Seattle-area sports stores face shortage of Seahawks jerseys ahead of Super Bowl

If you’re hoping to run out and buy a Seahawks jersey sporting your favorite player’s name and number before the Super Bowl, you could very well be out of luck – unless your favorite player is Russell Wilson.

I learned this the hard way Thursday night as I went in search of a couple of jerseys for my daughter and me to celebrate Blue Friday.

Given the Seahawks overwhelming popularity, I figured I could just waltz into one of the Seattle Team Shop outlets, Sports Authority or another store and grab a Marshawn Lynch, a Kam Chancellor or maybe a Doug Baldwin for each of us. Boy was I wrong.

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My 13-year-old daughter really wanted a Lynch jersey, with Chancellor a close second after his super-human play in the NFC Divisional playoff against Carolina.

I called the Seattle Team Shop at University Village, where the friendly clerk politely informed me they had just one jersey in stock, and it was the number 12 with Fan on the back. Everything else had long since sold out. The situation was similar at the other Seattle Team Shop outlets, with a limited number of jerseys and sizes, primarily Wilson’s.

Undaunted, I headed for Sports Authority at Northgate Mall, which offers one of the largest selections of Seahawks jerseys, clothing and other merchandise in town.

The place was packed with fans of all ages desperate to find a jersey. What we found was a bunch of officially licensed Wilson’s in both kids and adult sizes ($70/$100), a smattering of 12 Fan jersey’s in wolf gray, a couple of Richard Sherman’s, a few Kam Chancellor’s in kids sizes, a couple of XXL Bruce Irvin’s, and a lone remaining Percy Harvin discounted 50 percent.

The enthusiastic, Marshawn-clad salesperson told me the Lynch jersey had been sold out for several months, and no one is getting any more. But she was hoping to get a shipment Friday morning with a few more jerseys to bolster the limited supply.

I did manage to snag the lone Chancellor jersey for my daughter in her size, just ahead of another parent who gave me the serious stink eye as his son looked on forlorn.

But I saw a number of other adults and kids alike either come away empty handed because they couldn’t find their favorite player or size, or begrudgingly settle for Wilson (not that there’s anything wrong with buying the NFL’s top-selling jersey, but as several including my daughter told me “everyone’s got Wilson. We want to be different.”)

My quest continued Friday, as I called Sports Authority again in hopes the expected shipment would bring in a new bounty. Would I get that highly coveted Chancellor or Baldwin jersey I so desperately sought?

“Unfortunately, we didn’t get any jerseys, and none of our other stores around the area did either,” I was told by the apologetic clerk who took my call.

But I wasn’t giving up. I called Just Sports at Alderwood Mall, a specialty sports store that sells jerseys, hats and other merchandise. Unfortunately, the story was the same there.

Much like everywhere else, the supply was limited to mostly Wilson and 12 Fan, along with a couple of leftover Harvins.

“No one can get Lynch’s in town,” the guy told me. “Baldwin’s and Chancellors are also pretty hard to find, especially after the NFC Championship.”

With a few more calls, I did find out that the Seahawks official pro shops have a limited number of different players and sizes depending on location, but they’re getting snatched up as quickly as they get put on the shelves. The guy at the Alderwood store told me he put a number of Chancellor Super Bowl edition jerseys out yesterday, and most disappeared by the end of the day with the exception of an XXL and a couple of smalls.

So what’s a fan to do? If you absolutely have to get a jersey before Sunday, you should have no problem finding a Wilson. Any other player is a crapshoot. Just make sure you call ahead.

But the guy at Just Sports did have another suggestion: “some people just buy the Harvin’s for half-price and remove the name,” he laughed.

In an interesting aside, Sports Authority plans to stay open until 11 p.m. Sunday night if the Seahawks win to sell Super Bowl champion merchandise already tucked away in the back room. If the Seahawks lose, much of that stuff will get shipped back to the supplier and end up in third world countries thanks to Federal Way-based Worldvision.

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