On Sunday, Washington Commanders rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr. capped off a breakout game with a…breakout hat.
Robinson, just a few months removed from recovering from gunshot wounds he sustained during an attempted robbery in August, carried his team to a 19-13 victory over the Atlanta Falcons, and earned a game ball for his efforts. Afterwards, he met the press to discuss the game—which he did while wearing an impossibly large baseball hat bearing the Commanders’ logo. Surely, no real-life baseball hat could be that big; when first glanced on a phone or computer screen, the sheer magnitude of Robinson’s giant hat, like Lenny Kravitz’s giant scarf or Kyle Kuzma’s giant sweater before it, seemed to be some sort of meme-motivated optical illusion. But alas! You see something new every day.
Washington Post reporter Sam Fortier, who witnessed the hat in person, relayed on Twitter that “Brian Robinson said his friend has a ‘big hat’ company. ‘If you want a big hat, let me know.’” Upon further investigation, it turns out that this company is called NogginBoss, which was featured on the ABC entrepreneurial series Shark Tank earlier this year. According to the Post, the hat was a gift from Robinson’s friend Ron Dyer, who customized the gigantic blank cap with a proportionately gigantic Commanders logo, as NogginBoss does not yet have an official licensing deal with any pro sports leagues.
Images of Robinson wearing the impossible hat (which he paired, incidentally, with a Gallery Dept. logo hoodie) began to circulate, garnering comparisons to athletic greats like Pablo Sanchez, the pint-sized MVP of Backyard Baseball, and Toad, the fungi-domed protector of the Mushroom Kingdom from Mario. On Robinson’s most recent social media posts, hundreds of commenters wondered the same thing: “Where can I get a big hat?” In the photos, Robinson appeared bashful underneath his foam-filled crown.
Aside from being a feat of spatial intelligence, Robinson’s NogginBoss cap really makes you wonder just how many Shark Tank-adjacent products live among us. Scrub Daddy sponges. Bombas socks. Ring video doorbells. The Squatty Potty. But can any of those offer the same confounding joy as the big hat?
