The
draft used to be appointment viewing with Chris Burman and Mel Kipper
going at it for 8 hours on a Saturday afternoon. Depending on which side
of the coin you're on, that has now been reduced to 2 hours on Thursday
night, 2 hours on Friday night, and some time on Saturday where no one
is really watching unless you have a Geno Smith or Brady Quinn type in
the Green Room beyond the first round.
Speaking
of Mr. Smith, those Jets drafted him in the 2nd round and I'm happy.
He's a very athletic quarterback who has a strong arm and big legs. He
kind of reminds me of Tim Tebow only with out the Christ complex and
with an actual working arm. Mr. Tebow was released this morning by the
team which brings the number of QB's on the roster down to a manageable 5
(there's a lot of sarcasm here). Actually if the team is really
interested in teaching Smith and grooming him to be the QB of the future
then put him down as the 3rd on the depth chart behind starter Mark
Sanchez and back up David Gerrard and let him hold the clipboard this
season and learn. We are not going anywhere and can put up with another
season of Sanchez.
But
all this talk of players and strategy takes me off the point I was
trying to make here today. Did you watch the draft? Did you see the
tables where each team's staff was huddled around just before making
each pick? Did you notice something out of place on those tables? If you
said "A Bottle of Gatorade", you would be correct!
One
of the NFL's biggest sponsors made sure to have their products placed
in a high-eyeball area during the draft. While that's great for the
world of product placement, does anybody care that a sports drink was
being featured in an environment where there were more neck ties than
score ties?
The
Draft has it's fair share of corporate sponsors this year. Ad Age
points out that among them are Visa, Verizon, and other companies that
don't even have V's in their names. (http://adage.com/article/news/nfl-turned-draft-mcrib-sporting-events/241141/)
But why was Gatorade the only one featured up on the tables? Did other
companies just not give as much? What a great tie-in Visa could have had
if each team went up to congratulate their newest acquisition and
handed him a pre-paid Visa card with his signing bonus already loaded
up!
I
get that this is a prime time event with lots of the coveted "Males
24-40" demographic tuning in but I don't think that calls for this much
of an insult to "our" collective intelligence. Do you think we don't
know what Gatorade is? We've grown up with the "Be Like Mike" campaign
and the 1986 Giants starting the Gatorade showers. We get it. What we
don't get is why? When I'm in the office and the pressure is on. Do you
know what I reach for? If you said a big bottle of lemon-lime G2, you'd
be wrong....coincidentally if you said whiskey, you'd be right!
