The Definitive Giveaway Rankings – San Diego FC edition

The False Nine travelled to San Diego this weekend and we were rewarded with SDFC beach towels as a consolidation prize for not showing up on the field in their lovely city. These things are hard to take pictures of, but that won’t stop us from reviewing it as that is our God-given quest here at TF9.

In case you are new here: we here at The False Nine, in our attempt to cover all aspects of ~~Austin FC~~ Soccer fandom, have come up with a grading rubric to judge and rate giveaways. It’s a very simple system for very simple items, everything is graded 1-100 with 5 points possible for the Look, Usability, and Originality categories. An additional 85 points are available for the Throwability category.

Final Rankings:

1-24 – Not worth the effort of grabbing from the attendant

25-49 – No one will be heartbroken by not getting the item, nor will they be sad when they accidentally leave it at the stadium

50-74 – A perfectly cromulent giveaway item

75-99 – An item to cherish and display

100 – Reserved for a Rodney Redes bobblehead

Now, let’s get to the Giveaway:

Beach Towel (5/31/2025 at San Diego FC)

Look: It has a ton of text for a beach towel highlighting the 18 cities in San Diego County. However, it has them in alphabetical order rather than geographic order, which doesn’t make sense to me.

Score: 3 out of 5

Usability: If we lived in San Diego, it would be a 5, as they have tons of beaches. Since Austin doesn’t really have beaches, we deducted a point, but there are plenty of other uses for a beach towel, such as a lovely afternoon in Zilker (ok, maybe not this time of year) or at the compound.

Score: 4 out of 5

Originality: While we are surprised South Padre Island hasn’t sponsored one of these yet for us, the Padres give away a beach towels at games most years.

Score: 2 out of 5

Throwability: If it is all laid out, this towel is not throwable at all, as it’s too big to throw. However, it was given to us folded up. You can toss it around folded up and it is somewhat throwable. It’s enough to get a passing grade for throwability, but it won’t be winning any awards.

Score: 60 out of 85

Final Score: 69 out of 100

Ranking of Giveaways (score in parenthesis):

Yeti Season Ticket Holder Gift (98)

Yeti 10 oz Tumbler (96)

LED Bracelet Giveaway (95)

Dell Technologies/Intel Bucket hat (92)

Dell Technologies Fanny Pack (91)

Heineken Koozie (86)

4ATX Foundation/SeatGeek Fan (85)

SeatGeek Stadium Scarf (85)

Q2 Stadium Scarf (84)

YETI Hat 2023 (84)