Anyone familiar with the Family Guy cartoon series is well aware that Brian and Stewie often go missing for days on end, only this Brian was not the one Stewie usually goes home with.
Enter Brian Tewes, who happened to be granted the special privilege of flaunting the inaugural Stewie head in the student section of last Wednesday’s UCF men’s basketball game against Memphis. The UCF Athletics section has been handing out various “big head” posters of Knights basketball players, as well as cartoon characters and celebrities during basketball games.
The only problem was Tewes and the Stewie head poster were nowhere to be found after the postgame madness.
“I stormed the court like everyone else and took the cut out with me similar to how the other students who were given them did,” said Tewes. “Afterwards, I didn’t see who gave it to me so I went home with It and hung it on my wall.”
UCF premiered five cut out heads, featuring Stewie, Darth Vader, Justin Bieber, The Most Interesting Man in the World, and Daniel Tosh. During the circus that followed, collecting the heads was not easy.
“We went through the crowd to collect them and realized that Stewie was missing,” said Assistant Director of Fan Development Samantha Nemeroff. “We thought it wasn’t going to be found, but by chance, our intern’s friend was taking pictures for Valencia’s newspaper and had taken enough of the crowd for us to spot him.”
Nemeroff and the UCF marketing team decided to make the search for the Stewie head fun by making a themed wanted poster of Tewes with a Wild West flair. It featured several shots of him throughout the game with the Stewie head and offered a reward for its safe return.
Not even 15 minutes after the pictures were posted, with the help of UCF Nation, the culprit was found. Dan Antonino, or “Knight Fan Dan”, is a friend of Tewes and spotted the picture of him as soon as it was posted on Facebook.
“I called him as soon as I saw it and posted a link to his Facebook of the picture,” said Antonino. “Seeking the prize, I went with Brian to return the head and was awarded three t-shirts.”
The cut out heads of celebrities and cartoon characters was inspired by an Indiana Hoosiers basketball game that the UCF marketing team had watched. The cut out heads are traditionally used to distract the opposing team during free throws and are a way of making the crowd even more raucous.
“Our goal is to have those five heads showcased at every game, but we encourage students to make their own as well,” said Nemeroff.
The marketing team is calling for even more crowd participation with the cut out heads and will look to collect them prior to the games completion to ensure this mishap does not happen again. As for Tewes, he is happy things have returned to normal as his time as a UCF outlaw was short, but exciting.
“I couldn’t believe they went to such an extent,” said Tewes. “It was very creative getting the poster out there, and this was definitely one of my best college moments so far.”
UCF will play their first home game since the Memphis thriller Saturday against Southern Miss at 7 p.m., where Stewie and the gang will make their triumphant return. Hopefully this time he’ll make it home without any trouble.
