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Super Bowl-winning Chiefs player pays all dog adoption fees at shelter

Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi is top dog with rescue animals.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
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KC Pet Project

Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi was on the winning side for Sunday's Super Bowl, and a doggone good deed came out of it. Nnadi is paying the adoption fees for all the dogs waiting for homes at the KC Pet Project, a no-kill animal shelter in the Kansas City metro area.

"We're so honored to partner with Derrick Nnadi who is sponsoring the adoption fees of all of our adoptable dogs at our locations!" the shelter said in a tweet sent Monday. "What an incredibly generous gesture and we want to thank Derrick for his support all season long."

Nnadi paid off the adoption fees of more than 100 dogs. "All my life I always wanted a dog," Nnadi told CNN. "Growing up I didn't have a pet, my parents didn't really allow pets." He got his first dog, Rocky, in college, and it inspired him to want to help other animals.

More Super Bowl news

Nnadi's Derrick Nnadi Foundation had partnered with the shelter all season.  For each of the Chiefs' 15 wins during the regular and post-season, he paid for one dog's adoption fee (about $150, or £115, AU$224). When the team made the Super Bowl, he decided to up the ante and pay for every dog's adoption fee if they won.

"We have had an amazing, season-long, partnership with Derrick and he couldn't have thought of a better ending," the shelter said in a Facebook post on Sunday.