By the time NFL commissioner Roger Goodell reaches the microphone Thursday night to announce the top pick in the draft in Green Bay, a jersey with the player's last name and the No. 1 will already be customized.
It's not that inside information helped the jersey be prepped in advance, it's that the pressing actually takes about 30 seconds — which is half the time it takes from when the pick comes in to the time Goodell hits the stage.
A runner will take the jersey from a back room to the commish, who then will pose with the player with his name already imprinted on his new team's threads.
This is the 14th year that jerseys of draft picks onsite have been personalized for the on-stage photo. In 2012, Nike, having just received the NFL rights, came to Brent Kisha and told them it had an idea.
"They wanted to make a big splash and they thought this would be a cool way to do it," Kisha told cllct.
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On most days, Kisha is the vice president of strategic sales for Stahl's, the world's largest heat-press machine company. At the NFL Draft, he is the all-star heat presser who makes the magic happen.
Kisha has been pressing the jerseys back stage for years now, but, like anyone, on a big stage, he still gets nervous.
"The adrenaline is amazing for this event," said Kisha, 57, who has worked for the private Detroit-based company since 1991. "We started doing it when it was in a small theatre in Radio City Music Hall, and now it's a traveling road show with thousands and thousands of fans."
Stahls is just a contractor for the NFL, so his company doesn't have any rights to market his role in the process. But it's ideal for the Stahl's, which makes player jerseys for NFL team stores when demand spikes.
The machine Kisha will use Thursday is also the company's best-selling product, the Hotronix Fusion. It costs roughly $2,600 and saw a huge rise in sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, when stay-at-home personalization businesses exploded, thanks to sites such as Pinterest and Etsy.
In Green Bay, an extra Hotronix Fusion machine will be backstage, just in case one malfunctions, which has never happened.
Kisha and the NFL now have the whole thing down to a science.
An official with a headset is told the pick is in and who the choice is.
That person tells the people in the Nike/Fanatics jersey room.
From there, there are 32 folders organized by team with players alphabetically sorted. Teams have different fonts and colors so the name must match up to the jersey it's going on.
The draft pick's name is pulled and handed to Kisha, who already will have the right jersey on the machine. With the No. 1 already imprinted, he will then eyeball the name onto the pre-produced plate.
Kisha then presses the heat press, which is running at 350 degrees, down on the jersey for 10 seconds. When it is pulled up, the name will be adhered to the jersey.
"It's not hard," Kisha said. "For a heat press to work, it needs the right time, the temperature and the right pressure."
Kisha said there has never been any sort of disaster, like a name misspelling or an off-centered name plate.
"The biggest challenge is when a team trades, and then Roger immediately announces that team's pick," Kisha said. "We have to swap out the jersey that's on the machine, get the new folder of names, and start over. I remember one year, Roger told the guy he was handing it to that it was literally 'hot off the press.'"
If anything, Kisha's work is appreciated by the players, who receive the jersey to take home as an all-time piece of memorabilia. Not a single No. 1 jersey presented to an NFL player at a draft has ever reached auction.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.