- Harvard Business Review
- The helmet prank
But there probably should be a fifth shelf, representing the one helmet that the Huskies aren't wearing this season:
Petersen, his staff and his team all were still getting used to one another last spring when the Huskies hit the field together for the first time. Things were getting a bit tense in camp at times, and Petersen thought it would be fun to "lighten" the mood a bit.
So on April 1, he decided he'd pull a little April Fools' Day prank by introducing some uniforms that he had told the team they'd be wearing in the spring game. Petersen explained that he had told Nike he wanted the jerseys to represent the team's personality -- blue collar, hardworking, old school.
Those descriptions all sounded fine.
But on a uniform, Petersen had managed to make them look ridiculous. The jerseys featured a small "W" on the chest with a smaller number on the right side of the jersey. The pants had "DAWGS" written across the behind. And the helmets had a dog on it, which Petersen then turned into a story about a homeless dog that had walked through UW's campus.
"It had kind of a goofy-looking dog on the side, which I thought was going to get the biggest laugh," Petersen said. "None of them laughed. They weren't sure if it was real. And then to cap that off, they thought it was really, really cool, and I think they actually wanted it on the helmets.
"Now, I'm a little bit confused on the whole deal."
Huskies receiver Jaydon Mickens offered his take on Peterson's joke.
"He seems like the prankster type, but I didn't think he'd come that hard at us," Mickens said. "Because there are a lot of things you don't play with when it comes to football players. You don't play with the uniforms."