The awesomeness I want to mention today, though, is not Mr Carlson's wit and panache (of which I believe he has loads, and all the Yanks don't know what they're missing by having adverts instead). No, what I want to mention is the sponsor's messages on the (somewhat scarcer) ad breaks in our coverage.
Thomson Sport have, for the past two seasons, sponsored the Channel 4 NFL coverage. They have created little skits to announce their sponsorship. These, it turns out, are really cool. There are three sets of them, and they go as follows:
One set features a guy watching the game on television while getting ready for a holiday. He notices that his girlfriend/wife has forgotten to pack her handbag. After hefting it a couple of times, he executes a QB drop back out into the garden. He then throws a perfectly spiralled pass with the handbag into the suitcase upstairs. So far, so ordinary.
Where it gets cool is the other two sets.
***
A middle-class professional (going by appearances) woman is riding in a cab at night. The driver eyes her in his rear view mirror. She has her pocket mirror out and is doing her make-up in it. Her make-up routine is to draw the broad black "warpaint" stripes along the cheekbones under her eyes, that we see NFL players (and some cricketers) wearing. The final piece shows her handing a paper-money note to the driver and telling him to "keep the change".
***
A young man is visiting his grandmother. She offers to make him a cup of tea, and goes into her kitchen. he notices a signed NFL football displayed on her mantelpiece. He picks it up to have a look, and then bounces it a couple of times in his hands, at which point gran takes him down in a full-on tackle. The closing piece of the skit shows her celebrating and smack-talking her "opponent".
The NFL is, sadly, a sport where I see a lot of snide remarks about female fans - to the point that a lot of male fans did not see why it was sexist calling a Q&A session dedicated to the female fans of the Green Bay Packers, "Women Say The Darndest Things"... There are plenty of other "aren't they cute?" type remarks out there, and similarly dismissive attitudes. But the Thomson Sport ads don't seem to be in that vein at all. Gran performing her tackle on her grandson shows a woman who is a serious fan, and moreover who appears to be still athletic and keeping fit in her retirement (and one might guess has a history of some sort of sporting achievement herself). The woman in the taxi is tough, confident and up-front, and knows what she's about. Her manner suggests that there is nothing incongruous about her "masculine" warpaint with her "feminine" presentation in other aspects.
It is heartening to see at least one organisation recognise that women who like sports are often as serious about them as their male counterparts, and often have the same depth of knowledge. Of course, not all women who have an interest in sports follow them with any rigour, but the same can be said of plenty of men as well. The bell curve of sports-fandom-involvement I am sure is similar. There's nothing wrong with having a paper-thin depth of knowledge about a sport and just enjoying watching it occasionally with your friends. But it can surely feel that way sometimes, the way some people act. As noted above, some guys seem to be determined to make women feel that way more than they do other men.
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