The Athletics Department has teamed up with the ACC in an effort to make the Wolfpack’s student sections of Carter-Finely stand out during the football team’s nationally televised game against Florida State Thursday evening. Weather permitting, more than 9,000 free shirts will be waiting in each seat in the student section when fans begin filling the stadium prior to kickoff. If rain or otherwise inclement weather appears likely, the Athletics Department will instead have the shirts handed out as students enter the gates to each section. The goal is to create a unique checkerboard effect, with student sections alternating between students wearing red and white shirts, Chris Alston, Assistant Athletics Director for Marketing/Promotions, said.

“We have been approached about doing white-outs and black-outs, and other things like that throughout the course of the season,” Alston said. “Our thought was that a lot of schools have already been doing that. We wanted to try to do something unique and this is a way that we can showcase that red and white are our colors in front of a great national audience. We want that red and white checkered effect throughout both end zones for us.”

Alston said the idea was first discussed during the summer and was helped along with funding from the ACC.

“In talking with students over the course of the summer, they wanted to do something for this game that would really stand out on TV,” Alston said. “We get funding for each of our Thursday night games from the ACC. For this game, we wanted to do more of a giveaway for the students. We felt that just doing all red or all white t-shirts wouldn’t really stand out on TV. We felt alternating sections of the school colors would get attention and have the people on TV talking about it. The ACC really jumped on board with helping us promote the tradition of the school.”

The T-shirts were designed by Mack Garrison, a senior in art and design and the head graphic designer for student government. Garrison, who also designed T-shirts sold to raise funds for the Coaches Corner – Kay Yow Memorial, said the shirt design was finalized after a month-long process of designing the shirts that included several revisions.

“Scale-wise, this is the biggest design I have ever had,” Garrison said. “As far as exposure, this is huge. I love State football so much and I have been a huge Pack fan forever so for me to get involved with athletics and do a killer design students might like, I was really into it.”

Garrison said his goal was to create an original shirt more visually appealing than the ones given away in recent years.

“The whole thing is they always give out these crappy little shirts that say, ‘Beat Carolina’ or ‘Beat Florida State,'” Garrison said. “I wanted to do something different and give students t-shirts they might actually want to take home. Instead of making one like those given away for the 2009 season opener against South Carolina, I thought it would be cool to go down a Superman type of route with the ‘Block S’ design.”

Alston said the effort’s ultimate success will depend on students for one important final step.

“The biggest thing for this to work is going to be for students to actually wear them,” Alston said.