When NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue is on his deathbed, and his loved ones are surrounding him, he will look back on his life and assess his greatest successes and his greatest regrets. With his final breath, as a tear trickles from the corner of his weathered visage, he will utter nine words which have haunted him for the rest of his life:
\Why did I let the Coors Company sponsor us?""
In the realm of mass marketing, no single campaign has been more incessant, more grating or more skull-splittingly idiotic than the Coors Light commercials that have soiled our national passion for football. Each commercial seems to trump the previous spot's gutter-slut style with one that screams, ""YOU THOUGHT THE LAST ONE WAS A PIECE? WAIT 'TIL YOU SEE THIS ONE!"" I don't even think Vince McMahon would have used these 30-second bombs for his classy, hooker-saturated teams of the XFL.
The term ""Lowest Common Denominator"" is thrown around a lot when describing these ads. However, I don't even think the LCD label is appropriate. Because how can zero be a denominator? These are the types of ads that make Maxim readers cringe in moral disapproval. Have you ever just read these lyrics?
""I love playing two-hand touch / Eating way too much / Watching my team win / And TWINS!""
Read that and count the words that have more than two syllables? Yeah, that's right, ZERO! And they feel the need to bastardize Louie Armstrong's ""What a Wonderful World"" with some sort of synth-rock anomaly that should make any jazz fan weep. So how do you trump these worthless ads? Uh-huh, yeah, Kid Rock.
Just when you thought you couldn't get any lower, you hire the guy who got famous for introducing the line ""Bawitdaba da bang a dang diggy diggy diggy said the boogy said up jump the boogy"" into our national lexicon.
In all fairness, you must credit Mr. Kid Rock for bringing in a polysyllabic word to the ads with the term ""somebody."" It's just a shame that the entire line goes ""Somebody's got to feel this!"" Feel what? What the hell am I supposed to feel? It doesn't help that he's pointing downward at various crotches while imploring that we feel ""this."" Chances are, I'll just pass on feeling anything that Kid Rock offers.
I'm curious to see what the Coors people have in store for us. Well, I think it's fairly obvious. Since there are only a few ways to sink lower than now, the next commercials must involve:
1. Two people having sex. Yup, just two people going at it. No music, no clever lines, just sex. And then, mid-coitus, the guy will scream, ""COOOOOORS!""
2. Apes smashing things with rocks. Two chimps with a bag of rocks will be surrounded by a bunch of glass. They'll hear a whistle and proceed to smash things while screaming incessantly. Meanwhile, Kid Rock will come out of nowhere and scream, ""Somebody's got to feel this!""
3. The next jingle will undoubtedly devolve below actual words of any tongue and will involve merely guttural sounds. So people will come to understand that ""GUGGH MAA AIEEEE AIEEE!"" means Coors.
Beer commercials have never been ""highbrow."" But come on, everyone needs standards. So here's to the hope that Coors withdraws from the NFL, and the Miller Lite mud-wrestling gals come in and give the NFL what it's been lacking: a touch of class.
Michael Jones is a senior majoring in political science and international relations and can be reached for comment at michaeljones@wisc.edu.
