After this year’s Super Bowl, the victorious New York Giants immediately received their “Super Bowl Champion” hats and shirts, but they weren’t just printed on the spot. The apparel had to be preprinted, and of course, so did shirts for the “Undefeated Super Bowl Champion” Patriots. Except that the Patriots lost the Super Bowl, thus ruining their perfect season. So, the curious mind wants to know, what happened to the shirts?
Hundreds of them are making their way to poor children in Nicaragua, thanks to a humanitarian organization called World Vision. According to a Reuters story, “World Vision has links with the National Football League, or NFL, and every year helps out poor children in Latin America and Africa with the unwanted “winners” shirts of the team that actually loses the Super Bowl.”
I vaguely remember being given one of these erroneous championship-winning shirts by my lovely but clueless grandmother many years ago, who probably wondered why the item was so heavily discounted. My team lost, that’s why. But thanks for the reminder.
A spokesperson for World Vision said that the Nicaraguan children “don’t care what team name is on it. They don’t know about football. Some of these people have never had a new piece of clothing in their lives. They will wear them until they are threadbare.”