With the Atlanta Falcons up 21-3 at the half and 28-3 in the third quarter of Sunday’s Super Bowl LI, it seemed like a safe bet they’d be Super Bowl champions. No team had even come back from more than 10 points in the Super Bowl before. Also, nothing was working for the New England Patriots at that point. That led to an Atlanta store putting Falcons’ “Super Bowl Champions” merchandise out on the shelves. However, they then had to remove it once the Patriots mounted their comeback. Here’s a GIF of this at an Atlanta Dick’s Sporting Goods, via Fox 5 Atlanta sports anchor/reporter Cody Chaffins:
When I thought the #Falcons loss couldn't get any more depressing, I ran across this video from ATL. They already had the merchandise out! pic.twitter.com/T9Wxd5XHDx
— Cody Chaffins (@CodyChaffins) February 6, 2017
That GIF comes from the full report on this from Fox 5’s Doug Evans. Here’s that clip, of Evans reporting from a Dick’s Sporting Goods in northern Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood:
The hurt is real…. pic.twitter.com/fuvypBdMey
— Everything Georgia (@GAFollowers) February 6, 2017
As you can see in the video, none of these were actually sold. The store was closed during that period, and employees were putting out the displays to be ready to open once the game ended. The Patriots’ comeback meant they had to change course, though, and that produced this incredibly sad footage of historically-inaccurate championship merchandise being removed from shelves.
Fortunately, this merchandise may not go completely to waste. As per this MentalFloss piece, the NFL has been donating incorrectly-printed materials to disaster areas and poor countries for decades. They did that first through WorldVision, then through Good360 (since 2015). That has included shirts made by sports stores in the past. One prominent example is the over 15,000 Bears 2007 Super Bowl Champions t-shirts printed by Sports Authority before that game.
So, this merchandise may still show up elsewhere. It just won’t be in Atlanta stores, apart from its all-too-brief appearance on Sunday.
[BroBible]
