NFL Video: League's New Promo Nails What Football Is All About

If you believe what you see on TV, NFL football is at its best when it is accompanied by loud, boisterous music, fancy pyrotechnics, impossibly hot women and other such things that speak to the football junkie in all of us. Those of us who fancy ourselves as such may look normal Monday through Saturday, but Sundays are a different animal.

Well, the NFL has a new TV promo out now, and it sends a message that is a little different. Gone are the raucous tones, buxom babes and fireballs, and in their place are people. Ordinary people, that is.

That promo can be seen above. And as you can see, I am not exaggerating its down-to-earthness. Halfway through the commercial, the message is clear that it's good to have football back. But at the end, there it is in plain English: "It's good to be back."

It's a pretty far departure from what we're used to, no doubt about that. The use of Josh Ritter's "Change of Time" is a big part of said departure. When I first heard the song last summer, that it would be used in an NFL commercial never crossed my mind. Truth be told, I'm not even sure the juxtaposition works on a thematic level.

But you know what, it fits. The not-so-subtle motive of this video is to get past the hype and the fanfare that we typically associate with the National Football League so we can reveal the truth: those who make the NFL what it is are regular people who just love football, not the costumed crazies that get all the screen time. In other words, exactly the kind of people that would just as soon listen to folk music as they would AC/DC.

Naturally, the question begging to be asked here is why the NFL would do this. The previous image-crafting campaign wasn't broke, so why fix it?

That's an easy one. After the four months of football-less hell that the NFL owners and players put everyone through, garden-variety NFL fans needed a shout out. The league knew all along that the zealots were going to be there when it got back, but squaring things with everyone else was an absolute must.

Even if I'm way off with my interpretation, I'm still going to doff my cap at the overall message. It's good to be back indeed. Let's play some football.

-Zachary D. Rymer