Back In 1995, The Simpsons Visited The NFL On Fox, And Homer Took A Shot At Jerry Jones

This only came to my attention yesterday, and—as I'm a Simpsons fan and something of a sports enthusiast—I figured that if I hadn't seen it, most people likely hadn't. In 1995, the Simpsons did what has to be the best promo for the NFL on Fox—for any pre-game show—ever. It's not quite vintage, untethered Simpsons; the user that uploaded the clip to YouTube speculates that it's been allowed to remain when other clips from the show are promptly DMCA-ed because FoxSports holds the copyright, and if that's true, they may have had final word on the promo's content as well. (It may also explain why this segment hasn't appeared on a Simpsons DVD collection.) We learned about the type of edits that can come into play when athletes guest star in cartoons in our look at "Homer at the Bat."

Still, there probably hasn't been a NFL pre-game since that implied Jerry Jones was worse than "a vicious, evil skinflint who exposes [his employees] to nuclear radiation 40 hours a week," so we'll take the satire, however muted. Howie Long looks weird, Terry Bradshaw gets his own bald joke, and the goofy gravel-voiced NFL on Fox narrator introduces the highlights with "Cowabunga, Bart and Homer," which is worth the price of admission on its own. It may be nearly the same crew doing Fox NFL Sunday in 2012, but this is a lot better than what they've got going on now