An NFL punter who garnered attention around the country when he showed up in Winnipeg wearing a "Winnipeg, Alberta" shirt says he's adopting the Manitoba capital as his new home.

A. J. Cole III is the Oakland Raiders rookie punter. He joined the team's podcast "Upon Further Review" this past week and explained how the shirt came to be.

Cole says that during training camp the Raiders' head coach Jon Gruden handed out T-shirts to all the players. Half the team got Winnipeg Jets shirts, and the other half got the now infamous Winnipeg, Alberta shirts that Cole was spotted in. He says that a Raiders employee had bought the shirts on Amazon Prime.

So while half the team was wearing the same shirt it was only Cole who was snapped in a picture wearing one and posted to the Raiders' social media account. Cole says before team meetings the night before the Winnipeg exhibition game he favourited the photo on Twitter and retweeted it and then went into the team meeting.

"I take my phone back out and my phone, it's just vibrating off the charts. I'm like, 'what is going on?'"

Cole says that he knew Winnipeg was in the province of Manitoba but he didn't know what Alberta was. "The shirt said 'Winnipeg, Alberta' I just thought that was a neighbourhood in Winnipeg. I didn't know what Alberta was." He says laughing that he just wanted to show some support and the next thing he knew he set off a Twitter firestorm across the country.

The rookie took everything in stride, even making a self-deprecating apology before the game. Cole also says he gained around 1,000 new followers on Twitter because of the incident. Most people had fun with the mistake and Cole found himself with plenty of new fans.

"I'm good in Canada ... I think Winnipeg is my new home away from home," he says.

Cole took an opportunity to show he learned something before leaving Winnipeg, tweeting "yesterday we landed in Winnipeg, Alberta... today we are leaving Winnipeg, Manitoba with a win and a lesson on provinces!"

"I wanted to let the people know that I was leaving Canada better educated," he says on the podcast. "And, you know, that's life. You're either learning or regressing."