Posted on 02/16/2022 9:36:03 PM PST by DoodleBob
The Cincinnati Bengals lost to the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI, but their pre-printed championship gear finds a second life elsewhere.
Sporting good stores in Southern California and everywhere in the United States have merchandise adorned with “Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl Champions” ready to sell moments after the Super Bowl.
On the other hand, merchandise with the words “Cincinnati Bengals Super Bowl Champions” will not see its day in the U.S.
The fate of Cincinnati Bengals Super Bowl championship gear
The NFL pre-manufactures Super Bowl gear for good reason, to take advantage of fan emotions when their team wins the big game. Moments after the clock ticks down to 0:00, demand for merchandise of the winning team is perhaps at its peak.
For the team that did not win the Super Bowl, however, that gear gets shipped off outside of the U.S. and overseas.
Before 1997, the NFL just trashed the losing teams’ merchandise. According to Yahoo! Sports, the league utilizes one charity, Good360, to redistribute the excess (and inaccurate) merchandise.
The gear is sent throughout the world to impoverished countries who might have a need for clothing.
Instead of destroying the t-shirts, hats, and other apparel, the NFL donates the merchandise free of charge. The league avoids selling the alternate reality clothing to circumvent fan confusion and to avoid diluting the winning team’s victory.
The NFL also does not want any “Cincinnati Bengals Super Bowl Champions” t-shirts in circulation in the U.S. because fans might see it as a joke when the league is absolute in recognizing the hard-fought victory of the Los Angeles Rams.
The league keeps a lot of things secret, and evidence of the losing team’s pre-printed apparel is not widely available. Once in a while, photos will leak online of the alternate reality t-shirts of the losing team. For example, when the Seattle Seahawks beat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014, some photos of t-shirts that had “Denver Broncos Super Bowl Champions” made its way onto the Internet.
The deepest cut of alternate reality merchandise might be the year that the New England Patriots were to go a perfect 19-0. They just had to beat the heavy underdog New York Giants in 2008.
Alas, the Patriots infamously lost to Eli Manning and the Giants, and some photos were leaked online of kids wearing Patriots’ “19-0 Super Bowl Champions” t-shirts in Nicaragua.
That stuff usually ends up in poor 3rd world countries.
Well, the refs decided that wasn’t going to happen. Fire Goodell.
Better question. WGAF?
I recall some president of an African country being asked how can America help.
“Stop sending us your used clothing!! We are training people to make clothing, and providing them with cheap loans to start factories. So they can earn money and buy clothing made here. But the don’t buy it (or make it) when they can get it for free! Stop it!!”
I heard a similar complaint about food aid. The food for the “starving” people usually arrives about two weeks before the year’s harvest starts, so the farmers have to compete with shiploads of free food.
It’ll be laughed at.
You mean the egregious offensive pass interference that resulted in a Bengal TD they ignored at the start of the second half?
Yep. And the apparel manufacturer and losing team get a big tax write-off in the process.
Yep, I remember a TV segment about this decades ago. They showed kids in a remote African village proudly sporting “Super Bowl Champion Buffalo Bills” t-shirts, etc.
It’ll go the same route as “Dewey Defeats Truman”. Besides who gives a rats ass?
Send it to a dump with all of the old “President Hilary Clinton” crap.
This is true.
A few years ago I worked in Angola in the oil and gas industry. I remember seeing a “Dale Earnhardt, NASCAR Winston Cup Champion” tee shirt for a year that he definitely did not win the Cup. This was 10 years or so after his death, so they are probably stored long enough for people to forget, too.
Yeah. You can buy it from a street vendor in Accra or Lima.
During the 60's and 70's, I remember seeing many commercials for Project HOPE. It would show how they distributed food to poor African countries. I always wondered what the food was. They'd show a young African dipping his hands into some white stuff and putting it in his mouth with no utensils. I always wondered what the "food" was. It looked like thin plaster or house paint. I imagine it was something like Cream of Wheat. But it was so white and smooth it did not look like food at all.
How the ref missed that I dont know
I love it when conservative virtue-signaling happens on these threads.
Answer...DILLIGAF?
LET'S GO BRANDON.
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