Last season, Dylan Crews debuted his “Crews Missile” cleats on Military Appreciation Night at Alex Box Stadium.
The purple cleats were fashioned to resembled that of a World War II Warthog plan — black details to resemble metal pieces fastened together and a star-circled emblem with stripes. The toes bore the signature shark teeth with angry eyes while painted on the heels were the words “Crews Missile,” his number “3,” on the sides.
The cleats, while not the first of Mike Anderson’s creations, are one of the most recognized on the LSU baseball team.
Anderson, the sole creator for and owner of Boot Up Customs, designs cleats not just for Crews, but for many other LSU athletes.
“When I came on my official visit, I saw everybody had cool cleats and I was like, ‘Dang, if I come here, I really want to do that,'” Crews said. “I want to have the best cleats on the field.”
Anderson has two loves: art and LSU sports. Growing up in Baton Rouge, Anderson said he never missed a home LSU football game from 9 months old through 2020, when he moved to Denver. Anderson’s grandfather was a professor in the engineering school, both of his parents graduated from LSU and so did he and his brother. His love for art came from summers painting with his grandmother, an artist in Lafayette.
His first project that combined the two loves was a painting for Leonard Fournette and his daughter in 2014.
“I always liked meeting the players. I have pictures from when I was little going around team hotels at bowl games trying to take pictures with them,” Anderson said. “It was always something I wanted to be a part of, whether playing on the teams — realized I couldn’t do that, so art was the way to get closer to it.”
It wasn’t until 2018 that Anderson learned he could paint shoes. When LSU’s men’s basketball player Wade Sims was killed, teammate Skylar Mays asked Anderson to customize a pair in Sims’ honor.
“I had seen other artists doing it on Instagram and I had always wanted to do it,” Anderson said. “But when I was at LSU, there was no NIL and they’re super strict on what the players could and couldn’t do. They couldn’t wear their shoes during the game.”
But now the landscape is different. Anderson has expanded his shoe customization business to include former LSU athletes like Jaden Hill, Ja’Marr Chase, Cade York and Tari Eason and has even expanded to Barstool Sports’ CEO Dave Portnoy, Australian rapper The Kid Laroi and professional athletes in the NFL, NBA and MLB.
His latest projects for LSU baseball specifically include a pair of “Tommy Tanks” themed cleats for third baseman Tommy White and Mardis Gras-themed cleats for New Orleans-native outfielder Tre’ Morgan — both expected to debut in this postseason. Recently, Paul Skenes wore camouflage Air Force cleats that paid homage to Travis Wilkie and Nick Duran, former baseball players at Air Force who were killed in plane accidents.
Michael Anderson, owner and artist for Boot Up Customs, made LSU right-hander Paul Skenes a pair of Air Force cleats to honor his fallen teammates.
Anderson doesn’t meet with just any athlete, because as a one-man-show, his time is limited. He works a sales job in Austin, Texas, to help fund his passion. When he gets a referral, he meets with the athlete on a Zoom call for a consultation on their vision. He’ll work a mock-up design for approval, but leaves out small details to preserve the element of surprise.
“There’s some times where a player has no idea what they want and they’re like, ‘Look, man, just do something cool,’ and that gives me complete creative control,” Anderson said. “There’s other times where they want something specific.”
From there, it’s a process that takes up to 20 hours per pair of shoes. He sands them, adds a plastic adhesive coating then paints on top of them with leather paint.
“I can do a few of them at a time and assembly-line it, but I’m putting blood, sweat and tears into it — that’s for sure,” Anderson said. “That’s one thing that people underestimate is the time, the steps and the process. There’s a million different steps I have to do to make sure the paint is going to stay when they wear them.”
There are other custom sneaker businesses that feature multiple artists, but despite the rigorous hours of being a one-man-show, Anderson likes providing a more personal experience — especially for LSU athletes.
The hope is that there will be a day he can focus on Boot Up Customs full-time.
“I know that there are sneaker artists that are better painters than me or are more well known in the industry than I am,” Anderson said. “However, especially when it comes to LSU athletes, what those guys can’t do and can never do is replicate the last 30 years of my life being a diehard LSU fan, bleeding purple and gold going to all the games.”
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