Source: Blog – Alliance for American Manufacturing
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When watching the Super Bowl, don’t forget where its most important items came from.
Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans will be analyzed six ways to Sunday in the coming days. The most popular game in all American sports this year will feature the defending National Football League champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, a rematch of the 2023 title game.
Analysis of the football on the field is best left to the television talking heads.
But here’s a question best asked of AAM: Just how American-made is America’s pinnacle game?
While replicas of player jerseys or Super Bowl footballs are manufactured overseas to meet the widespread public demand, the National Football League makes a dedicated effort to ensure important aspects of the actual game are made in America.
Team Jerseys: The NFL licenses the rights to replica jerseys worn by fans to many different companies. Most of these replicas are manufactured in low-wage worker countries such as Honduras and Guatemala.
But the jerseys worn by NFL players are manufactured in America and tailored to the specifications of each player. One of the largest offshore manufacturers of sports apparel currently holds the rights to NFL jerseys, but it makes sure the actual gametime uniforms worn by the players are produced in the United States.
The Helmets: Nearly 90 percent of all NFL players’ helmets are made by Riddell Sports Group and Schutt Sports. A handful of players wear helmets made by smaller companies Xenith and Vicis that have introduced variations on the headgear in hopes of decreasing head injuries.
Riddell has been making football helmets at all levels of competition for more than 85 years. In recent Super Bowls, as many as 65 percent of helmets on the field at any given time were manufactured by Riddell at its massive factory in Des Plaines, Ill.
Schutt Sports has increased its NFL helmet visibility over the past 10 years and now accounts for approximately 30 percent of helmets donned by NFL players. The rest is accounted for by Xenith and Vicis.
Coin Toss: For the 32nd consecutive year, the official coin toss coin will be provided by The Highland Mint, a company of 175 employees located in a 40,000 square-foot building in Melbourne, Fla.
The NFL designs the coin and Highland does the manufacturing, using American-sourced raw materials. Every year the NFL sends new artwork to the mint. One side of the coin features the latest Super Bowl logo, and on the flip side are the logos of the two teams.
The Highland Mint has created 10,000 numbered coins for Super Bowl LIX. The NFL has received 100 copies of the commemorative coin and the remaining 9,900 are on sale to the public. The coin with serial No. 1 will be used for the official coin toss and the other 99 will be given to dignitaries.
The Highland Mint also makes coin No. 0 each year, which is used only if the game goes into overtime. It was first used in 2017 when the New England Patriots defeated the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in OT. The OT coin was used again last year when Kansas City won back-to-back Super Bowls with an overtime win over the San Francisco 49ers, 25-22.
The Footballs: All NFL footballs are manufactured at the Wilson Football Factory in the village of Ada, Ohio. Wilson provides all the footballs used throughout the NFL season, which amounts to 700,000 footballs per year. For the Super Bowl pigskins, manufacturing begins the evening the conference championship games are completed, because each ball needs to be stamped with the logos of the Super Bowl teams and the official Super Bowl XIL logo.
The Football Factory in Ada has produced every football that has been used in the Super Bowl game. The factory workers exclusively make footballs; other Wilson Sporting Goods products are manufactured at additional facilities throughout the world.
For Sunday’s game, Wilson provided 108 official footballs that were sent to the teams about one week before the championship game so that the teams could practice with the same balls they will use on Sunday.
The Trophy: The winning team will receive the Vince Lombardi Trophy made by renowned American jeweler Tiffany & Co. at its Forest Hill manufacturing facility in Cumberland, Rhode Island.
The 22-inch, seven-pound sterling silver trophy is created during a four-month period by 25 silversmiths. A new iteration of the trophy is manufactured each year so that the winning team will have sole possession of the award.
The design for the Lombardi Trophy was sketched in 1966 on a cocktail napkin by Tiffany’s vice president Oscar Riedener during a meeting with then NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. Tiffany has produced that same design for every Super Bowl since the 1966 Green Bay Packers won the first Super Bowl, which was then called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. The Packers, of course, were led by legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi.
The jerseys, the balls, the coin, the trophy – all are small but crucially important parts of one of America’s biggest annual spectacles. And notably, the League leaves these details in the care of American manufacturers.
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