NFL.com is Emo

About six weeks ago, I DVR'd a Morrissey Concert on HDNet. It was "Morrissey: Who Put the 'M' in Manchester?" and it was recorded on his birthday in 2004. I recorded because I know the Professor is a big Morrissey fan. Okay, after spending my high school career sneering at the kids in the Theatre Department who wore leather jackets and pompadours, I've grown up and become a fan myself.

What I didn't expect is that my daughter Lily would become obsessed with him. She watched the concert one day, and it's her favorite. Morrissey is her favorite. Her favorite song is "The Headmaster Ritual," which she calls "I don't want to go home, I just want to stay," as in, "Daddy, I want to hear my favorite, 'I don't want to go home, I just want to stay." It's a pretty morbid favorite song for a girl who just turned 3 last week. It's also kind of cool, because everyone else I know with a 3 year-old is still listening to Raffi.

Anyway, so we're watching Sunday Countdown on ESPN, and they show that new NFL.com commercial that has somebody else (Seal?) singing "Every Day is Like Sunday." And Lily heard it and was like "WHO'S THAT!?" because she knows that song and it wasn't Morrissey singing it. It's easily the 2nd stupidest song ever used in a commercial after Wrangler used "Fortunate Son" in a jeans commercial.

Just like the Wrangler ad cut off the lyrics from "Fortunate Son" just after "...born to wave the red white and blue," leaving out "But when the band plays 'Hail to the Chief,'/ they point the cannon at you," the NFL.com spot leaves out all the stuff where Morrissey is begging for Armageddon and nuclear bombs to destroy the seaside town, leaving just "Every day is like Sunday."

Although, not to go all Dave Zirin here, but the "armageddon" and "nuclear bomb" references are not that out of place in the context of the NFL, with all the football-as-war metaphors, and the Air Force and Navy Jets buzzing the stadiums after the National Anthem. But "every day is silent and gray?" Not so much, unless, as the Professor helpfully points out, you live in Los Angeles, as Morrissey does, where there is no NFL team. In terms of NFL Football, every day is indeed silent and gray.

I always wonder who proposes these songs to the guys in charge of marketing at these companies. And looking at the choices, you'd think that corporate executives have never listened to the goddam radio in their lives.