Nike and the NFL Co-Opt One of Soccer's Great Attractions

Nike's most recent advertisement for their football related products is a stunning piece of work. I'm sure someone will post a link to YouTube in the comments (Please? It's blocked where I'm at). The ad is a stunning triumph of clever editing, CGI and other effects, and orchestration. Playing like one really long cinematic take, the ad opens with San Diego Charger Shawne Merriman leveling a ball carrier, only to promptly get up, continue running up the field, and level another. And another, and another, while the teams and weather change around him. Ultimately he levels a quarterback just after the ball is pitched to St. Louis half-back Stephen Jackson. Now the motion is reversed, and Stephen Jackson hurtles over would-be tacklers, or fights through would be defenders, spinning and dancing his way towards the end-zone where he's met by a group of five Steelers. The commercial ends with him stretching out his arms to break the plane of the goal line, and the Nike Swoosh with the slogan "LEAVE NOTHING" appears.

The ad is simply brilliant. Beautiful, stirring, inspiring, jaw-dropping... all of that. But even when I saw it for the first time, something nagged at me. And that something is this: It's a big lie.

The thing about football, which I was recently reminded of with the start of a new NFL Season, is that the actual action is ten seconds and then a break when the teams huddle up. Then five more seconds, and another break for thirty seconds. It's a choppy, awkward affair, like a poorly directed Pinter play, not the continuous fluid movement that the Nike ad gives us. The motion that the Nike ad shows is more like, well, soccer, than anything else. A football player will spring fifty yards and trot to the sidelines for oxygen. A left back will sprint fifty yards and then have to reverse directions and sprint back fifty yards to cover the counter-attack.

The clever thing Nike has done is repackage football in the tempo of soccer. And that, well, bothers me for some reason. It's not the misrepresentation, it's the feeling that one of the things that makes this sport special -- it's consistent, fluid action -- is being stolen for sport that doesn't deserve it. I like pointy-ball. It's discrete battles, it's overarching strategy, it can be fun to watch them play out. But it isn't about what Nike purports it to show. If that's the kind of action you want, watch soccer.