Last August, we were introduced to a 12-year old boy named Nathan, who had already fulfilled the dream of most professional athletes by appearing in his very own Nike commercial. However, the theme of the commercial brought the guy a little more attention than he had expected, because he hadn’t taken into account that people on the Internet will fight about anything. Politics? Fight. Kate Upton? Fight. The Doritos Loco taco is better than the Volcano taco? You bet your ass that’s a fight.
The fight around Nathan, though, had several faces, including those who thought that Nike was simply exploiting an overweight boy for its “Find Your Greatness” campaign, those who think Nathan’s story was inspiring and wanted to encourage him, and those who just have really tiny penises and wanted to prove it by calling a kid fat. So how did this all play out for Nathan? Let’s check in with London, Ohio’s most famous son.
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Nathan stopped by the Today Show yesterday to talk about the fact that the both the positive and negative attention from the Nike ad inspired him to work his ass off to make a change, and he revealed that he’s lost 32-pounds since then.
“I would never have changed my lifestyle if I was never in this commercial,” Nathan Sorrell told TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie on Thursday. “That’s not the only reason, but that really did help.”
Nathan started working with a personal trainer and a nutritionist after shooting the commercial, which has been viewed more than 1.6 million times on YouTube. Although most people found the ad inspirational, some criticized the spot as exploitative. The ad exposed Nathan and his family to criticism, but he took it in stride.
The only way this story could be any better is if Nathan asked Kate Upton on a date on live national TV and she said yes. It would have been great for NBC, too, because they could have tied it into Dateline.
