The company's branding won’t be noticeable to fans, but Seattle Seahawks and Minnesota Vikings players will have some hidden help for Sunday’s NFC wild-card game in what is forecast to be one of the coldest in NFL history.
Both teams will be outfitted with cold-weather gear supplied by Minnesota-based WSI Sports that is specifically designed for football players forced to perform in frigid conditions. No WSI logos will be visible during the game because of the league’s sponsorship deal with Nike.
“This has been a big break for us,” WSI Sports owner and founder Joel Wiens told USA TODAY Sports. “I’ve spent most of my life pounding away, and we’ve been successful. But over the last few years, we’ve gotten noticed by designing better and better cold-weather gear.”
The football-specific cold weather gear was first utilized by NFL teams in a wild-card game between the San Francisco 49ers and Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field in 2014. The temperature at kickoff was 5 degrees with a wind chill of minus-10.
In the same postseason, the Seahawks wore WSI gear as Seattle toppled the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
According to AccuWeather, it could feel like 20-below zero for Sunday’s game at TCF Bank Stadium, where the Vikings play their home games as construction continues on the team’s new enclosed stadium.
Wiens said the players have access to long-sleeve compression shirts designed to wick away sweat, provide warmth, guard against the wind, and allow for full movement. His company also has supplied socks and glove liners.
While WSI has only recently supplied NFL teams with cold-weather gear, quarterback Jeff Garcia helped make a padded compression shirt made by the company popular league-wide 15 years ago when he was behind center for the 49ers.
WSI Sports has been in business for 25 years, pre-dating the wicking, performance gear that was the foundation of Under Armour’s now-multibillion-dollar empire.
“I wanted to make everything here in the U.S., and I wanted to keep the jobs here,” Wiens said. “We’ve done pretty well for ourselves utilizing our great technology. Money isn’t everything. I never wanted to be the biggest.”
