With a nod to Tyler Cowen, I present: 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.
So say the T-shirts and the caps worn in Niger, Uganda and Sierra Leone.
The Super Bowl will end about 10 p.m. Sunday, and by 10:01 every player on the winning team — along with coaches, executives, family members and ball boys — could be outfitted in colorful T-shirts and caps proclaiming them champions.
The other set of championship gear — 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...
For more information on a related topic, see Robert Murphy on “Beggars Can Be Choosers.”
One final thought, it is a horribly noxious idea to think that people on this planet are going around declaring the New England Patriots winners of Super Bowl XX.
