I know I'm lagging behind a little on posting this, so if someone else beat me to it, I apologize in advance.

This article was on the back page of the Arts & Life Section of Sunday's Dallas Morning News. I saw the LSU football and it caught my eye.

quote:
My Town: Football entrepreneur Chris Calandro enjoys life on the sidelines
Matt Strasen/Special Contributor Chris Calandro, owner of The Big Game, holds a few of the footballs his company makes. AText Size By KATHLEEN GREEN
Special Contributor
Published 06 June 2011 08:48 AM
Related itemsOn game day, Chris Calandro is happy hanging out on the sidelines. Not one to invite the spotlight, he’d much rather let his custom-made footballs bask in the glory.

“When I meet people and they find out what I do, they’re like, ‘What? You own a football factory? That’s crazy exciting,’” says Calandro, 45.

The Frisco father of three girls started the Big Game, a custom-football business, from his garage in the early ’90s. The Louisiana State University business grad saw entrepreneurial potential after he was turned away trying to buy a few customized footballs to give to coaches of his high school’s champion team. The big-name football makers wouldn’t take such a small order.

He rolled out a few prototypes and started kicking around some ideas. When a flag football injury sidelined him for a week with a torn ACL, Calandro started making some calls.

“I called all the bowl teams, every NFL team, some premiere high schools,” he says. “And lo and behold, I got the University of Texas and the Houston Oilers, Purdue and the Seattle Seahawks. It just grew and grew.”

As business picked up, Calandro and a few employees moved ball-making to the kitchen table until he says his wife tired of that. As more orders rolled in, he quit his full-time job at Beckett Media (a trading-card magazine publisher in North Dallas) and opened a factory in Frisco.

There, about 40,000 balls are cut from scratch and sewn together each year. Half are made for commemorative use “to sit on the shelf and look pretty,” he says; the others are used at college games, from the Florida Gators to the Colorado Buffaloes to the LSU Tigers.

“Saturday night at Tiger Stadium is something else,” says Calandro, who grew up in Baton Rouge. “I’ll try to catch a few of those a year.”

Often, his brother will join him there, he says, to share their mutual love for the game. Football has always been a major draw, he says, even though he never played past middle school because he was a squirt.

“I kept getting beat up and crunched by guys with beards and stuff,” he says. “I just wasn’t big enough and fast enough to play.”

Instead, Calandro is perfectly content watching the game, rubbing elbows with childhood heroes such as former New Orleans Saints quarterback Archie Manning and making game balls for his team.

“When LSU won the national championship in 2009, we made one for President Bush, and the team carried it to the White House and presented it to him,” he says. “I’ll never forget that day.”

Guy time away from the office: Tractor Supply Co. and Grainger are two stores that engage me. The last time I was at Tractor Supply, they were selling ducks and chickens. I almost bought a few but wisely realized that wasn’t going to fly with my bride, and I want to stay married.

Time with the girls: They sort of have accepted the fact that we do guy things. I’ll generally drag them to things we can enjoy together. I take them on the sideline for some of the TCU games. We’ll go to Pier 121 on Lake Lewisville and feed the fish there. That’s fun.

Favorite night out: If it’s my birthday, I probably want to get me some Babe’s Chicken. With my wife, it would be Cantina Laredo. It’s close to home, a nice, quiet dinner. And we just goof around a lot. I don’t need a lot of hoopla to have fun.

Best app: I have that Diners, Drive-ins and Dives app for my iPhone (a la Guy Fieri from the Food Network) that tells you where all those triple Ds are. I’m a sucker for a greasy-spoon restaurant. Whenever I travel, I’m hitting the triple D when I can. The family’s a little more reluctant than I am.

Fun family outing: We’ll get on the Tarantula Train in Grapevine and take it to the Stockyards in Fort Worth. We’ll mess around there for a while and then take the train back. And I love downtown Fort Worth. That’s the best-kept secret. I could occupy myself for weeks. Reata Restaurant is a great place, too.

Kathleen Green is a Plano freelance writer.