If a recently filmed promo for one Cleveland TV station's weekly Football Friday prep football review show is any indication, Northeast Ohio may be mounting a serious challenge to Texas when it comes to hardcore fans. Or, perhaps the station's anchors have completely lost their marbles.
Either way, Cleveland Fox affiliate WJW's promo for it's weekly Friday Night Touchdown program, which was first brought to Prep Rally's attention by Deadspin, is easily the most overly excited piece of prep football propaganda in recent memory, if not history in total.
The 1:20 TV spot features three old white guys and a not-at-all-old female anchor holding up cheerleader-style "T-G-I-F: letters, all while standing directly in front of awkwardly idle cheerleaders behind them who easily could have done that for them. It features 12 high school cheerleaders who are constantly overshadowed by the anchors themselves, with only eight used to form a pyramid on which the previously alluded to female reporter climbs atop. It features an pep rally-style line of reporters running through a cheerleader tunnel.
And, in a coup de grace, the Friday Night Touchdown spot includes the air sax solo to end all air sax solos, complete with Bill Clinton-style Ray Ban knockoffs, arrhythmic desk dancing and enough awkwardness to last a generation.
Finally, it features an actual Emmy award (of the local variety, certainly), which is robustly thrust in the viewer's face so that they remember which Friday night football recap show was adjudged to be Cleveland's best in 2011.
Naturally, these kind of local promos are a staple of news television, yet this one truly seemed to take the cake. On the sax solo alone it should stand atop the mighty mountain of high school football promos, yet it had so much more camp surrounding it, too.
And yet, the in-house ad actually does what it sets out to do: It gets you pretty excited about high school football. Maybe it was just the 15 seconds of bona fide highlights from the 2011 Ohio campaign. Maybe it was the cheerleader conga line. Or maybe it was that ridiculous sax solo. Whatever it was, it sure feels like it's time for football in Ohio again.
For that we can thank WJW, at least a little bit. Then we can all go back to making fun of that sax solo again.
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