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SB Losers Clothes the Fourth World

Via the NYT: Far Away, Super Bowl’s Losers Will Be Champs

In some parts of the world, the Seattle Seahawks are the reigning Super Bowl champions, the Buffalo Bills are the last great football dynasty and Tom Brady is some frustrated quarterback from New England who can never win it all.

It is sort of the Earth-2 of the NFL. Where is this place?

the 288 T-shirts and caps made for the team that did not win — will be hidden behind a locked door at Dolphin Stadium. By order of the National Football League, those items are never to appear on television or on eBay. They are never even to be seen on American soil.

They will be shipped Monday morning to a warehouse in Sewickley, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where they will become property of World Vision, a relief organization that will package the clothing in wooden boxes and send it to a developing nation, usually in Africa.

This way, the N.F.L. can help one of its charities and avoid traumatizing one of its teams.

“Where these items go, the people don’t have electricity or running water,” said Jeff Fields, a corporate relations officer for World Vision. “They wouldn’t know who won the Super Bowl. They wouldn’t even know about football.”

It’s the charitable equivalent of burying the stuff in a deep, dark hole.

And this is just cold (but, kinda funny):

The Bills, losers of four consecutive Super Bowls in the 1990s, at least have a following in Romania.

[Cross-Posted at PoliBlog: Deportes]

 
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Comments
 

I’ve heard about this before, but it’s still not only pretty funny but a great idea.

Posted by James Joyner | February 4, 2007 | 12:07 pm | Permalink
 

Yup.

Posted by Steven Taylor | February 4, 2007 | 12:08 pm | Permalink
 

Slate had a similar article last year. Different leagues have different rules regarding distribution of the losers’ memorabilia.

Posted by soccer dad | February 5, 2007 | 03:31 pm | Permalink
 

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