Millions of college-football fanatics tune into ESPN at 9 a.m. Saturday mornings during the season to watch College Gameday, the network’s three-hour program that breaks all the day’s big games. Every week, the show travels to a different university. Usually, the Gameday crew ventures to a venue where major-college rivals clash. But, on September 13, they trekked to Fargo, ND to tip their hat to North Dakota State Univ. (NDSU), which won the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) title three consecutive years. FCS was formally known as Division I-AA, and is a level below where such titans as Alabama, Florida St. and Oklahoma play. Yet, NDSU’s excellence, which is accomplished without the parade of superstars that will eventually land in the NFL, undoubtedly deserves nationwide recognition.
To prepare for such prominent visitors, NDSU enlisted Fargo, ND’s Signarama franchise to create banners and signage to celebrate the occasion. The shop has previously produced numerous promotional signs for the school, and this high-profile visit entailed banners that were highlighted in the show set’s background, supersized heads printed on Coroplast for frenzied fans to wave, athletic-department wall graphics to impress football recruits brought in for the weekend and other graphics that amplified the experience.
Read the photo captions for production descriptions. And, incidentally, the NDSU Bison crushed an overmatched squad from the University of the Incarnate Word 58-0.