This project has a special place in my heart. As a UW-River Falls alum and former Falcon Football Player and Coach, seeing your team reach the Division III National Championship was sweet enough, but to win it is something different. Saturday, January 3rd, 2026, at 7:30 a.m., I received an email from a member of the UW-River Falls administration explaining that should we win tomorrow night, we need a logo ready to go. So, with a 7 p.m. Sunday Kick-Off, I had a little under 36 hours to put together a logo that would encapsulate everything that this season meant to the players, coaches, administration, and alumni. The hardest part of the entire project was that there was a chance that it would never be seen by the light of day. However, spoiler, the Falcons pulled it off.

A Championship season isn’t complete without a championship logo

The Background

If you are unfamiliar with the story of the 2025 UWRF Falcons, Disney would think it is too far-fetched to make a movie out of it in 2025. The head football coach, Matt Walker, arrived in River Falls in 2011 and inherited a team that was in shambles and hadn’t been to the playoffs since 1996. The league they lived in never handed out sympathy. For the next 10 years, they would not have a winning season, including an 0-10 season.

In 2021, the Falcons weren’t a feel-good story anymore, they were a problem: 9–2 overall, 5–2 in league play, the kind of season that makes opponents start circling you in red.

Then came the hardest stretch, the years that break most rebuilds because they’re close, and “close” is its own special torture. From 2022 through 2024, River Falls was legitimately good, winning seasons stacked on winning seasons (7–4, then 7–3, then 7–3), playing like a program that believed it belonged, but the WIAC crown stayed just out of reach, guarded by the usual monsters and the league’s weekly knife fights. Every fall ended the same way: pride, progress… and that quiet, bitter taste of not yet. Until 2025, when “not yet” finally snapped.

In 2025, the season where all the “almost” years finally cashed in. It didn’t arrive like a fairytale; it arrived like a storm front. The Falcons beat the Whitewater Warhawks and the Lacrosse Eagles worse than any team had in years, but more importantly, they were WIAC Champions for the first time in 30 years. They blasted through the bracket in their first playoff run in nearly three decades, and when the lights hit their eyes in the title game, when the whole thing came down to a few inches, a few reads, a few tackles made with zero hesitation, they didn’t flinch.

In the Stagg Bowl, the North Central College were the reigning champions and had been to the championship game 6 consecutive times, but River Falls wore something heavier: every losing season, every close call, every cold practice where belief had to be manufactured. The final was 24–14, and when it was over, it wasn’t just a win, it was a program stepping out of its own shadow and into history: first national title, first WIAC title and the “over the hump” season turned a long rebuild into a permanent story.

During the same season I was a part of Small School Saturday, our version of ESPN’s College Gameday, which we were lucky enough to bring to the Stagg Bowl in which my alma mater was participating in. In the final minutes of the show we were making our picks for the game and this video sums up how I felt about the Falcons being in this game

The Concept

In any logo design, I want to include elements that pay homage to the story behind the logo; this design was no different.

A couple things from the game that I knew I wanted to consider:

  • The game was being played at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

  • The 2026 Stagg Bowl Logo, which we were not allowed to use specifically, but knew I wanted to hint at it.

  • “National Champions” of course had to be at the forefront.

With that being said, we went through a couple renditions of the logo with a variety of concepts:

Concept 1:

Originally, the logo started out with a red background with canton on top with the Stagg Bowl logo overtop, but did not find out until the day of the game, we would not be permitted to use it.

Concept 2:

Anytime I do a logo, I want to try to give the client as many different options in different designs so they can pick and choose elements they like, this is when I added the bottom portion of the Stagg Bowl Logo in the outline of the full logo.

Concept 3:

There was something so sharp and eye catching about the black background of the logo. We knew that we loved Canton being on top and the Stagg Bowl outline on the bottom. This was our last version before the final was approved

Final version full breakdown

Post delivery

Once the logo was finalized and delivered, it immediately became more than just a mark, it became a movement.

The design was rolled out across the official team store, giving fans the opportunity to own a piece of the season through hoodies, T-shirts, and other merchandise. From there, it took on a life of its own. The logo appeared on news broadcasts, across social media feeds, in print, and even on custom cornhole boards, a true symbol woven into the fabric of the moment.

There’s no way to measure exactly how many eyes have seen it. But that was never the goal.

The goal was to create something timeless, a visual legacy that will forever represent this magical season and the players, coaches and community who made it possible.

testimonial

When we knew we were heading to the National Championship, I immediately reached out to Seth Howard to design our 2025 NCAA National Champion logo for the University of Wisconsin Football National Champions merchandise. Having seen the outstanding work he produced for UWRF Football social media as both a student-athlete and later as a coach, I knew he was the right person for the job. More importantly, Seth is an alum who genuinely cares about Falcon Football, and that pride shows in his work.

The game was played in Canton, Ohio, at the Tom Benson Pro Football Hall of Fame Stadium, a venue rich with football history adjacent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame itself. The logo he created was incredible, it perfectly captured the moment and the magnitude of our achievement. The design was bold, clean, and symbolic, incorporating the school logo, the championship year, and a powerful nod to Canton with the Hall of Fame stadium dome prominently featured at the top, anchored by a champion ribbon at its base.

I especially appreciated Seth’s patience and flexibility throughout the process. As we shared the concept with more stakeholders, additional opinions and revisions naturally followed. Under very short timelines, Seth rose to the occasion, just like any Falcon would, and delivered a final design that brought everyone together and made our championship merchandise something truly special.

We are incredibly grateful for his talent, professionalism, and passion for UWRF Football.

  • Steve Stocker, Associate Athletic Director