An OU athletics promotional shirt featuring men's basketball coach Porter Moser dressed as Jonathan Goldsmith, "The Most Interesting Man in the World," from the Dos Equis beer commercials.
OU men's basketball coach Porter Moser dressed as Jonathan Goldsmith, "The Most Interesting Man in the World," from the Dos Equis beer commercials. Tee Shirt Creator
Head Coach Porter Moser during the game against South Alabama on Nov. 18
OU men's basketball head coach Porter Moser during the game against UNC Wilmington on Nov. 15.
An OU athletics promotional shirt featuring men's basketball coach Porter Moser dressed as Jonathan Goldsmith, "The Most Interesting Man in the World," from the Dos Equis beer commercials.
Porter Moser hollered an emphatic “Yes!” at the Oklahoma alma mater’s conclusion, grabbed a fan by the shirt and slapped him on the chest.
Moser’s pat was emblematic of the happiness he felt in Oklahoma’s first win of the season but also a subtle endorsement of the student’s shirt.
𝐷𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑀𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑟𝑠Brought the energy tonight @OUBoomSquad ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/F0ZJd96IAC
Members of the Oklahoma BoomSquad — the Sooners’ student section — donned similar tees with Moser posing in a suit and the white slogan, “Boomer Sooner, My Friends." The portrayal is Moser’s best impersonation of Jonathan Goldsmith, who is "The Most Interesting Man in the World," in the famous Dos Equis beer commercials.
Oklahoma’s marketing team offered 500 of the shirts to the first students to attend the Sooners’ game against Arkansas Pine-Bluff. It’s the program’s latest gimmick to increase student attendance at the 47-year-old Lloyd Noble Center. Moser has been deeply invested in the process as well, working closely with student organizations across Norman.
OU’s coach hand-delivered slices of pizza to the first 200 attendees before the Sooners’ game against then-No. 7 Kansas last season. Before the start of OU’s 2022-23 season, Moser crashed several Greek Life meetings in Dale Hall, visited Greek houses and tipped off a fraternity basketball tournament.
Had a GREAT night last night with the Students at the @OUPikes house for Greek Madness! A 🏀tournament with other Fraternities benefitting the Norman Department!👏 Incredible Energy out there and these guys got after it! 💯🔥🏀🏆🧱 by 🧱 fillin LNC😉#BoomerSooner pic.twitter.com/ncjnAUKW2f
After every game, the second-year head coach can be seen exchanging high-fives and fist-bumps with members of the student section. The T-shirt marketing added emphasis to Oklahoma’s desire to improve fan engagement ahead of its move to the SEC.
“Just imagine if we fill this thing,” Moser said earlier this season. “We just have to, it’s a home court advantage. The people that were here, I wanted to sincerely thank them. I was trying to go over and thank everybody because they were so loud. But imagine if it's five times that kind of atmosphere.”
Head Coach Porter Moser during the game against South Alabama on Nov. 18
While Moser’s enthusiasm for fan engagement isn’t new, the growth of a scruffy, white beard is his most recent development. Moser went for the “old as dirt” look in the spur of the moment during OU’s overseas trip to Spain and France over the summer.
After Moser kept the beard, his former Creighton teammates and longtime friends Todd Eisner, now head coach at Winona State, and Matt Petty joked about his similarity to the actor in the Dos Equis commercials. The tight-knit group sent GIFs to Moser, which finally prompted him to post a side by side comparison to him and Goldsmith.
While Moser drew insults from his friends, he ended up calling Petty for advice. Megan Moser, his wife, loves the beard and was encouraging her husband to keep it, while Porter was debating on shaving before the start of the season.
“I told him, ‘you gotta keep this thing man,’” Petty said. “The guys love it. You know it's a new deal, and I knew once he’d go to The Big 12 coaches meeting, they'd give him a bunch of shit about it. Then I was like, ‘then you got to really keep it.’ But, it honestly just came out of nowhere.”
As Petty predicted, Moser’s beard drew playful ire from the media, including CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein, who compared the scruff to actor Charlton Heston’s appearance as Moses in the movie The Ten Commandments.
Porter Moser with the beard is reminiscent of Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments. pic.twitter.com/Y2x5pdxtzl
The official Dos Equis Twitter account even jokingly replied to the post, “I’ll have my people call your people.” While it didn’t end in a business deal, Moser’s appearance allowed Oklahoma’s marketing team to leverage it into a promotional T-shirt. Even Goldsmith, who politely declined to comment on the tee, wished Oklahoma and Moser the best of luck with their season.
Since I have been getting so many GIFS sent to me the past few weeks …I said the heck with it…I’m doing an NIL deal with @DosEquis Stay Thirsty My Friends!😉 pic.twitter.com/0KTzb3bkXq
“It’s all of a sudden just grown into itself,” Petty said. “I told him to get a truckload of those Dos Equis delivered either to his house or my house, to start his conversation with them from there.”
OU men's basketball coach Porter Moser dressed as Jonathan Goldsmith, "The Most Interesting Man in the World," from the Dos Equis beer commercials.
Moser had on a black suit ready for a photo while he waited patiently in his office.
The Sooners’ coach was egged on by a tandem of assistant coaches to take a mock-up photo mimicking Goldsmith, and he finally caved. Sports information director Brent Beerends then rushed down to the Griffin Family Performance Center and took the photo himself.
Moser later posted the image to Twitter on Sept. 13 and the allure grew from there.
Leah Beasley, OU’s recently hired executive associate athletics director for external engagement, jumped at the program’s chance to market the image. Beasley was hired in April from Mississippi State to help revamp OU’s marketing and entertainment before the move to the Southeastern Conference in 2025.
In her nine years in Starkville, she worked with eccentric coaching personalities in the past. She says Moser’s infectious personality makes her job much easier.
Beasley has each Oklahoma athletics coach’s Twitter notifications on in case of a moment OU’s marketing team can leverage. In Moser’s case, once he posted the photo to his account, Beasley immediately screenshotted and texted the image to the licensing and marketing staff.
“I was like, ‘man, what can we do with this?,’ Beasley said. “I'm not necessarily the executor, but we have so many talented folks (on the marketing team) who are so creative and have so much execution. We have a vision of our external team. We have to leverage that and then sometimes we create the magic in the moment, and this was one of those moments.”
She then researched copyright information regarding Goldsmith and “The Most Interesting Man in The World” slogan. In the engagement staff’s preseason pitch meeting, their original promotional ideas included email advertisements and a potential billboard. Finally, Tyler Cofer, the associate athletics director for fan engagement and production, threw out the idea of free shirts.
Immediately, Johnny Smiley, the director of creative content, started working on a design for the apparel that OU could launch at the second game of the season.
They then gave the mission a name: “The Most Interesting Coach in the World” campaign.
“We kind of ran with it, and we knew that it was just gonna be a fun promotion,” Beasley said. We talked about how to tie it to ticket sales, and that might come a little bit later in the season. (We weighed) a ticket sales campaign versus just a student promotion. We had different ideas, but knew we wanted to roll it out with a student promotion (in the end).”
Smiley went with a gray-scaled shirt to capture the essence of a vintage piece of clothing. He then squared the image to mimic covers like Drake’s “Take Care” album or Kelly Kapowski’s portrait from “Saved by the Bell.”
Smiley finished the design by adding the slogan “The Most Interesting Coach in the World,” and placed “Boomer Sooner, My Friends” at the bottom with a crimson OU logo with golden trim.
After producing 500 T-shirts and reserving several for ticket promotions down the road, Beasley and the marketing team were entirely ready to go a week before. They stalled, however, because they didn’t know if Moser was going to shave the beard.
Beasley had to prod Megan Moser to make sure Moser, at all costs, didn’t shave his beard until the second game.
“I actually ran into her a few times with him and I was kind of on the side, nudging her like ‘Hey, at home, I need you to make sure he doesn't shave that off,’” Beasley said, “because we needed it at least to stay until the second game.”
The promotion is just scratching the surface for what Beasley and the marketing team want to do this season with the Lloyd Noble Center and the future of Oklahoma basketball. She and Cofer want to prioritize the experiences for student engagement, season ticket holders and student athletes.
During Oklahoma’s exhibition against Oklahoma City University, the pair walked through the tunnels of the Lloyd Noble Center and surveyed the bowl of the arena for in-season improvements. Cofer and Beasley, self proclaimed “fire lovers,” helped add pyrotechnic machines to light flames to the ceiling of the arena during OU’s player introductions.
They also installed a crimson light system to enhance the colors of the atmosphere, similar to the flashing LED light system implemented at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium this season. Smiley, who previously worked on player graphics at Stanford, added more personality to OU’s introduction videos by videoing close-ups to players’ faces and adding more intro highlights on the LNC’s video board.
Beasley still has a “laundry list” of improvements to make. She and Cofer are actively engaging with stakeholders — student organizations, BoomSquad, the Pride of Oklahoma and all the members of external marketing — to increase engagement.
“Our stakeholders expect the best and our staff does too,” Beasley said. “Supervision is a huge part of this. And they're the ones that are making sure the video boards are engaging fans and all the content is up to date and put in there, and there's a lot that goes into a game day. It's only gonna go up from here, but we still have a lot of work to do.”
Next, Beasley would like to find a place to emphasize the role of a DJ during games, much like an NBA environment. She wants flashing lights around them and their own stand to emphasize the DJ’s importance to the fans.
While short-term pieces like the Moser shirts attract fans to the arena this season, Beasley and the program have longer term projects in mind as OU transitions into the SEC.
“We're in discussions of what the new arena will look like and all the amenities that can have, but for right now we obviously will work around what we are presented with,” Beasley said. “We are trying to reprogram space and it's hard to do when the season has started, but it was really important for Tyler and I to at least see it before we started trying to make changes.”
For now, emphasizing the social environment and student engagement is what Beasley can work with best to improve the game day atmosphere. Working with Moser has helped, as he is pivotal in connecting to Sooners fans, but the T-shirt promo started a trend for marketing the program this season.
“(The LNC) has a rich history of being loud and intimidating,” Beasley said. “We want to keep all of that history, all of that richness, but we want to change some things and some different areas that have been updated with our modern technology. We want to add in some different things that people are looking for.
“They want to be able to be social, your standard, just seats in a bowl are not necessarily how athletics is trending. We want people to be just immersed in everything you could need.”
OU men's basketball head coach Porter Moser during the game against UNC Wilmington on Nov. 15.
During BoomSquad’s first meeting of the year, Dawson Wolff emphasized that the Oklahoma student section held an opportunity similar to that of the character Ray Kinsella, who constructed a baseball stadium in his Iowa cornfield that summoned spirits of major league standouts past in the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.”
“If we build it, they will come,” the new president of BoomSquad said to the group of students, paraphrasing the classic movie. Like Chicago Black Sox legend Shoeless Joe Jackson, who visited Kinsella in the field and urged him to put up the stadium, Wolff wants to be the voice of wisdom building an outstanding atmosphere in the Lloyd Noble Center.
Wolff, a freshman journalism major at OU, sees a specific vision for Oklahoma’s student section. He thinks he and the members of BoomSquad, can be a foundational figure in building a loud, imposing home court advantage for the Sooners.
“We're just envisioning what the possibilities could be,” Wolff said. “We just need to build it, and then they will come. We're in that stage, we're in the corn field and we don’t see the end product, but we're taking steps gradually to get there.”
Wolff is following in the footsteps of former president Matt Bowling, who inherited the position as a senior last year. Bowling, often seen wearing a frog onesie, interacted with former Sooners quarterback Caleb Williams and other prominent football figures with signs that drew them into the student section. Social media posts with those campus stars helped subsequent BoomSquad engagement and student attendance.
Wolff is taking the helm as a freshman, so he thinks he can build a strong foundation in the next four years at Oklahoma. The BoomSquad committee offered him the president position after his loud chants at OU’s exhibition against the Stars.
To their surprise, he already applied for the position following one of the first Oklahoma volleyball contests. Wolff created his own identity by standing out, and he sees the same vision for the student section as the new president.
Wolff is from Michigan and attended numerous Michigan basketball contests in high school. He loved their song “Pump it Up” to hype the crowd. It’s unique songs and identities that he wants to implement at the Lloyd Noble Center to get more people involved.
Wolff’s new three-word motto for BoomSquad is “bring the boom.”
“You want to create something unique,” Wolff said. “You want to be your own. Kinda like the whole crowd's advantage. You have to do something the team likes and you have to get involved in the game… that's what we're striving for. We want to make an impact.”
Oklahoma strived to start finding its own unique identity by starting the “Most Interesting Coach in the World” campaign and adding other amenities to the LNC. Wolff embraced the T-shirts, and noted they were a hit with the entire student section.
In fact, he has seen friends casually wearing them around campus, which should only help exposure and encourage attendance.
“I didn't think an idea like this could come about,” Wolff said. “They got people's attention, marketing it on Instagram accounts, Twitter accounts, little things like that. Making T-shirts out of them is kind of eye grabbing, and it definitely drew a crowd.”
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Moser interesting man in the world.
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