TAMPA BAY — Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans won’t soon forget their Super Bowl LV victory on their home turf of Raymond James Stadium.
Reilly Haney will make sure of that. He has hand-written every single word that Buccaneers play-by-play announcer Gene Deckerhoff said during the big game onto a poster. It’s a calligram. When you step back, it creates the Bucs logo.
“Handwriting and patience are all it takes,” Haney said. “I can’t draw. I can’t paint. But I have this creative energy I like to unleash every once in a while.”
Haney is a disabled U.S. Navy veteran who turned a hobby into a career by creating Calligrammer.
“Everything you see on the print is my actual handwriting,” Haney said.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This poster commemorating the Bucs as Super Bowl champions contains nearly 10,000 hand-written words that took 40-50 hours to write.
“I would have the game on my computer and pausing it and playing it like ten seconds at a time,” Haney said. “Deckerhoff would say ‘Leonard Fournette runs in for a touchdown.’ I pause it, write that. It’s a lot more tedious than reading it. Tedium is the name of the game.”
Haney, who lives in San Diego, first got in the game by putting pen to paper after the “Philly Special,” a play that helped the Philadephia Eagles win Super Bowl LII.
“I did it because I could not find any Eagles artwork that I liked for the house,” Haney said. “I saw this style from someone who did it for comic books. I emailed him asking if he would make something like this. He was not into sports. So, you know I have decent handwriting and a whole bunch of patience, so why not give it a shot.”
Yes, he’s an Eagles fan but finds something distinctive about Deckerhoff.
“They don’t come like Deckerhoff,” Haney said. “Just writing that he has a whole bunch of energy that you don’t find anywhere else. You guys are really lucky to have him.”
The Buccaneers print on Calligrammer sells for $35.
Kyle Burger at WFTS first reported this story.
