Did you hear there's a new movie coming out? Something about space, Harrison Ford and the Buffalo Sabres, apparently.
Fandom for the release of this film, titled Star Wars: The Force Awakens, extends to all boundaries of humanity, even to football players. A few members of the Carolina Panthers organized a private screening of the film on Thursday night and made matching T-shirts. Very cute.
Center Ryan Kalil, who set up the event, called it a "complete nerd man date". He was joined by the entire Panthers offensive line, linebacker Luke Kuechly and tight end Greg Olsen for the occasion.
The 'Purrbacca' shirts -- a product of Panthers fan art combining the team's logo and the likeness of one of the film's hairier, less intelligible characters -- received such a positive reaction in the Twittersphere that Kalil had a company print them for sale with all proceeds going to Olsen's "The HEARTest Yard" charity. The initiative provides families of babies affected by congenital heart disease with a multitude of services and assists them as they settle into their new lives as parents of children with congenital heart disease.
Of course, the Panthers have been given leeway to celebrate and organize late night galactic screenings. Written off as a stale team with a stagnant offense in the offseason, Carolina has remained perfect through 13 games and proved all the haters wrong, dancing and dabbing all the while. So excuse the Panthers' O-line if the unit wants to dive into some nostalgia on their offnight. They've deserved it; we're sure potential league MVP Cam Newton would attest to that.
