Jessie Noriega may be only 1 year old, but he knows who his
favorite National Football League team is
– the Oakland Raiders.
Jessie Noriega may be only a year old, but he knows who his favorite National Football League team is – the Oakland Raiders.
Baby Jessie was cruising down the aisle of a local supermarket on Tuesday wearing a Raiders sweatshirt along with a big smile as mommy pushed him and older sis in a shopping cart as if it was an E-ride at Disneyland.
Jessie knows the Raiders are one-half of the Super Bowl XXXVII (You mean to tell me I’ve wasted 37 years of my life? Don’t answer that!) equation. The other half being the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. One can imagine a Baby Josie breezing down a Wal-Mart aisle in Tampa Bay wearing a Buccaneers shirt. Oh, bet your sweet under.
Seems like the NFL is still the king of marketing. Everywhere one goes, Jerry Rice (80) or Tim Brown (81) Raiders jerseys are visible. Or even the old Howie Long (75) jerseys are popular. If one is a Niner fan, Steve Young (8) is the biggie. Sorry, Jeff Garcia. Get your NFL bean bag or credit card with your favorite team on it.
And jerseys, clothing, visa cards, etc. don’t even scratch the surface. The game, itself, costs millions of dollars to produce. Television pays the NFL megabucks for the rights, then charges megabucks for commercial rights. It’s the American way.
Ah, the Super Bowl commercials. There have been years where the commercials were better than the game. Millions of viewers tune in not for the game but for the commercials. It used to be the halftime show was the big thing until advertisements became so clever and entertaining that a performance by Michael Jackson didn’t thrill many, if you know what I mean.
Odds are the talk around the office next Monday will center on the commercials, not the game. I’d like to beg differently, that this game will be the greatest Super Bowl of all. True, Chucky Gruden, the former Raider head coach, is the man at Tampa Bay now. He’s done a tremendous job. Give him credit. I never gave Gruden much credit for winning the division while he was head Raider because the AFC West was the worst division in football at the time. This year it was the NFC West.
Just think if Gruden was coach of the Green Bay Packers. Then it could be Chucky and the Cheeseheads. Baby Jessie would enjoy that.
I bet Baby Jessie doesn’t know that the Super Bowl is all about big money. A thousand lucky (lucky?) Raider fans won a lottery for the rights to pay $400 for a game ticket, which would put them in the nosebleed seats. That’s more than I take home a week. And then there are the scalpers, who want $3,000 a ducat. Does that come with a box lunch?
It’s all supply and demand, baby. If people want to spend the dough to see the show, then so be it. For me, I’ll be content to stay at home and watch it on TV. And if the game doesn’t do the trick, then maybe PepsiCola will.
As for Baby Jessie, he’d prefer a Gerber ad.
