This would be a very cool tradition. Real Salt Lake had a fan that was from an area in Brazil and she died. She was one of the first season ticket holders and ran the first real blog about the team. When she died somebody in the BigSoccer groups got a flag from her region and carried it to every RSL game with the hope of carrying it to the club world cup 2 years ago when they made it to the Concacaf finals. She was going to go to the club finals with him and they were going as a group to the world cup (national) as well.
They lost in the final (I was there, and broke up about 10 fights haha) and it was a heartbreaker. But the guy who had the flag and was attending both events as a group with her prior to her untimely death decided to bring the flag to the World Cup instead and go to the places they had said they were going to go. He got there and an amazing thing happened. He saw this group of supporters getting ready to go into a game. None of them spoke English, but they were getting their faces all painted up and drumming and stuff, and the guy asked them where they were from. A guy said, "Brazil" in very difficult commnication (sort of 1/3 English 1/3 Portugese and 1/3 Spanish between the two guys). The Brazilian asked the guy who he was there for (what team). He said he had meant to go with a friend who had died and she was from this one town and said the town's name. The guy from Brazil got huge eyes and said "ME!!!! WE!!!!!" and showed all of the guys there. So the guy gets out his flag from his backpack and they all get the biggest smiles and even start tearing up and stuff. He realizes he had randomly bumped into her villagers essentially in front of 90,000 people trying to get into a stadium and he finally gets somebody to semi-translate and it is like this huge reunion of people that have never met.
I loved that story and thought it was cool. He went into the stadium and stayed with them and at the end of the game he gave them her flag and asked that they carry it back home and carry it on to any games. They promised they would. It was all pretty cool. Maybe he embellished parts of the story, I'm not sure. But he had pictures and such and it looked very genuine and I know for a fact that she did die. So I always thought it would be cool if the Hawks had a tradition like that. So let it be the Tanzania flag being an "unofficial" team flag. I'd love it. The Hawks could put a Tanzania flag on their helmets like Fresno State puts that V on their helmets. It's got a cool backstory as well and is a shout out to their fans.
I also think the Hawks should say "We'll play an overseas game to grow the brand... if all proceeds go to Tanzania or the game is played in Tanzania." If Paul Allen gave that press conference with a straight face he'd be even more of a hero to me. I can imagine the look on Goodell's face. He just wants the Jaguars bidding between London and LA for the billions of dollars, he doesn't want to do anything good for the world. So go whole hog on Tanzania! We can start calling our player of the game the Tanzanian Devil.
(Yes, I know it's really Tazmanian, I just thought it sounded cool and I'm going way overboard).
