In the hours after Alabama defeated Clemson to win the college football national championship, fans here stood in line to get the latest gear touting the Crimson Tide's victory.
There weren't any lines in South Carolina that night but that doesn't mean there wasn't a collection of shirts, caps, mugs and banners ready to be sold if the Tigers had won the Jan. 11 game. Now, many of those items are now being used by people in needy countries around the world.
Stores such as Dick's Sporting Goods and Academy Sports were stocked with both Alabama and Clemson merchandise ahead of the National Championship game. The next morning, Dick's Sporting Goods sent its Clemson items to World Vision, a Washington-based Christian organization that provides assistance in more than 90 countries.
"Through our long-standing partnership with humanitarian organization, World Vision, Dick's Sporting Goods will donate Clemson unused championship merchandise to countries in need," Brian Johnson, Dick's Sporting Goods community marketing manager, told GoUpstate.com last month.
The items go to World Vision's global distribution center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Once there, the donations are counted and sorted based on size, gender and destination, meaning a t-shirt may go to a place with a warm climate while a sweatshirt will go somewhere colder. Once sorted, the items are sent to impoverished countries or areas dealing with natural disasters.
Academy Sports said its items were sent back to vendors. It shipped boxes of Clemson and Alabama merchandise to stores with notes not to open the crates unless that particular team won. The Clemson merchandise was returned to vendors with the boxes sealed, according to the company, with the exact design of the items remaining a mystery. The individual retailers will then have to decide what to do with the merchandise.
The big retailers weren't the only ones dealing with unneeded Clemson fan gear.
A Columbia, South Carolina company called "Eat More Tees" designed its own series of National Championship shirts. The orange t-shirts said "Simply Perfect...15-0" in reference to the Tiger's undefeated record before facing Alabama. The company said it printed as many as 10,000 of the shirts but there's no word on where they ended up.
Super Bowl
The NCAA championship isn't the only sporting event that generates merchandise that can't be sold in the U.S.
Professional sporting leagues such as the NFL and MBA formerly required the merchandise from the losing teams to be destroyed. The leagues then began donating to World Vision, MentalFloss reported, which sent the shirts, hats and other items to places such as El Salvador and Haiti.
In 2015, the NFL began donating its unusable items to Good360, a Virginia-based company that works with retailers to help them donate instead of destroy excess items. Last year, Good360, which was formerly chaired by Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, sent gear from the Seattle Seahawks, who lost Super Bowl XLIX to New England, to Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Good360 told MentalFloss details about the donation of Carolina Panther items from Super Bowl 50 will arrive at the organization in about a week. The organization will then contact non-profit partners to determine where the donations will be sent.