{"id":66991,"date":"2019-01-23T20:36:13","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T02:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=66991"},"modified":"2019-01-23T20:36:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T02:36:20","slug":"view-from-the-balcony-on-the-verizon-what-really-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/view-from-the-balcony-on-the-verizon-what-really-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"View from the Balcony: “On the Verizon: What Really Matters”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Professional football has become as much about selling stuff as it\u2019s about the actual game. The sport seems to have followed a calculated, well-executed plan since the first instant replay on December 7, 1963, at the Army-Navy game.That added time to the game. When the game takes more time, guess what helps fill that time? Bingo! Commercials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commercial creep has seeped through the cracks and eaten up time like the blob swallowed up towns. With every extra second another snake oil salesman tries to get us to buy the latest shaving cream, beer, and potato chip. Why else did the NFL add playoff games, league championships, and even the Super Bowl? More time to sell more stuff. Now that coaches can challenge plays and officials can bake a turkey during the time it takes for reviewing plays,folks can sell enough stuff during a game to fund a concrete wall around every border on the planet. The game is no longer the reason for the commercials.I do believe the tail is wagging the dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\ncommercial standard was set in 1979 with Coca Cola\u2019s ad featuring the Pittsburg\nSteelers\u2019 Mean Joe Green. He went from a hacked-off has-been, limping his\nlonely way to the locker room to a genuine nice guy all because a kid gave him\nhis Coke. And what did the kid get? A torn up sweaty jersey. America ate it up.\nAfter that, everybody who had anything to sell and the moolah to buy airtime\ndeveloped ads just for the Super Bowl. But something different this way comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

            On\nSunday, January 20 I was watching the Saints-Rams game when a commercial came\non that made me put down my popcorn and beer and pay attention. It was an ad by\nthe cellular company, Verizon, called \u201cThe Team That Wouldn\u2019t Be Here\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nVerizon ad focused on eleven NFL players and one NFL coach who had been rescued\nat some point in their lives from apotentially fatal situation by a first\nresponder. The message was clear and simple: the world would be a much\ndifferent place if first responders hadn\u2019t saved the lives they have. The use\nof these select NFL men as a microcosm to demonstrate this point was, in my\nopinion, brilliant: down-to-earth and on-target.Verizon\u2019s website has\ncommercials for each of the 12 men in the ad and they will roll out another one\non Superbowl Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Sports\nare important. But what happens whena player is taken down with an injury? Who\ncomes to the rescue? It sure ain\u2019t the fat-cat owner of the team.The game may\nbe important, but it\u2019s the people involved who really matter. And when a\nperson\u2019s health or very life is at stake, who cares if you\u2019re the MVP and threw\nfor a gazillion yards and 87 touchdowns in a single game?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nones who really matter are those people who put themselves in harm\u2019s way to jerk\nyou out of a burning car, to jump into raging flood waters and pull you to the\nshore, to perform CPR on you while another first responder puts pressure on\nyour wound to keep you from bleeding out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\ncan\u2019t speak to Verizon\u2019s reasoning behind their first responder ad campaign. Of\ncourse they want more customers, but I can\u2019t say they\u2019re being totally\nmercenary in this. I\u2019m not going to switch to Verizon because of these ads, but\nI am going to be more outwardly grateful to the men and women who lay it on the\nline for others and get paid a pittance to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nDallas Cowboys are out of the Superbowl picture now. So are the New Orleans\nSaints.The New England Patriots and Tom Brady? They\u2019re reason enough to\nestablish term limits in the NFL as far as I\u2019m concerned.That leaves me\ncheering for the Rams. (I miss Roman Gabriel.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            If\nMayhem comes to your house during the Superbowl, don\u2019t call Tom Brady. He\u2019ll be\npolishing his Superbowl rings and hugging on Gisele (can\u2019t really blame him for\nthat). But he ain\u2019t the hero you need and neither is the insurance company.Punch\nin 9-1-1. The real heroes will answer the call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professional football has become as much about selling stuff as it\u2019s about the actual game. The sport seems<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[10286,10426],"class_list":["post-66991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-randy-weeks","tag-view-from-the-balcony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}