Josh Allen wore an old Firebaugh High hoodie to Buffalo Bills game. Fans went bananas
Kacey Jones knew it wasn’t going to be a normal Sunday morning when her phone started blowing up with notifications.
Jones teaches PE at Firebaugh High School, where she doubles as girls volleyball coach and athletic director. One of her duties is to maintain the Twitter account @FHSEaglesports, which was deluged by Buffalo Bills fans after hometown hero Josh Allen wore an old Firebaugh High hoodie to Sunday’s game against the Houston Texans.
At 7:55 a.m. California time, the Bills’ official Twitter account posted a video of Allen strolling into Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y. Within minutes, Bills fans by the hundreds began tweeting at @FHSEaglesports demanding to know where they could purchase one of those hoodies, too.
“We started getting all kinds of follows from the Bills Mafia (as Bills fans affectionately call themselves) and tweets asking if we had that sweatshirt, and if not when we were going to,” Jones said. “It was a little overwhelming. My phone was going crazy.”
The problem for Jones and Firebaugh High principal Anthony Catalan was that the Eagles don’t really have an online apparel store — at least not one equipped to meet the sudden demand.
“We’re a tiny little school,” Catalan said. “We print spirit wear for our kids, but you’re only talking 60 shirts at a time. This is potentially thousands of customers from throughout the United States. So we immediately said, ‘We can’t do this on our own. There is no way.’ ”
There was another problem as well — one that turned out to be a blessing later. The Firebaugh hoodie that Allen wore didn’t feature the school’s current Eagles logo that closely resembles the Philadelphia Eagles logo. Nor did it feature the Eagles logo from the time Allen attended school.
The logo on Allen’s hoodie depicted only the red-colored head of an eagle, faded on its beak. Meaning the fourth-year NFL quarterback, who managed straight A’s in high school in addition to playing three varsity sports, must’ve dug out that particular item of clothing from deep inside his closet.
“I’ve been here 21 years and can’t remember when I last saw that logo,” Catalan said.
Late Sunday afternoon, @FHSEaglesports sent out a tweet thanking Bills fans “for all the love” and saying the sweatshirt Allen wore was an original they no longer made. As such, it would take “a week or two” before they could handle online orders.
That tweet later received Allen’s official Twitter endorsement. The 25-year-old quote-tweeted @FHSEaglesports and asked Bills fans to wait for his former school’s link (rather than purchase a knock-off from unlicensed online merchants that had already started to pop up).
Monday morning, Catalan decided “a week or two” simply wasn’t going to work. To capitalize on the momentum, the school needed to move faster. So Catalan placed a call to Allen’s business representatives, who in turn steered him to a Bills-owned online retailer named One Buffalo.
“The Bills immediately welcomed us with open arms,” Catalan said. “They literally said, ‘We’re here to help. This kind of thing happens all the time, believe it or not.’ They told us, ‘We can make everything happen. You just say yes.’ We were like, ‘Wow, OK.’ ”
Firebaugh High and the Bills finalized their agreement Tuesday evening, Catalan said. By Wednesday morning, “throwback” Eagles hoodies were selling on shoponebuffalo.com for $40 apiece. (The fact that Allen wore an old logo without any copyright restrictions helped speed up the process.)
The school will get all the proceeds, which I’m told works out to $20 per hoodie.
‘Bills fans about to finance a new stadium’ for Firebaugh
What does Catalan plan to do with the money the school takes in from hoodie sales to Bills fans? For now, it’s impossible to say. In the meantime, he’s enjoying reading their tweets. One wrote, “Bills mafia about to finance a new stadium for the eagles” followed by a laughing emoji. Another was simply a GIF of a man diving into a swimming pool filled with stacks of money.
“It’s a big difference if we raise $2,000 off these sales versus $200,000,” Catalan said. “I could make up a feel-good story, but we really have no clue what we’re going to use it for because we had no idea Josh was going to wear that sweatshirt or the reaction it would create.
“We kind of laughed about it. If Josh had only told us he was going to wear that, we would’ve gotten on this a couple weeks ago.”
Truth is, these things are unpredictable. Allen has previously worn Firebaugh High gear to Bills functions, and the Bills Mafia did not create such a frenzy.
“What we think happened is he pointed to the Eagle and that shot went viral on Buffalo Bills Twitter,” Catalan said. “It was just the perfect storm.”
The least surprising part of what transpired is the pride Allen continues to show in his hometown and former high school. And, of course, the pride each shows in him.
“He’s never let go of his roots or changed who he is,” Catalan said. “I make jokes about it, but to this day he still refers to me as Mr. Catalan because he had me a long time ago as a teacher. He never loses sight of that respect, and he never loses sight of who he is as a person or where he comes from.”
Never throws out decades-old hoodies either, apparently.
This story was originally published October 6, 2021 at 3:33 PM.
