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Rob Lowe explains why he wore NFL logo hat that inspired a meme to Packers-49ers game

Raechal Shewfelt
·Editor, Yahoo Entertainment
·5 min read

Rob Lowe has a great sense of timing, whether he’s in front of the camera or not.

The Parks and Recreation alum inspired a meme earlier this month when he attended pro football’s NFC Championship game, featuring the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers, rocking a hat in support of... neither. His hat touted the NFL.

“It was the best thing I ever did picking that hat,” Lowe tells Yahoo Entertainment. “First of all, I love the hat. It’s simple, I love that logo, it’s cool. Frankly I’d never seen a hat like that before. I didn’t even know you could get an NFL shield hat. So I was, like, ‘Oh, this is badass, I’m gonna wear this,’ and then it had the added benefit of not pissing off any [division] in the stands, cause I didn’t really have a dog in that fight.”

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Lowe is a fan of the Indianapolis Colts, who’d already been eliminated from Super Bowl contention.

In a happy coincidence, Lowe’s fashion choice made him the talk of the internet the very same day his show 9-1-1: Lone Star premiered on Fox, just after the game, to impressive ratings.

“This is what I love about the internet is people were so hilarious about it,” Lowe says with a laugh. “I mean, I’m still scrolling through all of the comments, because each one is more hilarious than the next.”

The actor teased that, should the camera lens fall on him during the next big game, Super Bowl LIV, as he watches from the stands, people will like what they see just as much. He also revealed his thoughts about which team will take home the win.

“San Francisco’s defense looks so good and they’ve had two weeks to game plan, to stop one guy and that’s [Kansas City Chiefs quarterback] Patrick Mahomes, who’s a genius,” Lowe says. “So I’m betting San Francisco, but the good news is, I love Mahomes, so I’m good either way, but my hat is gonna be [on] a whole other level, I think.”

This weekend, Lowe hopes that the hashtag #SkinInTheGame gets some attention, too. Profile, the company behind his Cobalt line of skin and grooming products for men, will make a $1 donation to the Wounded Warrior Project, up to $25,000 total, each time someone posts a photo of herself watching the game, using the hashtag and tagging @CobaltByRobLowe, on social media. One winner will also receive two tickets to one of Lowe’s stage shows and meet him backstage.

Lowe’s interest in sports extends to the NBA, too, and he’s lived in Southern California for decades. So the death of Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant on Sunday was upsetting for him, as it was for many celebrities and non-celebrities alike.

“I met Kobe a number of times. I was a fan of his. He, as it turns out, was a fan of Brothers and Sisters, a show that I did years ago, and he and Vanessa used to watch it every Sunday, he told me,” Lowe says. “I’m a fan of his as a player, as a guy who thought beyond the world of basketball, a guy who was arguably becoming almost more interesting and successful off the court as he was on the court. I mean, the guy won an Oscar already. So he was doing such great things, he had such a beautiful family.”

Lowe notes that Bryant was especially beloved in the land of the Lakers.

“You can’t overstate what he meant to Los Angeles, to people particularly of a certain age,” he says. “My boys are massive Kobe fans, and this is the first time they’ve ever had to deal with loss in their lives. And so I’ve watched my young, twenty-something kids devastated and learning that great lesson that tomorrow is guaranteed to no one, and we need to go out and live and love like there isn’t a tomorrow, because there may not be.”

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