Meet Armando Villarreal, the man behind college football’s coolest helmets

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Meet Armando Villarreal, the man behind college football’s coolest helmets

Armando Villarreal was hanging from the back of a garbage truck in his hometown of Imperial, Neb., when his phone rang. He quickly shouted at the driver to hit the brakes. Villarreal got out and answered the incoming call from Brad Haley, manager of Schutt Sports, a football equipment company. That conversation, which took place six years ago, changed both the trajectory of Villarreal’s life and his artistic career.

If that call goes to voicemail and Villarreal forgets, he will likely never leave his municipal job at Imperial — a small town of fewer than 2,000 people in rural southwestern Nebraska.

Luckily, he did pick up and listen to Haley’s unusual pitch: airbrushing a special helmet for Mississippi State in honor of alum Sonny Montgomery, a World War II veteran and former Mississippi state politician. Villarreal and Haley first met at a retail summit in Las Vegas years earlier, when Villarreal was working for a California-based art production company contracted by professional teams and leagues.

Since then, Villarreal has become a leader in this specialized field. The Illinois leather helmets honoring legend Red Grange in last month’s game against Michigan were perhaps his best work.

“So iconic when it comes to the history of football.”

Each helmet worn during the Memorial Stadium Rededication Game was individually hand-painted and went through an intricate process to be ready for game day on October 19. #Illini // #HTTO // #family pic.twitter.com/CxaZlPR449

— Illinois Football (@IlliniFootball) August 7, 2024

Villarreal has individually made airbrushed helmets for 12 programs since 2018, including Utah, UCF, Maryland, BYU, Michigan and Tennessee. A former member of the U.S. Army Reserve who deployed to both Kosovo and Iraq in the early 2000s, Villarreal did his best to balance his city job with airbrushing hundreds of helmets a year — until 2022, when demand for his artistry became overwhelming.

Typically, equipment staff at various programs will contact Schutt Sports, who will then contact Villarreal with the school’s field. Schutt fills the orders for however many helmets are needed, and they are ultimately shipped to Villareal’s home in Imperial.

“I just have to make sure it looks good on TV,” he said.

Schools will have their own graphic designers send mock-ups to Villarreal. The tricky part is wrapping an image around the entire helmet. Some ideas are simple and easier to implement, such as UCF’s moon design honoring the university’s historic ties to the U.S. space program, or Tennessee’s helmet honoring the Smoky Mountains.

There was one project that was so intimidating that he initially turned it down several times. In 2021, Utah equipment director Cody Heidbreder asked Villarreal if he could paint helmets to commemorate the passing of Utah players Ty Jordan in 2020 and Aaron Lowe in 2021.

(Video courtesy of Greg Gosse)

“I think I told them four times that I couldn’t do it,” Villarreal said. “Cody just kept following me and following me. Finally I said we will do it. That was the year I quit my job because it was so much. It was about six hours per helmet.”

Programs typically come to Schutt and Villarreal with ideas in November and December in preparation for the next season. He’s currently finishing up Utah’s special helmet for the Nov. 23 game against Iowa State in Salt Lake City.

“Once that’s done, we’ll start working on next year’s designs,” Villarreal said.

Helmets sent to Imperial from Schutt arrive each spring sometime between May and June.

Villareal receives only the “shell” of the helmet – sans face mask and chin strap – and immediately sets to work sanding them all down, with the help of his wife and three children. In order for the paint and design to stick well, the texture of the helmet should be much rougher, without too much shine.

A typical order usually consists of approximately 150 helmets per team. Some schools order more because they plan to sell or auction them as collectibles. Villarreal said Illinois has gotten so much buzz about the leather helmet that the athletic department is considering a special order after the season.

It takes a minimum of two months to complete an entire order and have it shipped to the school. The Illinois order took an estimated two hours per helmet, while the Utah helmets debuting later this month against Iowa State took about four hours each.

“If you make 155 helmets, the 32nd should look like the 76th and the 120th,” Villarreal said. “They should all be quite similar.”

Villarreal takes up space in an old shop his father uses, and he also relies on his father-in-law, who owns a welding and fabrication shop in town. That’s where Villarreal spends hours with a paint mask, painstakingly applying the airbrush design to helmet after helmet.

The business is gaining so much popularity that he and his wife, Lora, are considering building their own studio and adding additional manpower if demand continues to rise. Once upon a time, after returning from his missions, Villarreal was airbrushing motorcycles in Florida. Now he’s at the forefront of college football uniform ingenuity.

“I have to figure out how many we actually do because ultimately it depends on the design,” he said. “The problem is that the players only report in the spring. And then they have to have their helmets fitted. So there’s a narrow window in which I’m thinking, how can we do this? How many can we get done?

“This leather helmet for Illinois just blew up. I don’t know what the future holds. There will be quite a big learning curve over the next two years.”

Maybe, but that doesn’t mean he can’t take a break and enjoy it. Recently, EA Sports College Football 25 updated its video game options with the antique leather helmets from Illinois.

“The little kid in me is going crazy,” he recently posted on X. “I’m going crazy!”