Here’s some sports schwag with a good cause behind it. In Iran, drug use is a rampant problem among adolescent schoolchildren. Not only do the drugs harm the lives of Iranians, but the sale of drugs usually funds terrorism and other illegal activities. In order to keep kids away from drugs, the Cease-Fire project wanted to give children something better to do. They came up with the idea of giving out free custom soccer balls imprinted with anti-drug slogans on them. Every time a group of kids is playing soccer, they are kept away from drugs. Simple, inexpensive, and highly effective!

Posted: February 24th, 2010 under Soccer.
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Scott Fujita may have a Super Bowl championship ring, but he doesn’t have the luxury schwag bag that Nike gave out to the rest of his endorsed teammates. Nike dropped Fujita after tape used to tighten his cleats covered up the Nike swoosh logo and voided his endorsement contract. While the rest of Fujita’s teammates were gallivanting around with about $5,000 worth of free schwag, Fujita was left empty-handed.

Here’s a direct quote from Scott’s Super Bowl diary:

Low-point of the day: Not getting a Nike schwag bag in my hotel room. All the guys who are endorsed by Nike got sweet Super Bowl schwag, with about $5,000 worth of merch, including some products from their ACG line, which I love for hiking and for outdoor use. I was endorsed by Nike for seven years, but they voided my contract (after several warnings) for “spatting” my cleats on game-days. Some of us spat, or put tape around our cleats, to keep them tight. Nike, apparently, doesn’t like that their precious Swoosh gets covered up. Oh well. Wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it weren’t for every teammate rubbing it in my face, parading around in all their cool new gear.

Personally, I’d still rather have the ring over promotional hiking gear.

Posted: February 19th, 2010 under General.
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Skateboarding isn’t exactly a “team” sport, but I’m a big fan of Andy Warhol, so I feel the need to post about these custom skate decks featuring works by the famous artist. There’s a “Pop Art” series, with Warhol’s iconic Marilyn and Mao portraits, plus the Velvet Underground banana and Campbell’s Soup can that helped make him famous, and the “Death and Disaster” series, featuring less well-known images of, well, death and disaster – think guns, knives, and skulls. Anyway, I like to see communication between the worlds of art and sports – it doesn’t happen nearly often enough.

[via StreetLevel]

Posted: February 10th, 2010 under Skateboarding.
Comments: 1