Old Navy has recently released a series of shirts called the NFL Team Champions Collection, in which they’ve come into some serious design flows.
For instance Old Navy had a Houston Texans 1961 AFC Champions Shirt which was recently taken down due to error. The errors in the design were pretty significant in that the Houston Texans didn’t become a franchise until 2002 AND the AFC didn’t even exist in 1961, the AFC was referred to as the AFL. What is true though is Houston did enjoy an AFL championship in 1960 and 1961 however those titles belonged to the old Houston Oilers who later became the Tennessee Titans. According to NFL record books the Titans took all Houston Oilers records when they made the move to Tennessee.
“The NFL clothing sold in our Old Navy stores is created by a third party sports licensing company,” said Edie Kissko, a spokesperson for Gap Inc., which owns the Old Navy brand, in a statement. “It is our intention to always provide the best merchandise to our customers and NFL fans. We apologize for this error and are removing the T-shirts.”
The problem for Old Navy and their lack of fact checking in their third party sports licensing company doesn’t end with the Houston Texans blunder. In addition to that mistake they also had various other teams with incorrect information displayed. The Cleveland Browns were listed as 1964 NFC Champions which also can be said for the 1957 Detroit Lions . Furthermore Old Navy portrays the New York Jets as NFL Champions in 1968 and the Kansas City Chiefs NFL Champions in 1969… both were not members of the NFL at this time.
This isn’t the first time though Old Navy had problems with a design flaw in sports themed shirts. Last year according to ESPN, the company had to replace thousands of T-shirts with college logos after the shirts had “Lets Go” on them, missing an apostrophe. They ended up reprinting the shirts with with the correct punctuation.
As of now it looks like Old Navy has corrected all shirts in their store.
