Wednesday, January 27, 2010

 

Super Bowl Ads

The NFL is nothing if not advertising savvy. Even people who have no idea what the game is about can tell you a rough estimate of how much a 30 or 60 second ad for the big game costs. For many, the game of who has an ad, what it will be, when it will air is as much fun as the actual pigskin contest (but rest assured, Dear Reader that I'm all about the game). As other major sports take big PR hits from drug, violence and other scandals, the NFL leads an apparently charmed life.

This is, of course, a delusion. As the tastefully named Gregg E. of TMQ often warns us, "there is no law of nature that says football must remain so popular" and he's right. Why am I such an ardent NFL fan? Because I used to be a HUGE baseball fan (Ozzie Smith and the StL Cardinals, thankyouverymuch) and when I became disillusioned with millionaires going on strike and pumping themselves full of drugs, I needed a new outlet for my admiration and the NFL was just walking right by. The rebound sport snagged me. Oh I'd flirted with it every now and again, but didn't really pay it much attention until my first love broke my heart. Funny how life works out that way.

Because lots of ordinary fans (like me) love the NFL and will watch it to the point of being braindead (how I still remember the one day of watching NFL Sunday Ticket), people will pay the NFL outrageous amounts of money for insane things. The NFL has an official beer (Coors Light--not that you could tell with all the Miller Lite and Bud commercials thrown in), soft drink (Pepsi, with one of the most annoying commercials I've ever seen, but I don't like throwbacks), bank (B of A...I guess that's where the NFL officially keeps all their money), etc. Stadium naming rights, personal seat licenses (where you pay for the right to pay for your season tickets) and paying to stand up to watch a game are now the common parts of the biz.

None of this has ever bothered me. Do I think PSL's are stupid? Yes, but I'm not a season ticket holder. Would I pay to be allowed into a stadium and not have a seat? No, but since I hate the Cowboys and don't live near Dallas, I'm not obligated to participate. Even the excesses of the Super Bowl ads have never bothered me. Until now. For the most part, NFL fans keep politics out of the game. I don't know how my favorite player/coach/coordinator/trainer/ballboy votes and I don't care. You want to pray before the game? Go ahead, I'm watching the pregame show or racing through traffic to get home after church. You want to pray after you score a TD? Fine, make it quick. You want to point to God to thank Him for a good play? Your choice. If any NFL owner is shoveling money to a political party, that's up to him or her. It's their money; I'm not telling them how to spend it. They don't seem to have any issues with my Starbucks habit.

But not this year. This year, the NFL accepted money from a virulently anti-woman organization, Focus on the Family, to air a commercial with the assuredly-high draft pick Tim Tebow and his mom, discussing how she gutted (no pun intended) through a dangerous pregnancy against the advice of her doctors and give birth to the young man who some NFL club (cough, Jacksonville, Tampa) believes will fix all their problems with one fell swoop and take them on to glory in the postseason for the foreseeable future. Some will say "this is about choice...she was free to make a choice and see, everything turned out alright". And so it did. Congratulations Tim's Mama. I'd like to say this happens for everyone, but it doesn't. And FotF doesn't support a woman's right to choose. They support forcing women to carry every pregnancy to term, even if it kills her, maims her, destroys her reproductive system, saddles she and her family with a shell of a child they cannot manage emotionally or financially. They are not there to help once a child is born, only to demand that women be forced through that all-important 9 months. Hell with her after that. Pregnancy is a dangerous business. There's a reason infant and mother mortality rates dropped significantly when more births happened in medical facilities than on your own.

I'll be at a Super Bowl party this year, enjoying the game and making fun of most of the commercials. I'll be with people whose politics are vastly different from mine. We don't agree on a great many points, but we're all football fans. I might not like your favorite team, but I know you're a fan, same as I am and for that, I can respect you. I respect the common ground we can find, where political labels don't matter. Where there's a good game to be had, good-natured ribbing about a bad play by your offense or a good tackle by my defense. Where you're not some idiot fascist and I'm not a commie you'd like to shoot. The NFL allowing such a hot-button topic as this ad threatens that. Our country is polarized enough. We already shout slogans at each other while the real problems of every day go unsolved. There is too much "I've got mine, why should I worry about anyone else?", too much "my way is the right way and F*** anyone who disagrees", too much "they only think that because they're backwards idiots". Sports is a good way to find a place of agreement. I don't think one game will destroy anything, but it's a bad precedent. Remember NFL, there is no law of nature that says football must remain so popular.

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Friday, January 01, 2010

 

Happy New Year

For someone who overthinks everything, you'd think I'd be totally into New Year's resolutions. While I do have plans for some changes in the new year, they're not really "resolutions". Yes, I'm planning more exercise and leaner food, but that's mostly because I won't have weird weeks of evening events and days off to mess up my workout schedule and after all the holiday partying, I'm actually craving veggies.
I got a new job last year, so no worries on that for 2010 (one hopes). I'm getting into a groove with the job, I'm learning the people and processes, so I do have ideas and things I want to do, but that too isn't really a resolution.
I want to spend more time with the folks who mean a lot to me. However, that too isn't a resolution so much as a constant. My peeps mean a lot to me and the more time with them, the better for EY. I do think this year may be more traveling to see far off friends. I've never been to New Jersey. Think it's about time I go.

So to the 3-4 folks who read this, I hope that 2010 brings you good times, good friends, good health.

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