The most remarkable sports business story of last week had to be the item highlighted by the New York Times on Sunday by Dave Caldwell. It talks about how jerseys of the former Arizona Cardinals linebacker Pat Tillman, who died while serving in Iraq – killed by friendly fire – was the seventh most popular player jersey on NFLShop.com in October. I was really surprised at this because in all the jersey sales lists the NFL had given me, Tillman's name never appeared.
Despite the Army at first botching the details of what led to Tillman's death, I was more mad at the people who were selling jerseys of Tillman on eBay just moments after his death became known two and a half years ago.
One of the greatest gestures had to come from card company Donruss, who found a full game-used Tillman jersey in their warehouse that they were supposed to cut up.
But after his death, they donated it to the family.
It took a while on the jerseys, but after it was all figured out that all Tillman jersey proceeds would go to his foundation, the NFL killed the business of all those people who were ironing on the Tillman name and number 40 by releasing official jerseys. And it's so awesome that apparently enough people are buying them even today.
By the way, I hate when these articles aren't in the sports section because I think sports fans miss them when they shouldn't. I'm not trying to dumb down sports fans, but I'm guessing that the "Fashion & Style" section on the sports fans list come after reading "sports," "business," and "real estate."
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