Redbox Bowl t-shirt calls Cal “Cal State,” draws fire from the school, includes San Francisco tourist destinations nowhere near Santa Clara

The Redbox Bowl found itself taking a lot of fire Tuesday thanks to some very curious merchandise decisions. The bowl, which was played at the San Francisco Giants’ stadium in San Francisco from 2002-13 (with various title sponsors) and then moved to the San Francisco 49ers’ stadium in Santa Clara in 2014 (where it was initially the Foster Farms Bowl; it’s been the Redbox Bowl since 2018), features the Cal Bears and the Illnois Fighting Illini in this year’s installment (to be played on Dec. 30). And it put out some remarkably bad official t-shirts on that front, with those referring to Cal as “Cal State”:

That even received a rebuke from Cal’s creative director/brand manager:

https://twitter.com/jlemein/status/1204454484769832961

And this led to a lot of wisecracks about it:

https://twitter.com/PiotrLe/status/1204247418805641216

Meanwhile, this design also got criticism for using an old Illini helmet:

The Illinois helmet is also wrong. The current orange helmet has a blue I. This is several years old.

— Mike Rohan (@MikePRohan) December 10, 2019

And for featuring a whole lot of things that are nowhere near Santa Clara (although every NFL broadcast about the 49ers also does this):

So that’s just a big old swing and a miss by the Redbox Bowl. Congratulations on getting so many things so very wrong on an official t-shirt.

[California Golden Blogs]