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The National Football League (NFL) announced on Thursday that popular content creator Dhar Mann will be its official “Chief Kindness Officer,” as well as its “Creator of the Week,” ahead of upcoming Super Bowl LX.
Mann’s first initiative under the new role is called, “Be Kind to Your Rival,” where the league encourages fans to say nice things about rival teams and their fanbases on social media.
Every kind message directed towards opposing teams will result in Mann donating $1 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
“I’m honored to be appointed by the NFL as its Chief Kindness Officer,” says Mann. “I tell hopeful stories, and the Super Bowl has always been about more than football. It’s one of the rare moments when millions of people are all watching, reacting, and feeling something together. I’ve seen firsthand how powerful that shared connection can be. This week is about channeling the passion the NFL is built on into moments of kindness, empathy, and sportsmanship, both on and off the field.”
The news was widely criticized, as Mann was charged with 13 felonies in 2012 for allegedly defrauding a City of Oakland grant program intended to help home owners pay for renovations.
In 2013, Mann pled “not guilty” to five felony counts and was sentenced to five years probation one year later for pocketing city grant money meant for building improvements while he worked in the Oakland, California, marijuana industry.
The league’s new “kindness officer” was also ordered to repay Oakland $44,399 over the taxpayer theft.
In 2021, Mann’s parents Baljit Singh Mann and Surinder Mann, who owned 130 commercial and residential properties the city’s largest taxi company at the time, were ordered by a judge to pay the city nearly $4 million for “repeatedly renting illegal and hazardous units to tenants at several East Oakland properties.”
Local news outlets say Mann “grew up around the city’s leaders,” such as former Oakland City Council Leader Larry Reid, thanks to his parents’ decades-long effort of establishing political relationships with local Democrats.
According to a 2012 NBC Bay Area report, “Reid had been a critic of medical marijuana, but when Mann opened weGrow near the Oakland airport, in Reid’s council district, Reid was supportive,” and also “tipped off Christopher Miller, a friend and employee of Mann’s, about an Oakland police raid of his marijuana-growing operation” in 2010.
The article also describes Mann personally and through proxies donating campaign money to Democrat Oakland mayoral candidates in the 2010 race, likely to ensure he would be on their good side once elected.
“The rush to get a piece of the marijuana business in Oakland coincided with the 2010 city election, including a hotly contested three-way mayoral race with then-City Councilwoman Jean Quan, former state Sen. Don Perata and Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan. Quan received at least $5,300 from businesses, employees and people with ties to weGrow, Mann’s real estate company and the family’s taxi company. Perata got $7,100, including a $5,000 donation from Navjoyt Nagra, Mann’s friend and banker, to a political action committee that supported Perata. Mann himself was not a big individual giver. In addition, Councilwoman Desley Brooks received $1,900 from businesses, employees and others with ties to weGrow and the family’s taxi company.”
Several NFL-focused 𝕏 accounts lambasted the announcement:
