We’re starting to think the NFL has a geography problem. Back in 2013, it was a Carolina Panthers shirt with the wrong Carolina on it. In June, it was a Washington Redskins novelty license plate featuring Washington State (they play in Washington, D.C.). And now, it’s a Denver Broncos blanket with Salt Lake City’s skyline, obviously.
KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Denver, was first to report on the blanket. The site found it and a similar variation for sale at Home Shopping Network, Kohl’s, NFL Shop, Fanatics and several other online stores. Most of those sites have since removed the listing, but some still show the variation, which features a large Broncos helmet that partially obscures the skyline.
Here’s that one:
And here’s the original, with the full skyline in view:
How long this thing was for sale is anybody’s guess, but based on its wide availability and the pair of variations we’re assuming it was up for awhile.
Still, we’ll be the first to admit we would not have noticed this error on our own—Denver isn’t exactly known for its skyline, and Salt Lake City even less so. The giveaway, apparently, was the Mormon Tabernacle, visible just left of center on the above image. KUSA said it first looked into the erroneous blankets after a tip from a viewer, who saw it on Home Shopping Network. That’s impressive. Good work, anonymous viewer.
Intrepid reporters that we are, we investigated the rest of the blankets in this series on NFL Shop to see if any others had similar decorating errors. They all seemed to check out, but our search did raise some questions about just how Denver’s blanket got messed up. Follow along with us:
- Other than Denver, whose blanket was removed, 20 NFL teams had similar blankets on the site.
- Of those 20 team blankets, eight have a skyline, nine feature a famous landmark (mostly bridges, but New Orleans had a cool steamboat), one (New England) features a stadium, and two (Los Angeles Chargers and Miami Dolphins) have some random palm trees.
- Based on the four themes available, why did the blanket’s designer choose a skyline shot for Denver? The majority of the blankets feature landmarks, which seems like a much better choice for Denver given its lack of distinctive skyline. Our best guess is the team or designers wanted some mountains in the shot, which is fair, but still. The city has a gigantic zombie-horse statue for gosh sake. This was a layup!
No one is impervious to decorating errors or design mishaps, but the NFL has had a rough go of it lately. At least this particular geography snafu isn’t quite as bad as this one.
