It'll cost mucho dinero for Chad Ocho Cinco to switch jerseys

by JeffHuang | September 10, 2008 at 03:12 pm

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This story gets stranger and stranger. First of all, I have no idea why someone would change his perfectly good name from Johnson to Ocho Cinco (I wonder what his family thinks about this). I know Chad Johnson is an entertainer and he wants to entertain us, but changing his last name is just bizarre in my opinion.
Now here is the new twist. Before he is allowed to make the change, he would have to buy 100,000 jerseys from Reebok with "Johnson" on the back. This is the way he is to compensate for changing his name so close to the season and leaving Reebok with old Johnson jerseys. This could cost him $4 million dollars. I wonder what Chad Ocho Cinco Johnson is going to do. We'll just have to wait and see.

Don't expect to see Chad ~~Johnson~~ Ocho Cinco wearing his new name on a jersey anytime soon. CNBC's Darren Rovell reports on his blog that the former Mr. Johnson would be forced to buy out the stock of the 100,000 remaining "C. Johnson" jerseys before making the switch to "Ocho Cinco". If Reebok asked Ocho Cinco to pay for the cost of making the unsold jerseys, the total could reach upwards of $4 million (or $50 million pesos).

Because Johnson changed his name so close to the start of the season, Reebok was left in a bind since they'd have to produce new jerseys and eat the old ones. That's why the NFL has told Johnson he'd have to reimburse the company for the price of the jerseys. That's not unprecedented, rookie linebacker Keith Rivers did it last week when he changed his uniform number. Of course, Rivers didn't have thousands of jerseys with his name on it on sales racks nationwide.