BLING: Designing the Championship Rings
July 15, 2008 | Men's Basketball
One of the best little known traditions in the Wisconsin men's basketball program recently took place. Any time the Badgers men's hoops team wins a Big Ten title the seniors on the team get together to design the squad's championship rings. With an unprecedented double-dip of winning both the Big Ten regular season and tournament crowns last season, this year's seniors (Tanner Bronson, Brian Butch, Michael Flowers and Greg Stiemsma) had their work cut out for them. Director of basketball operations Joe Robinson and Bronson tell us the story.
'First, the seniors all get together with me and the representative from Jostens and we basically start from scratch,' Robinson explains. 'There are three sides to the ring and we just have to pick what you want on the top and on each side. We just need to decide what is important from the season and what you want to make sure is included on the ring.'
Robinson, who has been a member of the basketball program since '99, owns four other UW rings (2000 Final Four, 2001 and 2002 regular season titles and 2003 Big Ten tournament champs). But this year was different, there were two titles in one year to celebrate.
'We actually designed two rings with the impression that we would get two, one for the regular season championship and one for the tournament. Then we found out a couple weeks later that the NCAA rule is you only get one ring even if you win both. So we merged the two rings into one. The NCAA has guidelines for price range of the rings, so we try to put as much into it as possible within the limits.'
'We thought about what things were really important to us from the season, ' Bronson added. 'One of them was the school-record 31 wins and obviously winning both trophies, regular season and Big Ten tournament was big. We also wanted each guy's name on the ring too.'
'The top of the ring is just personal preference of whether you want a red, gold or white background,' said Robinson. 'Do you want the motion W ' Do you want a number 1' Etc.'
Bronson said that deciding what the focus should be wasn't too difficult.
'I think we all unanimously wanted the 'W' on top of the ring. That's Wisconsin's symbol and the University is what it's all about for us. That was the biggest thing. We also all liked having the Kohl Center on one of the sides because of how special that has been to us over the last four years. We were glad to get that on the ring.'
Each year the seniors handle it differently. In 2003, Kirk Penney was the only senior on the team, so he designed and sketched every detail of the entire ring. This year's seniors were not as crafty with the pencil and paper.
'We had the seniors come in but J.C. Fish from Jostens did all the drawings, ' Robinson admitted. 'They were telling him `do this, do that' and he took care of sketching it. It probably took about an hour or an hour and half to get it right.'
Robinson adds that the Badgers seniors did get some inspiration along the way.
'Jostens brought it several samples for the guys to look at while they were deciding. He had Brett Favre's Super Bowl ring and Michael Jordan's NBA Championship ring. They also brought every ring Wisconsin's ever gotten: football, track, cross country, hockey and all the basketball ones from before. We obviously couldn 't make ours look quite like the $25,000 Super Bowl rings, but they turned out great.'
'There were some really cool ones, like Florida's national championship ring from a year ago and one of the Patriots Super Bowl rings,' said Bronson. 'They had a bunch of different rings that we could look at and model ours after.'
Not every idea was available however.
'The Patriots Super Bowl ring had the Lombardi Trophy raised off the ring over the team helmet,' Robinson described. 'We wanted to do something like that with the Big Ten trophy raised off the motion W, but a Big Ten rule doesn't allow that. The Big Ten trophies can't be affiliated or intersect with the school logos, they have to be on separate planes.'
After a couple months of production the rings finally arrived in late June and the guys were eager to get their hands on the goods. Almost immediately after the announcement that the rings had arrived, Wquinton Smith was in picking his up. Teammate Keaton Nankivil wasn 't too far behind.
'Marcus Landry really wanted to get his on July third before he went home on the fourth,' Robinson said. 'I wasn't here, but he called me to see if someone could open my office to get the ring since it was locked. He really wanted to have it to show off when he went home. He was really excited about it. The coaches like to wear them for recruiting, so they all wanted to get them early too. They went out on the road last week and wanted to make sure they had them.'
'As soon as I got mine I wore it pretty much all day inside,' added Bronson. 'I didn't want to wear it in public though because I was afraid I would lose it.'
Bronson said he does envision a day when he'll wear his outside though.
'I feel like someday when I'm coaching I'll wear it so the guys on my team can see what they're working towards. I think it's important to have a little hardware to show off.'
As great as this ring is, it's always what's next' Almost as quickly as the players got their hands on the rings, thoughts were already turning toward next year.
'It's better than I expected,' Joe Krabbenhoft admitted. 'I didn't think Brian, Greg, Mike and Tanner had that much talent for fashion. It's alright, but I really want to design one now that I'm a senior. Hopefully I'll get that opportunity because I think I'll make a better ring.'
