A commercial aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday promoting women’s flag football by resorting to tired gender war tropes and making men look like sexist bullies.
While the National Football League (NFL) ad featured an appealing message about women’s flag football becoming a varsity sport nationwide, it employed entirely unnecessary cliches ripped off from 80s teen movies to get it across. As The Hollywood Reporter (THR) described:
For Super Bowl LIX this year, the league’s star-packed two-minute commercial uses a comedic tone to spotlight on girls flag football, as part of the NFL’s effort to grow the sport around the world. The spot is a riff on classic high school comedies, with NFL veteran and ESPN host Pat McAfee joined by current and former NFL stars Justin Jefferson, Marshawn Lynch and Myles Garrett, as well as a team of some of the best female flag football players in the world.
“We [NFL players] have fun playing flag just because it kind of reminds us of being a kid, having fun, creating those skillful plays, doing those double laterals,” Jefferson says of the ad. “It’s competitive, one, and two, it reminds us of when it all started for us just being a kid in the backyard and being excited to play the game of football.”
The spot ends with a message to “Leave the past behind” and a call to “make girls flag football a varsity sport in all 50 states.”
NFL CMO Tim Ellis told THR that the league wanted the ad to inspire people to see the appeal of flag football.
“We [NFL players] have fun playing flag just because it kind of reminds us of being a kid, having fun, creating those skillful plays, doing those double laterals,” Ellis said. “It’s competitive, one, and two, it reminds us of when it all started for us just being a kid in the backyard and being excited to play the game of football.”
“This is our ad to really inspire people to think differently about the NFL, to think differently about football,” Ellis added. “This particular ad is a tribute to the evolution of girls high school sports and to the momentum of girls flag football and the gains it has been making as an official high school varsity sport. For us, it’s all about momentum.”
Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating and can be viewed for FREE on YouTube, Tubi, or Fawesome TV. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow him on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
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