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QuickTake:
University of Oregon junior Cheythan Winter has a side job that plants him on the sidelines of the nation’s biggest games with a confetti cannon. Ahead of his fourth Super Bowl Sunday, Winter discussed the preparation that goes into the job.
With 16 seconds left in Super Bowl LVIII in 2024, Travis Kelce slid out of bounds, putting the Kansas City Chiefs in field goal distance to tie the San Francisco 49ers and send the game to overtime.
The CBS broadcast cut to Taylor Swift.
Cheythan Winter, who was standing on the sidelines, didn’t.
“This is the closest you can get, in the biggest moment you could get,” he said.
Watch the highlights back, and you’ll see Winter — he’s a few yards behind Kelce on the sideline.
Winter is a University of Oregon junior with a job that takes him to some of the biggest annual sporting events. Super Bowls? This will be his fourth. College Football Playoff games? Several NBA Finals? He’s been there too.
How does Winter get access to so many high-profile events?
He works for his uncle, who co-owns Artistry in Motion, a California-based company responsible for the confetti cannons that fill the air with colorful paper bits after the final whistle.
“It’s a wild, niche job,” Winter said. “It’s crazy.”
Winter’s uncle, Noah Winter, is the company’s operations manager. He started in fireworks, but when that became “a little too dangerous,” Cheythan said, confetti became king. Noah has been in the business since 1997 with Super Bowl XXXII in San Diego. The company was founded in 1994 and has been expanding since.
“You could name an event in America; they probably do it,” Cheythan Winter said.
‘Give me my shot’
Winter has been watching the confetti business for a while, watching his dad, Joshua, who told him once he turned 18, he could “maybe” get a shot to fire some cannons. He thinks he was 8 when the idea first crossed his mind.
Once that birthday rolled around a decade later, he knew how he wanted to celebrate.
“I was like, I’m 18, give me my shot, I want to do it,” Winter said. “There was no doubt — I mean, waiting for 18 years to do something like that, I was like, ‘I’ll do anything, bro. I don’t care.’”
His first shot at firing the cannons came Feb. 12, 2023, at the end of Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. It was the first Super Bowl after he turned 18.
“It’s wild to say that I’m about to be going into four Super Bowls — in a row,” Winter said. “I never thought in my life I’d be able to say that.”
There’s a good amount of prep work he will do before the cannons fire Sunday, Feb. 8, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. Does he have a left cannon, or a right cannon; that determines what side of the field he’s positioned on. Is he watching Noah, who gets the call to hit the button? There are two boxes of confetti, one for each team, each in different colors. He needs to be sure that the cannon he’s working with fires the proper-colored confetti — that is, confetti with the colors of the winning team.
That can be tougher than you might think. During that 2024 overtime Super Bowl, the Chiefs (red and yellow confetti) and the 49ers (red and gold) had very similar colors.
A surge of activity — and then the cleanup
He’s not rooting for either the Seahawks or the Patriots in this Sunday’s game. Winter grew up in Brooklyn. He’s a Jets fan still waiting for his team’s return appearance in the big game. For now, he just wants a good game.
And his job waits for the game to end, when everything surges into motion.
Noah gets the call. The cannon turns on, and operators shovel confetti into the machine. Moments later, it’s sprinkling down on the champions.
“When people come up to me (and say), ‘it’s such an easy job,’ I’m like, yeah, it’s pretty easy,” Winter said. “It’s pretty hard to mess up, but it’s still work.”
The aftermath is less glamorous.
There’s confetti — at least, the pieces that don’t travel home as souvenirs — left to clean up. The cannons are broken down, packed, and shipped off, perhaps to a championship parade.
As a kid, Winter never thought he’d land on a football field — he was a baseball guy. But having a spot on the 50-yard line at the Super Bowl isn’t a bad consolation.
“I’ll never complain,” he said. “They could have me running laps. I couldn’t care less.”
