"Chicago Bears, Super Bowl XLI Champions"

Somewhere in West Africa, the Buffalo Bills are known as four-time Super Bowl champions. Brett Favre led the Green Bay Packers to victory in 1998 after losing the big game the previous year. And New England Patriot quarterback, Tom Brady, is a virtual unknown as that team most certainly did not triumph in three of the past six Super Bowl match-ups.

Of course, none of the above is true, but the people in far away corners of Ethiopia or Sierra Leone who receive the otherwise unwanted hats and t-shirts, which declare as such, could not care less.

Every year, in preparation for that perfect TV moment during which tens of millions of Americans will watch one gridiron hero or another don their product -- leading to tens or hundreds of thousands of sales the following day -- Reebok prepares two sets of merchandise declaring the Super Bowl winners. Six company employees join six NFL employees to form their own game plan for how to best distribute the goods to key players as the final seconds tick away in the fourth quarter. When the Super Bowl comes down to the wire, they must split up into two teams, manning either sideline, and -- much like field goal kicker Adam Vinatieri in Super Bowl XXXVI -- hit or miss their targets as time expires.

This year, whether it was Peyton Manning or Brian Urlacher, one matching hat and t-shirt was ready and waiting with the words "Indianapolis Colts" and another proclaiming "Chicago Bears" as the world champions of the NFL.

Thanks to the efforts of World Vision, an international Christian relief organization founded in 1950, some 17 years before the first Super Bowl, a shipment of 288 hats and 288 t-shirt is on its way to help clothe needy people in Africa. The championship gear, which claims the Chicago Bears as victors, was made by Reebok and would have retailed for $20 per t-shirt and $30 per hat had the outcome for Super Bowl XLI been different.

"Where these items go, the people don't have electricity or running water. They wouldn't know who won the Super Bowl," said a World Vision spokesperson. "They wouldn't even know about football."

Sent along with the erroneous championship hats and t-shirts is a large shipment of medical and school supplies, and the Reebok gear will be issued along with those more vital provisions to needy families this week.

Source: "Far Away, Super Bowl's Losers will be Champs" by Lee Jenkins of the New York Times.