I should have known better. I was, after all, twenty. But there I was, watching the 1968 Democratic National Convention when I saw professional football player Roosevelt Grier, sitting among the California delegation, knitting. I was stunned.
“OMG,” I gasped decades before the phrase had been coined. “He’s not just a jock. He has interests other than football!” Until that moment, on some level I had held onto my narrow-minded view from my high school years that athletic boys, by and large, were just jocks. But here was an All-Pro defensive tackle with an interest in politics and the traditionally female craft of knitting. That vision shattered my stereotypical view of all athletes, high school, college, and professional.
Within a few years, another football player, Joe Namath exposed his muscular legs in a Beauty Mist Pantyhose television commercial. This also exposed his sense of humor, a self-deprecating one at that. Namath did numerous other commercials, too, displaying comedy timing and the ability to read lines effectively and naturally. These were skills I did not expect from a jock. And these were skills that can be expanded to film and television acting.
Over the years, we have seen countless athletes evolve into actors: Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, ice-skating princess Sonja Henie, 1960s football great Jim Brown, Esther Williams, Mark Harmon, Fred Dryer (envisioned by Cheers producers as Sam Malone), Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), Terry Crews, and MMA star Ronda Rousey.
But TV commercials continue to be the form in which most professional athletes exhibit their acting skills. Over the decades we’ve seen O.J. Simpson, “Mean” Joe Greene, Charles Barkley, auto racer Danica Patrick, Shaquille O’Neal, and Serena Williams hawk products on television. Most have used humor, a method of humanizing themselves to the public, in their ads, but not all have.
As a Seattle Seahawk fan, I have witnessed Marshawn Lynch, who nixed post-game press conferences, leaving the impression that perhaps he was uncomfortable in front of the camera, attempt, awkwardly at first, local Seattle commercials. But, with time, he honed his craft and last year was cast in the satiric film Bottoms, about the lowest high school social caste, playing an absurd civics teacher.
My all-time favorite example of a professional athlete stepping out of their comfort zone and acting was Quarterback Joe Montana’s 1987 appearance on Saturday Night Live. In one sketch, he played the totally honest, straightforward roommate who came home and interrupted his roommate entertaining a date in the living room. After brief introductions, the girl said she hopes they won’t be bothering him. “No. You won’t,” Montana replied as he climbed the stairs. “I’ll be upstairs masturbating.”
Joe Montana said that on national television. In 1987. Self-gratification was not discussed in public forums then. It was not commonly acknowledged by men. But Joe Montana, a pro QB, the epitome of alleged masculinity, shattered norms and expectations and altered his image with four words. I howled.
The past several decades has seen a spurt in the frequency at which athletes do commercials. Perhaps because of social media, possibly because of reality television, more athletes, many still active, are doing commercials. It has become the norm.
Whoever expected Payton and Eli Manning to become the TV personalities they have become? Super Bowl champs humorously hawking anything and everything, it seems. And well done, too. Even before he retired from the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Rob Gronkowski established himself as a top-notch, and self-deprecating, product spokesperson.
We find, today, several active pro-QBs doing commercials. But none do it better, in my opinion, than Kansas City Chief Patrick Mahomes. He understands how acting is not simply about the words; it involves body language, facial expressions, and an ability to project a natural likeability. While Mahr may have many more years in the NFL, I see, and await, a post-football career in front of the camera.
Like so many other athletes, Mahomes has proven to me and the world that he is not just a jock.
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