Bad Athlete Commercials

I'm biased because of my experience with Esposito several years before the spot was made, but I enjoyed it as an example of bad advertising.

They did do another, so maybe they did sell jeans.

Or maybe the client liked the concept.

 

There was a great -- and by "great" I mean "cringe-worthy" -- one on a local high school football broadcast a couple years ago around here. It was for a realtor, and the tagline at the end was, "Like Podunk High's offense, we're moving one yard at a time."
It was made even better by the fact that Podunk High has an outdated 70s-style Power-I offense that wasn't particularly good that year.

 

This doesn't involve actual athletes, but it's still a great commercial involving football.

 

I give you Jose Lima pitching Casa Ole restaurants.

So hilariously bad that Casa Ole created a website to honor him for it after he died. I say bad but Jose clearly enjoyed making them.

http://www.casaole.com/joselima

 

Fuck!!!!

I wanted credit for Easterns!!!

For all the Eastern Block immigrants with shitty credit.

 

Thing about the Lima commercials is that if you knew Lima, you knew that was pretty much him.
He loved life, he loved people and he loved to talk. He was pretty colorful and would never turn down an interview request (though about half the time I had no idea what he was saying).

 

You can post the Ovechkin clip if it makes you feel better. That one's just as funny in its own way.

 

It's so ugly, but so hilarious.

Hilarious enough that the Atlanta Thrashers parodied it (and the Colby Armstrong/Max Talbot car commercial) in their own in-game video, a PSA narrarated by Ron Hainsey about athletes in bad commercials.

Another one that deserves mention on this thread - Mario Lemieux for Colussy Chevrolet.

 

This one's pretty bad too, featuring Martin Brodeur and Luc Robitaille and Delissio Pizza.

 

First reason he is not in the Hall of Fame. (Crossthread)

 

As soon as I saw Pete Rose, I thought you were going to bring up the underwear ads.
And please don't bring up the underwear ads.

 

As a kid, I remembered seeing some of those Jockey ads and wondering why big league ball players were wearing Underoos.