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• Product placement won't hurt us

I really enjoy football Sundays. Many people I know enjoy them also, but it’s often a little different. Some chew their nails and throw things across the room when their team doesn’t play well. Others run back and forth from the TV to the computer to check their fantasy football points. I even know a guy who’s got two big screen TVs beside each other so he doesn’t miss a second of high definition action. For me, I don’t really care all that much and just enjoy watching because its relaxing. Either way though, we all get treated the same when it comes to breaks in the action. It’s not just football, but sports in general. We see lots of commercials every week, and it’s getting to the point where it seems like the same thing over and over and over and ... well, you know, over again.

If you simply go by what advertisements are on each week, it would appear most sports fans in general have at least some serious problems and that many could possibly be bordering on being completely dysfunctional. We need to drink enormous quantities of beer. We have to spray huge amounts of chocolate smelling body sprays on ourselves to make women flock to us. We have an amazing amount of trouble with our penises, both trying to make them go pee pee and also trying to keep them erect. We will also buy anything that happens to be “extreme” or is introduced to us by women with large breasts. Actually, when I think about it, most of the folks I know actually are sort of dysfunctional in those ways, but it’s still not as bad as the commercials would make it seem.

I read an article about a group called Common Sense Media that is urging television networks and the sports themselves to “clean up their acts” when it comes to all the alcohol and erectile dysfunction because we’re sending the wrong message to children who might be watching the game. “Sorry Timmy, Daddy can’t play catch with you right now. The game’s on, he’s really drunk, and he can’t maintain a chubby.” Well, we may be sending the wrong message to them, but it probably in no way means we are sending the incorrect message to them. If Common Sense Media really wanted to help out, maybe they could do a study to see if there was any correlation between all that beer and all that flaccidity.

Of course, the National Football League and Major League Baseball don’t really appear to care about all of this research being presented by Common Sense Media. I think this is probably for two reasons. One, the leagues are making insane amounts of money so what they’re doing must be working, and two, I get the impressions all the little bitchers at Common Sense Media are probably the sort of people who don’t watch sports to begin with. They mostly just like to complain about other people. Actually, complaining is their sport, it’s just that no one cares to televise it or watch it.

It’s not just them though. In May, a politician named Jim Moran introduced a bill that wanted erectile dysfunction ads to only be shown between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Apparently Jim Moran is not a huge fan of the nooner. You’d really think our country was rolling big sevens if a congressman had time to worry about such a thing. “Wow, everyone is employed. There’s no more national debt. We have a functional healthcare system. We don’t have to worry about terrorism anymore. Finally, I have time to go ahead and take up that boner issue.” It’s makes me feel super secure when our representatives are unable to prioritize. The guy probably couldn’t run a freaking lemonade stand, let alone a government.

None of the commercials they’re complaining about really bother me — at least, not any more than any commercials bother me. In fact, the erectile dysfunction commercials only confuse me. Do old people like to sit in two side-by-side bathtubs in the middle of a field and hold hands before they have intercourse? Are they really having that much sex still anyway? Most of the old guys I know just worry about their golf game and the goddamned government. I can’t imagine them popping a pill and dancing their wife around the patio every evening like they do in those commercials. I mean, good for them if they still do, but I think most of them would just as soon take a nap.

It really seems that some people out there just need to relax a little. Yeah, there are some creepy commercials on during sports, but we’re completely used to it now, so it’s fine. If the people who actually watched these sporting events were offended by any of this, I’m sure you’d see a change, but they just aren’t. They sort of like to be told of the many beer options that are out there. They want to know that there are pills that can firm them up. They want to be told about all the crappy food they could order at halftime. The way the ads are presented may be a little freaky, but the messages are probably exactly what many people would like to hear. The commercials can’t hurt us that much. Most of us get up to pee while they’re on anyway.