a Washington logo he found online.
In a 9-second video let everyone know, “we official, baby. Go Huskies!”.
But it was what he wrote in a separate post that drew the attention from around the college football world: “They ain’t given me the gear yet so this all I got”
The video went viral with nearly 150,000 views on X alone with the picture drawing another 143,000 views.
X users tagged Washington, Adidas, and Simply Seattle but it was Seattle-based sports apparel company, Twin Vision‘s co-owner Nolan Kozu who reached out to Watkins on there picture thread.
“Congrats my DAWG! DM us and we want to send you one of our gold bomber jackets,” the tweet said.
A short while later Watkins sent a direct message to Twin Vision and Watkins’ first NIL deal was born.
In exchange for the gold “Bombers Jacket” the Husky “nose guard pusher” (as his X profile says) would take pictures and post them on social media.
“Mike told us that he was an XXL, but all we had at the time was a XXXL,” Kozu recalled. “We sent that one to him and it fit him quite well.”
The jacket is a far cry from his homemade shirt as the gold is closer to the helmet color with the striped elastic waistband that Coach James modeled after the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers in 1975.
“The striped waistband, wristband, and collar are an homage the classic Washington uniforms,” Kozu said. “It looks like the stripes on a Husky helmet and the Don James-era pants.”
To some, Watkins’ self-swagged t-shirt shows ingenuity, creativity, and resourcefulness but to Watkins the meaning runs much deeper.
“The NFL is my ultimate goal,” he said. “I know that with BC I’m going to get developed into that type of player.”
“BC” is offensive line coach Brennan Carroll under Jedd Fisch who recruited him to the University of Arizona.
Living in the Grand Canyon State he witnessed first hand Jedd Fisch’s remarkable two-year turnaround of the Arizona Wildcats. By the end of last season nobody wanted to face the Wildcats.
Along the way, Carroll also transformed Arizona’s offensive line and the two built a strong bond.
It was because of that relationship he committed to Washington sight unseen– and is also why he had no purple and gold apparel which recruits typically pick up on official visits.
And how he accidentally landed his first NIL deal.
“I love the jacket,” the future Husky said. “Everybody here loves it down here.”
With temperatures heading into the 70s and 80s in Glendale he will likely have more of an opportunity to represent Twin Vision when he arrives for Spring Football next month.
