When Josh Allen Asked A Superfan To Build A Beer Snake, A Legend Was Born

This Josh Allen superfan wasn't made in a day.

He was molded and inspired over years of University of Wyoming football, starting when Jaxon Sweep was just 9 or 10 years old, shivering in 6-degree temperatures at the 2016 Mountain West Championship game against San Diego State.

"I just kind of fell in love with Josh there," Sweep told Cowboy State Daily in his first interview about a viral moment that transformed him into the beer snake guy.

On Nov. 22 at War Memorial Stadium during the Nevada game, UW retired Allen’s jersey.

While walking past the student section, Allen singled out Sweep and called an audible: "You, come here, come here. I need the biggest beer snake f***ing possible, alright?" Allen told Sweep.

"I got you," Sweep replied with a thumbs up, kicking off a series of events fueled by pure fandom and empty beer cups. 

Beer snakes are this generation’s version of the human wave, when a crowd of sports fans acts in union for the sake of school spirit. Except instead of standing and sitting in a flowing wave of choreographed motion, a beer snake is more hands on.

To build one, it takes scores of empty beer cups and enough determined group think to stack those cups, creating a slithering snake of empties that advances over the crowd as more cups are added. 

Allen anointed Sweep as the head of what the NFL MVP quarterback envisioned as “the biggest beer snake possible.” 

What happened next launched a kid from Bridger Valley across social media, giving UW a playful PR splash and showing the world Sweep was ready when Allen called his number. 

Day Of The Snake

When Nov. 22 rolled around and the university announced it would formally retire Allen's No. 17 jersey, Sweep and his brother Caden weren't taking any chances on seating.

"The kickoff was at 12, and my brother and I went and waited in line at 9 in the morning to make sure we got there so that we could be in the front row," Sweep recalled.

The brothers wore Pokes-inspired hard hats, and Jaxon made a sign inspired by his favorite YouTube videos of Allen. 

"There's lots of videos of him just like thinking in movie quotes. Like in practice, he'll just be saying movie quotes all the time," Sweep said.

So the night before the game, Sweep made a sign referencing Napoleon Dynamite, the 2004 comedy where Uncle Rico famously brags about throwing a pigskin a quarter mile.

The sign read: "Josh Allen can throw a pigskin a quarter mile."

Allen noticed. Viral video footage from the Nov. 22 game shows Allen calling out to Sweep, who is surrounded by other fans chanting MVP in Allen’s honor. 

"He pointed me out, and at first I was like, ‘No, he's not pointing to me,’" Sweep said. "And then he did it again and again."

Sweep still wasn't convinced, but a fan standing behind him, “Shoved me down. Like, ‘He wants you. Go talk to him.’ So I jumped down and went to talk to him," Sweep said.

Then, with a deep sense of purpose and alacrity, Sweep swept through the stands, rounding up empties and encouraging others to do the same. 

"I'm under 21 still, so I don't drink. And some personal beliefs. I just don't like beers. It just isn't attractive to me," Sweep said. 

But he’s got no problem with discarded beer cups and had seen beer snakes at games before.

"I just told everyone around me, ‘This is what Josh wants. He said, ‘Let's get a beer snake. Let's get the biggest one,’" Sweep said.

He recruited helpers. Some fans told him the game was boring, and they didn't want to watch.

"I was like, “Alright, do you want to do me a favor then? Go collect a bunch of cups?" Sweep said.

They fanned out through the student section, gathering them into a bending stack that spanned a huge swath of the stadium. 

"You can just kind of see it from like the start and it just made its way all the way up," Sweep said. "People that were helping collect cups, they would go with like huge stacks, like taller than them, just go add it to the snake. And so it was just winding through the whole bottom bowl."

By game's end, the snake had climbed to the second level of War Memorial Stadium.

Media Snake-sation

The social media explosion erupted immediately after the game.

"You start looking on Facebook and there was some local places that had posted the picture of Josh talking to me," Sweep said. "And then we started looking into it, and then the Bills made a post about his retirement and there's a picture of Josh and I... and it just kept growing."

The next day, the Bills posted the full video. Family members from Bridger Valley texted that they'd seen Sweep talking to Allen on the TV broadcast. Like the beer snake itself, the attention kept growing. 

"I was laying in bed one night and then I'm just like scrolling through and boom, there it is," Sweep said. "And I go running upstairs and like, freaking out. ‘I'm on the Kelce Brothers podcast.’"

On the Dec. 10 episode of "New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce,” the brothers — a current and former NFL star who have one of the top podcasts in the country — featured the beer snake as the “Stamp of the Week.” 

"Wyoming students built a beer snake to honor Josh Allen at his jersey retirement," Travis Kelce said on the broadcast.

"What is a beer snake?" Jason asked.

"You've never seen a beer snake? At a ball game?" Travis replied, explaining the concept. "It was going all the way up to the second level. That's epic."

"That's a lot of f***ing beers consumed, and I'm proud of you, Wyoming," Jason added.

Travis agreed: "You guys were having good energy in that game. I guarantee it. Stamp of the Week."

For Sweep, seeing the photo of himself sandwiched between the Kelce brothers on their podcast was surreal.

"It's Jason on one side, Travis on the other side. And then I'm in the middle. Just never in a million years I expected to see a picture like that," he said.

Proud Father

Justin Sweep watched it all unfold from higher up in the stands, behind the student section where his son was making viral history.

Asked who's the bigger Wyoming fan, father or son? Justin laughed.

"He goes generations deep, especially on his mom's side," Justin said. "He's had more opportunities than we ever had because he's been to Mountain West Tournament a couple times. He's been to bowl games, and a few Bills games.”

Justin said Jaxon was always destined for this kind of fandom.

"When he was a kid, he always had to have number shirts. His shirt always had to have a number or some kind of jersey,” Justin said. "He's a fanatic. But the Cowboys are everything.”

The Wyoming tradition runs deep in the Sweep family. Justin's own conversion came at a 1985 game where Wyoming lost to BYU 59-0. His father, a University of Idaho graduate, turned to young Justin and declared: "You're a Wyoming fan."

His wife's family goes back even further — sixth-generation ranchers with "a lot of University of Wyoming in their blood."

Justin reflected on his own student days, when the beer song was a stadium staple.

"The band, they'll play it and people sing it the whole time," he said, then sang: "'In heaven there is no beer. That's why we drink it here. And when we're gone from here, our friends will be drinking all the beer.' It's kind of stupid."

The second verse just has one word, but it’s stacked on top of itself, repeated over and over: “Beer. Beer. Beer…”

"I hope we didn't brainwash our kids. We gave them choices on things, to where they wanted to go to school, but they didn't really have any other option that they wanted to do," Justin said. "The Wyoming tradition is just fun.”

Unexpected Recruiting Tool

Social media moments celebrating good times around college football are valuable assets for major universities trying to attract more students. 

Chad Baldwin, associate vice president for institutional communications at UW, said the university hasn't issued any formal statements about the beer snake moment — but they've definitely capitalized on it.

"Our social media team did use Travis Kelce's 'I'm proud of you, Wyoming' comment during his podcast discussion about the beer snake to lead off a commencement wrap-up video," Baldwin said.

The attention has painted Wyoming as a destination for students seeking the kind of experience offered at better known football schools like the University of Florida or the Ohio State University. 

"Certainly has gotten the university some attention as a fun place for students and others to watch a football game," Baldwin said. "At a time when a fun college experience is one of the reasons credited for enrollment growth at southern universities, this publicity certainly is welcomed by Wyoming's university, where we also have plenty of sunshine and fun.”

Baldwin added, "I would be remiss if I didn't also point out that UW encourages responsible drinking and requires our students to take alcohol training."

Legendary Moment

For Jaxon Sweep, the whole experience capped off in grand style another semester spent studying for a degree in elementary and special education. 

The rising sophomore said the photo of Allen talking to him is now his phone screensaver and his social media profile picture. His dad commissioned a local artist to create a comic-book-style illustration of the moment for family shirts. 

When he’s approached by Allen and drafted as “the foreman of beer snakes,” as one Facebook poster put it, Sweep is wearing a hard hat and a determined grin. 

Another commenter on Facebook came away impressed with Sweep’s project management skills. For her, Sweep's fast action stood out as a resume bullet, writing: “Project manager on his way to CEO… the fact that he communicated this effectively to that particular crowd in such a loud environment is actually extremely impressive!”

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.