There aren’t many people quite like Bo Jackson. This doesn’t necessarily have anything to do about the athletic abilities he displayed during his time playing in MLB and the NFL, although Jackson’s exploits on two different types of field had him go from a freak athlete to a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.
No, there aren’t many people quite like Jackson because it’s exceedingly rare that an athlete can find a way to transcend the sport — or, in his case, sports — that they play. Jackson wasn’t just a baseball player or a football player, he was Bo, a cultural phenomenon who was at the center of ad campaigns, posters, and a sense of wonder that only a handful of athletes can inspire over the course of his career.
It’s the type of thing that has made Jackson a superstar even though he hang up his football cleats in 1990 and his baseball cleats four years later. It’s also why you can expect to see Jackson on Sunday, as Sprint tabbed him for their upcoming Super Bowl ad, one which plays off of his sports career.
“The ad was super, I have never held a mermaid before,” Jackson told Uproxx Sports with a laugh.
Jackson has been in a countless number of advertisements over his career. Still, in Jackson’s eyes, there’s something special about getting to appear in a commercial that airs on Super Bowl Sunday, one of the few sporting events that brings people across the globe together to sit in front of their televisions and share the collective experience of enjoying a football game.
“I can remember back almost back in the early 2000s, I was in the Middle East and the Super Bowl aired there live on the military base at 2:30 A.M.,” Jackson recalls. “I’m watching the Super Bowl with the troops before Desert Storm. Yes, everybody that’s familiar with American football will be watching this game. Hundreds of millions of people, so to have a commercial run when you’ve got the largest audience on the planet watching, that’s saying something.”
It’s been a while since Jackson has gotten a Super Bowl ad — while he’s been in a few, he doesn’t quite recall the last time he was in a commercial for the biggest game in all of football. He does, however, have a game plan for when he shows up on the screen during his 30-second spot.
Since he’s been a bit of an advertising icon over his time in the spotlight, Jackson knows that the best thing to do in the immediate aftermath of a commercial making its debut is to tune everything out.
“One thing about me, and it’s weird, is that I’ve done tons of commercials, I’ve done a lot of TV shows, but I never watch them because as soon as it airs,” Jackson says. “I just turn my cell phone off because my cell phone will blow up, ‘Hey, I saw you on this commercial,’ or [my friends] will text me. I’ll end up turning my cell phone back on, on Monday, and I’ve got 85 texts and I missed 45 calls from buddies and friends around the country. They’re poking fun at me and they’re complimenting me.”
As for the Super Bowl itself, Jackson isn’t one to really pay too much attention — he says with a chuckle that the only thing he knows is the teams involved are the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams. In fact, while the rest of his household is watching the game, Jackson will hang out in his man cave, working with some of his hunting equipment, whether it be items related to archery or one of his shotguns that he decided to take apart and clean.
Don’t get it twisted, Jackson loves football. But when it comes to Super Bowl Sunday, he’s more of a commercials guy.
“I love the sport, that’s how I made my living,” Jackson says. “But it’s almost like you being a reporter, and you’re gonna go watch somebody interview somebody else. It’s like, you don’t want to go sit and get a bowl of chips and a beer and watch somebody do what you do for a living. It’s no fun. More than likely, I am a horrible spectator. I can’t sit and watch something that I know how to do, so what I’ll do is I’ll periodically switch the channel back to the game to see what commercials are being run, and then I’ll switch it back to something else.”
He doesn’t have a prediction for what’s going to go down, but he is happy to see football back in Los Angeles, as he played for the Raiders during their run in the city. Jackson calls it a “good thing” that the sport is back, as the city has “been without football for a long time.”
Ultimately, Jackson thinks the Rams will “put L.A. back on the map again,” and if anyone would understand how the City of Angels will be able to get behind a football team, well, Bo knows.
