I know these days there are many people who start watching games a half hour late so they can fast forward past all the commercials, or spend their football Sundays watching seven hours of commercial-free football with Scott Hanson.
Anyone trying to convince me to purchase something is always annoying (except for the companies that sponsor this website, please buy everything they’re selling.) However, certain ad campaigns are as creative as anything that has ever been aired on television. The Budweiser frogs, Air Jordan and Mars Blackmon, and of course, “french vanilla, rocky road, chocolate, peanut butter, cookie dough!”
Then there are those commercials that may not have the budget to air during the biggest sporting events on the American television calendar. Sometimes they air at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday and only the locals get to see it. The acting is stiff and the special effects are limited — if they exist at all. Yet, as much as I loved Shaq yanking down a basketball hoop for Pepsi, I will never forget the Washington Metro Area Eastern Motors — “your job’s your credit” commercials of the 2000s. They featured the players from the Washington football franchise, Wizards, and Ray Lewis. The jingle is catchier than choruses from a TRL-era music video.
The local TV commercial. They cost much less to produce than the Nike ones, and are funny because they lean into the fact that they’re cheap. Unfortunately, due to NCAA rules, they were limited to professional athletes only. That day is over. Behold, Nebraska wide receiver Decoldest Crawford’s HVAC commercial.
There had to be not only air conditioner repair, but refrigerator, ice, and water companies in college towns across America flinging themselves at Crawford as soon as they heard the name. Thank goodness this company had some creative people that thought to score the commercial with 90s stock track No. 6 and a classic was made. Also, with the ability for a commercial to go national in 2022 at a fraction of the cost, nearly five million people have seen this commercial on Twitter alone.
For any other Lincoln, Neb., company that might have a commercial ready for Crawford, the bar has been set. The world has seen this first ad and it is just delightful. Bring your A-game Lincoln bag of ice company, or you’ll be saving on refrigeration this winter because you’ll be able to store all those unsold bags outside.
Starkville, Miss., Baton Rouge, La., Provo, Utah — these college towns are perfect for silly commercials like this. Tuscaloosa all-you-can-eat restaurant, get the Alabama offensive line, 15 seconds of them eating, then a shot of a still full buffet, and then pan to those mountains of human beings slumping over the chairs and tables in food comas. The commercial would take a few hours to shoot, and now you have a line around the corner for at least the rest of the football season — but be sure to pay those men with money and not free food, I’ve seen firsthand what lineman can do to a buffet.
Every television market has its favorite local commercials. Peter Francis Geraci, Moo & Oink (someone please find me the one with Dwayne Wade’s father), 411 Pain, and those HEB commercials that feature the San Antonio Spurs — the folks in South Texas have known that Kawhi Leonard is hilarious for years — are beloved. Commercials like this have been waiting for a car dealership in Columbus, Ohio for decades.
College sports purists can wail and whine over NIL all they want. Yes, it further removes the veneer of amateurism that does make college sports more fun, but once Texas A&M jumped to the SEC and Syracuse stuck a knife into Big East basketball it was already useless.
It’s time to have some fun with this and Decoldest has shown you what it can look like with a delightful commercial about one of life’s most frustrating problems, a broken air conditioner. I challenge the next local college town business to come up with a catchier jingle than the one Brendan Haywood was enthusiastically lip-syncing in a truck more than 15 years ago, “Ford, Honda, Chevy, Beamers, and minivans, over 600 cars, trucks, SUVs are you listening, man?”