It's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World

Do you get a facial tic when you see boxers renting the very skin on their backs for cheesy online casino ads?

Do you grind your molars when you see the feared Oakland Raiders play at Network Associates Coliseum?

Do you gnaw on a table leg when you read how the Boston Red Sox just sold ad space on the home run nets atop the Green Monster?

Not me. I want more ads. I want them everywhere. The more the better. If they could find a way to project the Pepsodent logo onto Tiger Woods's pearly whites, I would be delighted.

I used to be like you. I used to curse the fact that ads are taking over every square centimeter of sports. That is, until I read that someday, logos could be genetically imprinted on butterflies.

Schweitzer! There's a rare blue-winged Blockbuster!

That's the day I lost all hope. Like Captain Queeg with the strawberries, I snapped. Now I am insatiable. The sooner all our games are covered in ads, the better. I want ads everywhere, anywhere!

It's not enough that Linford Christie once wore the Puma logo on his contact lenses. Or that Rasheed Wallace considered letting a candy company tattoo its logo on his body. Why can't Kurt Warner shave the Campbell's soup logo into his famous stubble? Why can't Edgerrin James spell out SONY on his gold front teeth?

It's not enough that the networks project ads onto the wall behind home plate. Why can't they put the Target logo in the catcher's glove? The Tidy Bowl man on the dugout water cooler? A Starbucks logo on Joe Torre's plastic foam cup?

It's not enough that bulls in rodeos are now named after products. (Do you realize you can ride Durango Skoal?) We need people named after products. George Foreman named five of his boys George. Couldn't the next few be called Fireman's Fund Foreman?

Think of how much ad space is wasted at the Olympics alone! Do Olympic committees really need both sides of the gold medal? What about ads on swimmers' Speedos? (Some affording more space than others.) Or on the bottom of Michelle Kwan's skates?

People, we need to plaster outside the box here! We need to start thinking like Acclaim Entertainment, the New York-based video-game company, which says it will begin offering fees to relatives of the deceased if it can put small billboards on gravestones in Great Britain.

Brother: Where's Grandpa again?

Sister: Under the Marlboro ad, ditwad!

It's not enough that we have college football players with swooshes on their uniforms playing for the Sears Trophy on a football field with a big Tostitos logo stenciled in the middle. We need ads on the cheerleaders (Wonderbra) and on the team benches ("Get your butt into a Ford!") and even on the stretcher (Advil).

It's not enough that the LPGA just played the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic Presented by Alltel. Doesn't the Dr. Irwin Schmaltz Clinic of Nasal Plastic Surgery Sponsors the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic Presented by Alltel with Additional Support from Qualcomm in Case Alltel Goes Broke Between Now and Sunday have a nice ring to it?

Why can't we be like Mexico, where, seconds before the opening kickoff of soccer matches, a huge digital Coke bottle rises out of the midfield circle, begins spinning madly and then retreats into the earth? We have the perfect place for that in this country: Dick Vitale's mouth.

Hell, what are colleges waiting for? There's money to be made, people! Why not call yourself the Akron Ziplocs? The Rice-a-Roni Owls? The Pittsburgh Paints? Do you realize how much money the University of Arkansas would make if it'd simply change "Whoooo, pig, sooey!" to "AFLAC"?

It's not enough that there are ads on our urinal cakes, our fortune cookies, our ski-lift chairs and our bananas! It's not enough that ads are rolled into our beach sand, beamed onto our buildings, plastered onto our buses. Why hasn't somebody figured out a way to project an ad onto the moon or get bluebirds to whistle the Chevy jingle?

Luckily, the future is shaping up ad-tastically. Already, virtual ad companies like Princeton Video Image are refining technology that allows them to do cyber product placement in old movies and TV shows. Can you imagine what they can do to old sports movies?

Honey, do you remember Rocky hitting Apollo Creed with his Palm Pilot?

Issue date: July 29, 2002

Don't miss The Life of Reilly (Total/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, $22.95) -- a best-of compilation of Rick Reilly's columns and features, with a foreword written by Charles Barkley, available at bookstores everywhere.

 

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