Right Field

The Inside Out World of Pro Football

Or, why folks in Africa love Super Bowl losers:

It’s a marvel of modern industry: members of U.S. sports teams win a championship game and—presto—within seconds of the final buzzer/whistle/strikeout—they’re suddenly wearing caps and shirts proclaiming their victory in a game that, only an instant before, was still uncertain. The losers’ shirts and caps? They’ll end up in the third world.

Also, proof that no good deed goes unpunished:

Even so generous an act has critics. “We know that GIK (gifts in kind) items (like clothing) that are readily available in a country undermine local clothing markets, create dependence, and deprive poor people of work and the dignity work provides,” Laura Seay, a Morehouse College political science professor, writes on the Christian Science Monitor’s Africa Monitor blog.

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