MIAMI (AP) — Every championship game has a winner and a loser with the champs immediately wearing hats and T-shirts pulled from boxes at the stadium.
Then there’s the loser’s gear, including merchandise already sent to stores in the team’s home market.
Well, the NFL has a plan for that.
The NFL has worked for six years with Good360, a non-profit organization that helps get products companies no longer need to non-profits around the world. Good360 starts collecting T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts for losers of the AFC and NFC championship games and will add the Super Bowl losers after Sunday’s game.
The league provides a list of pre-approved regions and countries to ship all that gear to areas such as Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
“We don’t disclose much more exclusively than that,” Shari Rudolph, Good360’s chief development officer, said Wednesday. “This is a pretty sensitive donation and could be quite the collectors’ item. We don’t want any risk of those items making their way back to the United States.”
World travelers won’t have a chance at a Tennessee Titans’ AFC championship shirt or Green Bay NFC champs’ hat. Rudolph said everything goes to people in need.
“These kind of donations can literally change people’s lives,” Rudolph said.