Opinion: Helping Africa, One NFL T-Shirt at a Time
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
If you’re a Chicago Bears fan, the Super Bowl victory slipped out of your grasp -- but maybe not a shirt proclaiming Da Bears as the world champs.
How is it that, within mere minutes of the final second ticking off the game clock, winning players can celebrate in official NFL T-shirts and caps proclaiming their team as the victor of a game that ended just moments before? Is the T-shirt maker psychic? And if so, why is he wasting his time making T-shirts instead of cleaning up in Vegas?
It’s obvious -- they make up several hundred ‘’Super Bowl Champions’’ shirts and caps well in advance for both teams, because either way the game goes, they’ll be prepared.
And what happens to the losing team’s gear? Why don’t we wind up with another Dewey-Beats-Truman-style photo of a Colts player mocking Chicago in a ‘’Bears Win’’ cap?
The losers’ stuff doesn’t get shredded. For a dozen years, the NFL has donated it to the World Vision Christian charity, which distributes the shirts and caps to people in more than two dozen African countries, people who may never have had new clothes before, nor seen an American football game. These are the people my colleague Davan Maharaj described in his splendid series ‘’Living on Pennies,’’ about poverty in Africa.
These desperate people who get garments from the bales of used clothes sent by American charities refer to them as ‘’dead men’s clothes’’ -- they can’t believe any living being would give up something so nice.
So here’s a way to chip away at African poverty, one shirt at a time. Bears fans are known to be particularly intense in their devotion. Owning a T-shirt proclaiming the Bears the Super Bowl winners would have enormous collectible and emotional value. How about collectors sending their agents to Africa to put out commissions to find these items, like a treasure hunt. They’d hire regional finders who would hire local finders who would pay handsomely for these items -- and avoid the government bribes and shakedowns that can accompany official operations.
The owners of the donated shirts could get money, seed, a bicycle, cash, lots of new clothes, in exchange for that one shirt or one cap with its precious -- and untruthful -- champion boast..
It’s no Lombardi Trophy, but at least Bears fans could wipe their tears on their might-have-been shirts.