V-Shirt History
It was a cold blustery day at Villanova. A young man named Matt was walking near the Fieldhouse when a wheel rolled over his foot. He felt a powerful jolt of energy surge through his body as he looked over to see who it was. It was an old man named Jake. He smiled. "Excuse me," he said. Matt did not think much of this incident for the next couple of weeks. Then he attended a Villanova basketball game in the Fieldhouse. It was so crowded in there that he could barely move. Then as he was brushing past someone, he felt that same jolt again. He turned and saw that it was Jake. Then he immediately turned and looked at the "V" in Villanova and he was inspired. That summer, as he was reading the New York Times, Matt saw an ad for T-shirts that cost $0.85 at this store in New York. He took a ride up there and purchased 100 shirts. Continuing with the divinely inspired vision, he silk-screened a big "V" on the front of these shirts in the St. Mary's auditorium. When he was done, there was a V on every chair that had a shirt on it in the auditorium; it had bled through. These shirts were fine until they got washed. They shrank to about 2 feet. However, the shirt continued in the band and became the attire the band wore at Villanova football games.
So then the V-Shirt became the Villanova Band's football uniform until fall 1997. The university decided that it was too informal for a uniform, so we switched to white band polo shirts. The V-Shirt then became a casual shirt for band members to wear around campus, to the gym, or while playing sports.
Then the day came. It was in Connelly Center when we were sitting in our usual area. Sal, band president, during the typical banter of the day mentioned hockey's Phoenix Coyotes and their "Whiteout" in which every single person in the arena wears something white. Pointing to one of us wearing the V-Shirt, he said "Imagine if we could get everyone in the Pavilion to wear that!" And so it began. Neil immediately liked the idea and ran with it. Jake Nevin appeared to him in a dream and said "You are wise young fellow and the V-Shirt will bring back the spirit of 1985. Thou shalt call it The Sea of V." The mysterious ad campaign was adopted, so numerous flyers were printed with a bunch of letter "v"s on them and other merely saying "Sea of V coming soon!"
As the student body was baffled as to what the Sea of V actually was, the band was finding out the best strategy to sell shirts. We made them very reasonably priced at $5 each. Our primary goal was to have the shirt worn by as many people in the Pavilion as possible. By putting the school fight song on the back, we hoped to have the crowd singing "V for Villanova" at the games along with the band because very few people know it. By reducing our profit margin we thought that we would get cooperation from other organizations in the University. An alumni club, continuing their good relationship with the band, gave us full support. In exchange we put the club's logo on the back of every shirt.