The Difficult World of Personalization

Many leagues want to offer fans the chance to buy their favorites teams' jersey with their name across the back. It makes fans feel like a part of the team, and with a price of $80, makes for quite a revenue stream. But leagues also want to guard its image and do not want their jerseys associated with words that are deemed bad. However, how does a league decide what is "bad" and what is acceptable?

The NFL ran into this problem last week, when it was revealed that "Gay" was not acceptable for the back of a jersey. An LSU professor discovered this by mistake when he tried to order a customized jersey for a former student, New England player Randall Gay. He was not allowed to continue, receiving the message, "This field should not contain a naughty word." According to the NFL, 'gay' was included on the list because of complaints received by the league of people placing the name on jerseys in a way not indicative of someone named 'Gay.' But now, the word is no longer 'naughty.' The NFL has removed the word from its banned list in response to some outrage at Outsports.com. The full list (discretion advised -- contains foul language) can be found here. In addition, the NFL has assured its critics that although words like "Hitler," "Gay Nazi" and "Fag" make it through the computer screening, an actual human reviews all of the orders and screens them out.

Obviously, a league has the right to control what is and is not put on the back of its jerseys. But you have to wonder about the mentality of those making decisions when "gay" is filtered out automatically and "fag" requires human intervention.

Hat Tip: Josh

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