The NFL And Some Musicians Team Up For Inexplicable Branded T-Shirts

Something is standing between humans and a glorious collective act of self-immolation, and while it is unclear what that thing is—some latent decency or dumb luck, basic democratic norms or the fact that we are generally more lazy than we are actively cruel—it is obvious that it is both thin and working extremely hard. It is easy to see how all this could give out, and how the whole enterprise could wind up backpedalling righteously off a cliff. But, for now, there is that vague saving grace, and the little moments of gratitude it inspires.

Among these uncountable little blessings, I've always found, is the fact that we have not yet invented any non-human thing that convincingly replicates actual humans. Phishing emails still arrive from flubbily fake email addresses and tell us of imaginary rich uncles' tragic intestate deaths in heavily sauced Crimean babblefish un-English; brands earnestly tell us what they stand for and what they believe, and the attempts to portray themselves as The Very Patriotic Beer or The Supplemental Insurance Company With An Absurdist Sense Of Humor just remind us of how profoundly corporations are the opposite of anything human. Every time one of these non-human things begins to initiate its handshake sequence protocol, the mask slips, the grinning robot circuitry reveals itself, and the game is up. Once this is no longer the case—when people can be sold on the idea that the NFL is not a league of affiliated business concerns but An Actual American who is real, and strong, and our friend—we are probably fucked. But for now, we just get to laugh at the silly robots.

The greatest mystery and most profound comic delight of the NFL's rise to prominence over the last decade and change is seeing how oafishly, cravenly un-human the league can be while continuing to crush its own revenue records. The league only has bad ideas, and its lousy stewardship of a great game will likely come with a consequence eventually, but for the time being the NFL can happily roll out things like its #MyTeamMyCity gambit—a partnership with online t-shirt retailer Teespring that pairs NFL teams with musicians from those teams' cities to create exclusive limited edition shirts—without any concern for the rank jankiness of it all. The NFL does not care about any of this, and does not even care to act as if it does. The musicians involved don't seem to have broken a sweat, either. The result is perfect.

In Teespring, a venture-backed garment disruption concern based in San Francisco, the NFL has found an ideal partner. Facebook users will recognize Teespring shirts from their frequent appearances in promoted ads on that site, and Facebook is absolutely the right place for those ads to be. The shirts, which are designed by Teespring users, tend to tout various chunklets of demographic information and consumer preference, and tend to be both text-heavy and weirdly defiant; they're effectively Facebook profiles you can wear around, and if that doesn't sound like a terrible idea to you, you might be someone who would want to wear a t-shirt that says "Yeah I'm a Chevy-driving libertarian uncle of two with Type 2 Diabetes, and a Virgo….You got a problem with that?" There may be only one person alive who would want to wear a shirt that's so specific, but it only takes one—there is no Teespring warehouse with a bunch of "It's An Irish-American Grandpa Who Enjoys Fishing Thing—You Wouldn't Understand And Also Don't Tread On Me" shirts in it, after all.

These shirts are, pretty much without exception, what experts in the garment field call "extremely not-good shirts." But because Teespring has a licensing agreement with the NFL, these shirts can be even more specific, and allow designers to add NFL allegiances to the long list of personalized micro-preferences that make these shirts such weird works of artless art. The shirts are as bespoke as can be, and manage the neat trick of both catering to the specific demands of every possible consumer while simultaneously being shirts that no reasonable person would ever wear out of the house under any circumstances. In that way, and especially in Teespring's insistence that the shirts and its platform are empowering—per their website, Teespring "believe[s] we can empower millions of people to launch their own products with the same quality and economies of scale as a major retail brand…Hundreds of people are making over six figures per year through Teespring"—the shirts are perfect turdly artifacts of this particular moment in the free market. It makes sense that the NFL would somehow find its way into this.

Unsurprisingly, when Teespring's rote and artless tackiness comes together with the NFL's rote and artless tackiness, the result is astonishing. The musicians that the NFL wound up licensing as collaborators sometimes make sense—the Bone Thugs N Harmony-themed Cleveland Browns shirt is actually pretty good—and generally don't. The boilerplate copy on each page reliably drives home the jarring weirdness of the collaborations—"These limited edition shirts are perfect for Eagles fans that are also Diplo fans" or "These limited edition shirts are perfect for Chiefs fans that are also Melissa Etheridge fans."

Mostly, though, it's all just a strikingly, defiantly lazy cash-in—a cheap idea done cheaply and without any evident care by either party involved. The Jason Mraz/San Diego Chargers t-shirt is Jason Mraz album art with the words "San Diego Chargers" where the title used to be. Instead of Pitbull or Rick Ross or even Hootie And The Dang Blowfish on the Dolphins shirt, #MyTeamMyCity opted for "My Humps" songstress Fergie. Leave aside the sadness of the Dolphins making Darius Rucker cry again, and all you can do is marvel at the choice, and maybe wonder who these shirts are for. Besides Dolphins fans that are also Fergie fans.

— Baby Boy Bro Dude (@trillballins)September 28, 2016

You already know the punchline to this, of course. Demand for the shirts was brisk enough that preorders topped Teespring's minimum with more than two weeks left to go in the campaign. "The shirts will be printed," the copy on the site cheers. "now help us reach our goal!" Oh, we're getting there.

H/T to Twitter power-user @Trillballins