It may come as a shock to you that New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski has never been featured on one of ESPN’s “This Is SportsCenter” commercials, but one of the most marketable athletes in American sports has finally had his moment. Unfortunately, that moment comes in one of the dullest commercials in the series’ illustrious history, wherein Gronk simply shows off his gigantic Super Bowl ring to Kenny Mayne, Neil Everett and Stan Verrett.
It’s kind of a clever play on a woman showing off a new engagement ring to her coworkers, who say all the right things to her face but talk trash the second she’s out of earshot. In Gronk’s case, that sort of sycophancy is a little more earned, considering that he’s a gigantic, incredibly strong (though good-natured) man with a ludicrously oversized ring. Coworkers would never want to get on his bad side, but would probably have a joke or two about it once Gronk’s out of the room.
This one isn’t quite to the level of Yasiel Puig’s recent debut on the SportsCenter commercial circuit, and it’s not even close to the concept’s absurd peak in the mid-to-late ’90s, but it’s still better than 99 percent of all other commercials on TV.
