SportsThe FIFA World Cup is the planet’s most beloved sporting event. The 2014 edition is taking place in Brazil as we speak, and tons of international companies are eager to cash in on all the excitement. Here are just a few of the kooky World Cup-related ads that have been airing around the globe in recent weeks.
Hooray for exciting, world-class soccer! Boo for vuvuzelas and overspending!
Mansions, fancy cars, and a stake in a pro sports franchise—the spoils of wealth! Here are a few sports teams co-owned by famous people.
Weird stuff that doesn’t happen everyday in basketball.
The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls finished with a record of 72-10 (and in the playoffs, they went 15-3 and won the championship).
Two football players whose careers and lives were forever altered by injury…who still got to be part of the NFL, at least symbolically.
It’s champing at the bit, not chomping at the bit. This phrase (or idiom) comes from the sport of kings: horse racing. A bit is part of the apparatus that goes in the horse’s mouth and connects to the bridle and reins so the horse can be controlled and directed by the jockey on its back. The bit fits into a toothless ridge of the horse’s mouth, so the horse never really bites the bit.
Some quick facts about the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Who can’t play for the World Cup this summer? Teams from non-sovereign nations, displaced peoples, dependencies, and tiny countries. They’ve got their own tournament.
Joby Ogwyn is a just a normal guy…who enjoys extreme skydiving and speed-mountain climbing. This May, he plans to jump off the top of Mt. Everest and fly to the ground in a specially-designed nylon wingsuit.
Those weird side-by-side toilets in Sochi aren’t the only convergence of bathroom news and winter sports to make headlines. In Arizona, you can ski on snow made from pee.
Europe’s attention is currently focused on snowboarding, figure skating, and other Olympic events. Typically the continent’s sports fervor, and airwaves, are devoted to some much goofier competitions.
Do remarkable sports achievements exist in a vacuum?
The Bills are the only team to ever make it to four consecutive Super Bowls. However, that achievement is overshadowed by the fact that the Bills also lost all four of those Super Bowls.
Prepare for the opening ceremonies this Friday, with some fascinating facts about the Winter Olympics. Have an ice day.
• The 2014 games are officially known as the XXII Olympic Winter Games. It’s the 22nd edition. The first took place in Chamonix, France, in 1924, just 28 years after the first modern-day Summer Olympics took place in Athens in 1896.
You’d better not be bashful if you’re planning to attend the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Going to the bathroom will practically be a team event in and of itself.
Recently, BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg took a tour of The Laura Cross-Country Ski and Biathlon Center, one of the venues that will be used during this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. He went to use the men’s room and was surprised by what he found inside. In addition to a sink and a paper towel dispenser, not unlike the ones you’d find in any of a million restrooms around the world, Rosenberg discovered two potties sitting side-by-side.
After spending six hours on the pregame, the game, and the postgame, what’s the best way to unwind after a long day of watching TV? Watching more TV!
• In the early years of the Super Bowl, the game was played and broadcast earlier in the day, not in primetime. Nor was it the TV event or near-holiday it is today. Now the game coverage ends around 10:30 p.m. eastern time, and subsequently earlier in the western time zones. This gives the network airing it (it rotates among the Big 4 broadcast channels each year) an ample opportunity to present a new show or expose an existing show to a potentially huge audience. The concept began in earnest in 1984, when NBC used its post-Super Bowl advantage to help launch The A-Team.
More than 40 years after the first Super Bowl broadcast, the halftime show is no longer just something to fill TV airtime while the football players rest—it’s now a spectacle unto itself.
1967: Marching bands from the universities of Arizona and Michigan perform.
1970: The NFL experiments with big-name celebrity halftime entertainers. Their first big star: Carol Channing.
1972: “A Salute to Louis Armstrong,” with Ella Fitzgerald, Al Hirt, the U.S. Marine Corps Drill Team…and Carol Channing. Armstrong had died the previous summer. Songs included “High Society” and “Hello, Dolly.”
Admit it: You only watch the game for the ads. Here are some facts about Super Bowl commercials.
• Since 1989, USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter has tracked which of the game’s commercials most resonated with viewers. Once done with focus groups during the game, voting is now conducted online in real time. Some past winners include Diet Pepsi’s 1991 commercial with Ray Charles singing “You Got the Right One Baby,” and a 1992 Nike ad in which Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny play a basketball game on Mars against Marvin the Martian (which directly inspired the 1996 movie Space Jam). From 1999 to 2008, a commercial for Budweiser of Bud Light took the Ad meter honors.
The 2014 Winter Olympics are just around the corner. They’re sure to offer plenty of triumphs, but for every Brian Boitano, there’s a Tonya Harding. Here are some other spectacular Olympic duds.
