Football Frills: Classy DIY Ideas to Show Your Team Pride

College football officially kicks off this week with our beloved Minnesota Golden Gophers playing their first home game on Thursday, September 1! Chris and I are excited to get out and tailgate and cheer on our alma mater this fall.

Besides our regular fan gear we wear to the games, I'd never tackled trying to show team spirit at home. Before transitioning to cube life, I showed my Gopher pride in my office. September has always been a decor transition month and I thought, hmm, why not see if I can create a classy looking football display?

I started with my new staple window on the mantel and built it out from there. Whenever I think football, I think about Friday Night Lights. (Side note: If you have not yet binged the amazingness that is FNL yet, I highly recommend you get streaming on Netflix ASAP. Ladies, Tim Riggins will change your life.) The book turned movie turned TV Series made famous the "Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't  Lose." phrase.

I put it in an Ikea frame that I had around the house. These are inexpensive and have come in handy for so many things.

Next, I pulled out a framed vintage Minnesota Gophers football program re-print that used to hang in my office. I have two of these that came from a vintage calendar. The calendars are designed for you to be able to remove the art and reuse it. A great gift idea for the college football fanatic in your life. 

After arranging those items, I put up my new "M" string art. I recently visited a local shop called Homade. It has so many fun handcrafted items and they even do private events and birthday parties. I am sure I could have constructed this myself, but the prices were reasonable and I got to support another local artist/crafter.

My trusty vintage law books got turned around and stacked to hold up a Dollar Tree clipboard ($1) with a hand-drawn football play. I googled some plays and just used a Sharpie and a piece of cardstock to create the final product. Not sure how accurate of a play this is, but it looks cute! On the other side of the framed items, I used my new lightbox and added "Ski-u-mah," the slogan used in the U of M Rouser. This lightbox is too fun! It worked great for the fantasy football draft party last week as well.

Of course, no mantel display would be complete without some garlands! I took to Pinterest to find inspiration. I settled on making a referee-inspired banner made up of striped paper printed on cardstock and cut into squares and yellow napkins clipped on to look like penalty flags. I added a whistle to the center of the garland to complete the look. I already had yellow napkins at home leftover from a party, but you can pick up a pack for $1 at Dollar Tree. I used black and white baker's twine (an old Target dollar spot find) and mini-clothespins from Walmart (less than $2/ 50-pack) to secure the items onto the twine.

To jazz up the window a bit, I cut banner pennants from kraft cardstock I had around the house to create a football look. If you don't have any on hand, it is often on sale at Michael's and JoAnn Fabrics. There are also some kraft paper banner pads available at a variety of stores. I used white cardstock to cut strips of paper to be used to create the football laces. One I glued on the laces, I used double-sided tape to secure the individual pennant pieces onto a black and white striped ribbon. The ribbon was also a previous Target dollar spot clearance find. See, these random clearance purchases really do come in handy!

And there you have it -- a DIY way to show some team spirit that I think looks pretty classy as well!