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Date: 12/6/2021
LUDLOW- From the New England Patriots to the Los Angeles Rams, one local airbrush artist spends time every year designing cleats for players across the NFL for the “My Cause My Cleats” initiative, when players wear cleats designed to show off the causes they support.
Joe Ventura, the owner of Joe V Designs, said he initially received an offer to design cleats after Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Equipment Director Brad Berlin became a fan of his Bon Jovi cover band, “Bon Jersey” back in 2017.
“I have been playing in a tribute band for 30 years and the equipment manager from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is a huge fan of our band and we became very good friends, he asked what I did for my full-time job and he had me do a mockup set of cleats for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and for New England,” he said. “He had me go to Tampa when the Patriots played the Buccaneers on a Thursday night and like three to five days later, I got a call from the Patriots.”
Ventura said the Buccaneers players were so happy with the designs, he received a helmet signed by all the players.
“They sent me a game worn helmet and every player signed it for me as a thank you. I called the girl that was in charge at the time to say thank you and she said, ‘Those players were excited as you were to do their cleats to sign that helmet for you, the work you do on cleats is far beyond what we have ever seen in the NFL,’” he said.
When designing the cleats, Ventura said the players give him the artistic freedom to come up with the designs.
“Most of the time I get their foundation name and they tell me to make my magic happen. All of the time when I send it back to them, they say it is far more than they can imagine and they just love it,” he said.
Ventura said the “My Cause My Cleats” program is not the only time he works on cleats for players.
“I am not only doing cleats for My Cause; I do in-season cleats for some of the players also so that is the stuff you see every week. For the past two years I have done all of the in-season cleats for Cole Beasley,” he said.
Two of the players Ventura said he worked with in the past were Devin and Jason McCourty ahead of the Patriots Super Bowl victory against the Rams in 2019.
“I did the McCourty brothers for the Super Bowl the last time they were in the Super Bowl and both of them kept their cleats in glass cases in their houses. I just recently did Devin’s cleats for this year, and I have a personal relationship with him so I can call him directly and talk to him and he told me what he wanted,” he said.
Despite a trade to the Rams, Ventura said former Patriots’ running back Sony Michel reached out about cleats this year.
Ventura said he wanted to make an impact with one of his first sets of cleats, which happened to be for former Patriots running back Rex Burkhead and his foundation, Team Jack, a foundation which works to provide funding and awareness for research into childhood brain cancer. Jack Hoffman, a boy who was diagnosed with brain cancer at five years old, met with Burkhead when he still played at Nebraska during his college years. In the spring of 2013, Hoffman came onto the field during the team’s spring game wearing Burkhead’s number 22 and scored a 69-yard touchdown. Now Hoffman, a junior at West Holt High School in Nebraska, plays football and is still on a clinical trial for his brain tumor.
“What I did was I asked him if he had a picture of Jack when he first met him and another of him when he was 12 – when I was doing the cleats – from there, I took that picture and I did a portrait of Jack on the toe of the cleat. So, I made the phone call to Jack’s parents to get their permission and I did the cleats. I then called him back and asked them to send a video of Jack signing the cleats,” he said. “They told me they played the video before he opened the cleats and there was not a dry eye in the place.”
By creating the designs, Ventura said he is exposed to causes he did not know existed, including Patriots’ punter Jake Bailey’s foundation, Fur the Brand.
“It is really cool, and you learn a lot about foundations you do not know are out there, like Jake Bailey’s cleats, I had no idea there was a foundation out there that helps people that have pets that are suffering from cancer,” he said. “It opens your eyes to a lot of things you do not realize are out there.”
Ventura said he never imagined when he was growing up players would be running around in cleats he designed.
“It is almost surreal, when I was a young kid all I wanted to do was be a running back in the NFL. I had no idea that as time went on that my work would be running around in the NFL. You do not watch the games from the eyes you did when you were just a fan when you know some of those guys, you just become friends and realize they just have a different job than we do,” he said.
When Ventura is invited to the games once his work is done, he said he shares it with his family and friends as much as possible.
“I like sharing it with my family when I get perks like that, I do not ask anything of the players, I am here to do a job for them and show their foundations in the best way possible and they really enjoy it,” he said. “The coolest thing about it is being able to bring my family, my son, my wife or my friends to a game and tell them we are going on the field, you get to give someone an experience they may never have in their life.”
Ventura said it takes about four and a half hours to finish a pair of cleats with his son’s help.
“It is all hand done and airbrushed, there is no mechanical arm helping me along. I really enjoy it. My son, Zachary, he tapes them up for me, preps them for me and makes sure they are ready to go for what I need to do,” he said.
Before jumping into NFL work, Ventura said he worked on goalie masks for college and NHL teams, but now that field of work has expanded even further.
“I have had Bill Belichick’s people do all the running shoes for one of the teams they had for the Boston Marathon, I have had insurance companies call me and have me do golf shoes for their teams so they can play against other companies and I have had people off the street that have kids in high school that want them done,” he said.
Ventura said he hopes people remember that he put Ludlow on the NFL map through his cleat designs once he is gone.
“If anything, when I’m not here anymore I hope somebody will remember that Joe V brought the NFL to Ludlow, Massachusetts because none of them knew where the hell Ludlow was until they found me,” he said. “I would never have thought a guy from such a small town would be in such a big market.”
When the Patriots took the field during their Dec. 6 matchup with the Buffalo Bills, players wore their “My Cause My Cleats” cleats.