The Mormon Sports Nerd

2006-10-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

Monster.com commercial

The depressingly funny monster.com ad. When did I want to become an HR Manager, anyway?

2006-10-16T22:38:00.000-07:00

CAT HERDERS

The rugged. The manly. The Cat Herder.

2006-10-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

Office Linebacker Terry Tate

Better put a cover sheet on the TPS reports.

2006-10-16T22:26:00.000-07:00

ESPN Sportscenter Commercial - New Kid

Bringing the Kid up to Sports Center too quickly.

2006-10-16T21:58:00.000-07:00

Geico Caveman Commercial

The off-camera Caveman takes offense

My College Hoops Dream Day - U of A

2005-12-19T08:53:00.000-08:00

Saturday 12/17/05 was a wonderful day for me. It was a wonderful combination of my alma maters (BYU and the University of Arizona) basketball teams absolutely destroying their opponents. What made the day even sweeter was that they did it against Weber State and the University of Utah. BYU beat WSU by 26. My Arizona Wildcats shredded Utah by 30.

The University of Arizona (where I earned my MBA) handed the Strugglin' Utes their worst home loss since 1943. The domination was so complete that even Lute Olsen talked a little smack after the game when he said, "It seemed like once they got across halfcourt, it was almost a sigh of relief that 'Hey, we're here! At that point you're here, but you still have something to do." And Utah did very little after getting the ball across half court. Utah turned the ball over 23 times

The Utah fans, in their usual classiness, added to the ugliness in the second half by throwing debris from the student section that landed on the "U" at midcort after Tim Drisdom was called for an offensive foul. Utah coach Ray Giacoletti got on the public address system and asked fans not to throw anything on the court. He urged them to cheer on the Utes for a defensive stop.

After opening presents, Brandon had his second basketball game of his life and hit some nice shots on the 6' Little Tykes hoop that they use in his 3-4 year old league. He probably led his team in rebounding as well.

BYU wins big. Arizona destorys Utah in SLC. My 4-year-old son hoops it up. What a day.

Society - Men Must Be Dumb

2005-09-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

Splenda, you have made powerful enemy. Hardee's, your going down hard. Summer's Eve Feminine Wash - don't even get me started. You see, each of those companies think that I am an idiot because I happen to be male. Not only do they think that I am a moron, they have the audacity to tell me so directly to my face in the privacy of my own home via their stereotyping and demeaning commercials. But what may be even more frustrating than the commercials themselves is the fact that nobody seems to care.

Imagine the outrage if Honda, for example, released the following commercial:

Opening scene: A housewife clicks her 5-year old son into his booster seat and begins to pull out of her driveway in her new Honda Odessy. She drives down the street, cheerfully waving to neighbors while singing along to the radio with her son.

Narrator: "The all new Honda Odyssey has improved handling, more comfortable interior and a softer suspension so that even a woman's most common errands feel like a small vacation."

Scene Two: Mom comes to a complete stop, signals right and begins to make the turn. She immediately accelerates too quickly, jumps the curb, takes out the neighbors hedge, runs over a garden gnome, and sideswipes the car in the driveway.

Narrator (chuckling): "Well, if women could drive, that is".

Final Scene: Mom puts a dopey smile on her face, raises her hands to her shoulders and shakes her head as if to say, "What did you expect? I am only a woman. I'm supposed to be a terrible driver." Meanwhile the son in the carseat rolls his eyes and shakes his head in disgust at his mother to convey that he knew all along that this incompetent female was going to screw things up yet again. After all, she's just a woman.

If this commercial existed, Honda would suffer a worse fate than the poor garden gnome. It would be a PR nightmare. They would be boycotted NOW and every other radical feminist organization on the planet. Dateline would do a 2-hour special on the adverse effects of this commercial on young girls who happen to see it (assuming they could charge Stone Phillips' batteries to keep his robotic parts moving, which is actually most of his body by now).

Here is the irony - this commercial actually exists. Splenda uses it to hawk its sugar replacement. The only difference between Splenda's actual commercial and the hypothetical Honda example is that instead of a mom driving a minivan, it is a dad cooking in the kitchen with his daughter. The narrator says, "A dad can use Splenda instead of sugar in anything he is cooking". The father then plays right into the stereotype by destroying what he is attempting to prepare. The narrator chuckles and says, "Well, if dads could cook, that is." Each perpetuates a stereotype - women can't drive, men can't cook. Buy you will never see the Honda commerical on the air. Splenda, meanwhile, took the ball and ran with it.

Splenda is not alone in their portrail of men as idiots. Hardee's (Carl's Jr. in the West) had an entire ad campaign centered around the theme of, "Without us, some guys would starve". One commercial showed a man attempting repeatedly to crack eggs to prepare for breakfast. He destroyed the whole dozen without successfully getting any of them into the frying pan. If a man is so utterly incompetent and useless that he cannot even prepare his own breakfast, HE DESERVES TO STARVE TO DEATH! Actually, the gene pool would be better off if he did. My plea to Hardee's is to not give this guy a Triple Thick Burger when he comes in. On second thought, give him two on the house, it would probably kill him faster than a 9 MM.

Here is the reverse of the Hardee's commercial - let's say for the womens' apparel at Dillards. Here is the ad: An attractive, well-dressed woman enters a Board Room with her resume for a job interview with a panel of men. She answers each of the questions with an idiotic, unprofessional response. She is obviously unqualified for the job and blew the interview. At the end, however, she leans forward allowing her Dillard's outfit to provocativaly reveal just enough skin to get her the job offer. The the narrator comes in with the punchline, "Dillards - Without us, some women wouldn't get hired." Ooooohhhhhh, the outrage.

My last offender is Summer's Eve Feminine Wash. Their recent ad shows a...well...very...ummm... "refreshed" woman getting dressed for the day. Her husband/boyfriend comes up from behind her in a pair of dirty jeans and an old t-shirt that looks like it spent the last several days on the floor and probably reeks of cat pee. The narrator says, "We have our way of freshening up..." as the woman looks at the moron behind her and asks, "Did you shower today?". The man just smiles and says, "I'm a guy. I showered yesterday" and then puts on a ratty old baseball cap and walks away. The narrator ends the spot by saying,"...and they have their way of freshening up." Yup, we men love to wallow in our own mire and then put on the ol' Dodgers cap and strut out the door.

I'm not even going to attempt to create the opposite of a Summer's Eve commercial for men. It's just too disturbing to think about.

The one company who reverses the men-as-iditos-women-as-omnipotent trend is Arby's. Actually, they think everybody is a moron. One of their commercials shows a woman on a business conference call with three of her co-workers. Their boss on the other end of the line is explaining why this project is so critical and that he wants the woman to be the team leader. She doesn't hear a word the boss is saying because she is thinking about Arbys. When she doesn't respond to one of the boss' questions, a male co-workers saves her bacon (or Bacon Swiss Melt) by replying for her in his best falsetto. While the woman was the idiot in this commercial, it does not give me any more desire to buy a Market Fresh Sandwich.

With all of this said, I guess that I will avoid buying Splenda because what's the point? Why buy a sugar replacement for recipes that I am just going to screw up? Instead of cooking, I'll just get fast food but it will have to be somewhere other than Hardee's because they think I'm not bright enough to unwrap my burger. And Summer's Eve - you'll never see another dollar......well, I guess that's a pretty empty threat.

But then again I'll probably forget all of this by the time the NFL season kicks off tonight. After all, I'm just a man. What'd you expect?

Sports - Shawn Bradley: Defeding the Defender

2005-08-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

Shawn Bradley retired this year after 11 seasons in the NBA. I thought it was time that somebody gave him a proper send off.

Answer quickly, just a gut reaction - who put up the best numbers during the first seven years of their careers in terms of the big three stat lines for Centers (points, rebounds and blocks) - Shawn Bradley, Vlade Divac, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Rik Smits, Jermaine O'Neal or Ben Wallace?

Now answer this - who has taken more crap, been the punchline for more jokes, been criticized, laughed at and ridiculed more than the rest of the bunch combined? The answer to both questions is.....

Shawn Bradley.

Yep, Shawn Bradley put up better numbers than the rest of the group during the first SEVEN YEARS of their careers. Those guys were All-Stars at times during those seven years. For some odd reason, the only All-NBA team Bradley every made was the All-Ridicule Team, along with perennial members Oliver Miller and Shawn Kemp.

Here are the objective stats with the commonly used fantasy formula of 1 point for each Point, 1.5 points for each Rebound and 2.5 points for each Block. These are the averages of each of these players first seven years in the NBA:

Name........................... PPG.....RPG...BPG...Fantasy Pts
Shawn Bradley ...........11.3.......7.8......3.3.........31.25
Zydrunas Ilgauskas.....14.9......7.7......1.9.........31.20
Vlade Divac.................12.4......8.6......1.6.........29.30
Rik Smits.....................14.0.....6.0......1.4.........26.50
Ben Wallace.................5.1........9.2......2.0.........23.90
Jermaine O'Neal.........9.7........6.1......1.5.........22.60

Remember, these are averages of the FIRST SEVEN YEARS of their NBA careers. You could try to argue that it is unfair or misleading to put Jermaine O'Neal's numbers up there because he jumped straight out of High School and had a difficult transition. Before you cry a river for poor Jermaine, remember this - Shawn Bradley had one of the most difficult transitions in the history of the NBA. What he did is still unprecedented. After playing just 1 year at BYU against second rate competition, he spent the next two years as a Mormon Missionary in Australia where he hardly touched a ball, watched a game or even exercised. He went straight from his mission to the NBA draft. Talk about difficult transitions - try to top that.

Perhaps my favorite stat to throw out to illustrate how good Shawn Bradley was at the beginning of his career is to compare his stats and reputation to those of Ben Wallace. Over the past 5 years Ben Wallace has been the NBA's undisputed defensive monster in the paint. There is no discussion about it. People fear him when they drive the lane. He has been rewarded with a tough-guy reputation and garnered multiple NBA Defensive Player of the Year honors.

Now consider this - Ben Wallace's blocks per game over the last five years - which have been his best - do not hold a candle to Shawn Bradley's first seven years in the league:

Player....................BPG......Mins PG.....Blocks per 48 Mins
Shawn Bradley.....3.3.........29.4.......................5.4
Ben Wallace..........2.9.........36.8.......................3.75

Okay, the big difference between Shawn Bradley and those I compared him to is that each of them either maintained their productivity (Divac, Smits, Z) or became a legitimate All-NBA Center (O'Neal, Wallace) after their first seven years. Years 8-11 for Shawn Bradley were difficult to watch as he was slowed by injury and played less and less on a Dallas team that pushed the ball so quickly up and down the floor that they occasionally used 6'8 Eduardo Najera as their Center. Had he played on an Eastern Conference team that stressed defense and needed a Center (Knicks, Nets) he could have contributed a solid 10 pts., 7 rebounds and 2-3 blocks per game.

A couple of other tid-bits to help solidify his legacy:
*Holds Dallas' team record for blocks in a season
*Set Dallas team record for points in a game by a Center with 32
*Holds Philadelphia's team record for blocks in a season
*Became just the fifth player to ever record 20+ points, 20+ rebounds and 10+ blocks in a game (the others being Shaq, Kareem, Hakeem and Elvin Hayes)
*First NBA player to record double figure blocks in consecutive games

Shawn - have a peaceful retirement and remember that there were many of us who looked past the punchlines and recognized the solid player that you were.

Movies - Saints and Soldiers Drops a Bomb From Nowhere

2005-08-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

Saints and Soldiers the frontrunner for my 2005 "Belly Button Lint" award. This highly coveted honor (which I just made up today) goes to the movie that suddenly appears out of nowhere and when you see it you think, "How had I never seen this movie before? How long has it been out?". These are the same questions I ask whenever I notice a small fuzzy clump of blue lint collecting in the dark recesses of my belly button, hence the name of the award. When I design the trophy it will be a pronounced "innie" stuffed with blue cotton candy. Mmmmm......the most tasty award in Hollywood.

Andrea and I had heard some good buzz about the WWII story as it circulated through the Mormon grapevine. Because the main character has been on a mission to Germany (presumably for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), reads a small book of scripture (presumably the Book of Mormon), doesn't smoke or drink, etc. it is apparent that he is LDS though it is never stated in the movie. It would have been even more subtle if the main character traded is Army helmet for a bike helmet and his dog tags for a name plaque that read, "Elder". The writer and director did a good job of making a "Mormon Movie" without being heavy handed about it.

My second made-up award that Saints and Soldiers has been nominated for is best DVD Commentary. Sometimes I enjoy the commentaries more than the movies themselves, unless either of them involve Tim Robbins. The Writer, Director and a forgettable 3rd voice tell some very interesting and funny stories of making a good movie on a shoe-string budget. My favorite commentary is still "Behind Enemy Lines", though Saints and Soliders is not far behind.

Since Hollywood has been cranking out mostly recycled junk for the last three years, an independent Utah film like Saints and Soldiers is a breath of fresh Rocky Mountain air. So go home, buy some popcorn and cotton candy and enjoy a compelling, emotional story and a great commentary.