If you're having trouble coming to grips with the outcome of the Super Bowl, if you're desperate to get the voices of the 1972 Dolphins out of your head or if you're simply craving the urge to celebrate perfection, go to Nicaragua.

The New England Patriots are still perfect there -- and will remain so at least until the dye fades and the seams split and the material disintegrates on all the 19-0 T-shirts.

The victims of September's Hurricane Felix that devastated portions of the poor Central American nation don't care that Eli Manning and David Tyree hooked up on the greatest Super Bowl play ever or that Plaxico Burress caught the game-winning touchdown with 35 seconds left. The inhabitants of the impoverished war-torn country don't care that one of the great historical records in American sports was thwarted by the New York Giants.

The immortality that escaped the Patriots will be kept alive on the backs of Nicaraguan children just trying every day to keep on living.

World Vision -- a Christian humanitarian organization -- will deliver next week a shipment with hundreds of officially licensed Super Bowl XLII apparel to people who need clothing in Nicaragua. In the months to come, millions of dollars worth of NFL losing team merchandise will be sent to Romania and other places where our useless scraps have real meaning.

"They wear them until they're threadbare," said Karen Kartes, a spokesperson for World Vision, which has partnered with the NFL since the early 1990s. "Most of these people have never had a new piece of clothing. They don't care what it says."

If you've ever walked out of a stadium after a championship event or bowl game and marveled at the merchandisers already hawking cheap T-shirts to the fans of the victors, there is always another side that you don't see. Retailers aren't clairvoyant. They get just as much wrong as they get right.

But the waste isn't worthless. Instead of sending all of the losing team merchandise to landfills or incinerators, charitable organizations have found the perfect market for it. It started when the NFL was trying to dispose of confiscated knock-off merchandise and grew into an enormous operation with World Vision by 1994.

"World Vision helps us to ensure that no NFL apparel goes to waste," said David Krichavsky, the NFL's director of community relations. "We are pleased to find a good home for clothing by getting it to those who need it most."

Said Kartes: "They were looking for a partner to get these things out of the U.S. so they wouldn't show up on the black market or eBay. And it has an environmental impact. Instead of paying to get rid of it, they get a cash deduction with us and a guarantee that it's not going to end up in the wrong hands."

Thanks to World Vision, there are places in Africa where the locals believe the four-time Super Bowl losing Buffalo Bills are the greatest dynasty in American football.

Last year the organization and NFL distributed approximately $2.5 million worth of shirts, caps and sweatshirts. Much of the Super Bowl XLI-losing Chicago Bears apparel was distributed in Zambia, while more was spread out among Chad, Chile, Bolivia, Congo, El Salvador, Romania and Zimbabwe.

Considering that Sunday's Super Bowl was the most watched in history, by more than 97 million viewers, and since the Patriots were such heavy favorites to become the first 19-0 NFL team, Kartes expects an even larger donation this year.

"From what I'm hearing, we expect more," Kartes said.

Over the next few months, employees in Pittsburgh will be removing tags and sorting goods based on cultural and regional needs. Sweatshirts and knitted hats are perfect for Eastern Europe. T-shirts and caps are great for warmer climates. They'll get stuffed into containers with other medical and food supplies and shipped around the world.

It's hard to feel too sorry for the Patriots, who have done their part to send Rams, Panthers and Eagles paraphernalia to impoverished nations around the world in recent years. It's hard to feel sorry for Tom Brady when he has supermodel girlfriend Gisele Bundchen to help nurse his bruises. It's hard to feel sorry for coach Bill Belichick, who wasn't genius enough to attempt a prudent field goal in the third quarter or realize that leaving the field before the game was officially over showed little class.

If you need to feel sorry for someone, feel bad for the unfortunate Nicaraguan child who not only has to live in poverty but now faces the remote threat of running into Mercury Morris sometime while wearing a "Perfect Patriots" T-shirt.

Despite the insufferable lecture he's sure to get, the Patriots will always remain undefeated in his eyes.