Steve Spurrier has the gift of being one of those people that wherever he goes, there he is: a brilliant, cocky, and complete slave to games (most notably football and golf.)
This is what makes him a brilliant choice for any commercial, since wherever you put him, he's still going to be himself. That's what made this weekend's nonstop loop of the Spurrier UnderArmour commercial so completely awesome. Given a wooden script fashioned from the stalest coach speak, Spurrier did what all actors do: he inimitably made it his own.
(Video captured by the Sporting Orange, in case you can't read. In which case, fuck you, Charlie, because you can't read this anyway.)
Sure, there's a whole twenty seconds of homoerotic commercial after that: drills, sweat, sprinting with parachutes, all done guys in tight Underarmour shirts wrestling over superimposed animal sounds (LYCRA FLEX ROOOOAAARRRRGGGHHH!!! They're like animals!) The ersatz Dr. Dre soundtrack doesn't help either, since you expect 50 Cent to come in mushmouthing about champagne and his sexual superiority to you at any moment.
Yet the opening performance--visual poetry. Spurrier actually drops the definite article from his greeting--"This is head ball coach."
That's owning your language. He doesn't even need "the," so far advanced is he from any other coaching specimen. Then he fiddles around the office as he talks, just as he does on the sidelines, using his environment like a true Strasbergian method actor would, fiddling with the lockers, roaming his office like a sunburnt redneck Brando.
His confidence is laid bare in the confident phrasing. In the hands of a lesser thespian, "He ran a what? Yeah, I told you he could really go..." would just come off as ad-pablum. Spurrier tranforms it into ironic sprechstimme: "yes, duh, I told you he was fast, and now my East Tennessee twang will drip with sarcasm at your shock. I know more than you will ever know about anything, and that is apparent to everyone but you, scout-dork."
And the coup de grace: his rushed variation on Eric Ogbogu's classic ad refrain, "Click, clack." Most would wait for the pause, but Spurrier elides the two into a hurried singular phrase: "mmmmclickclack." While the rough boys of the world may need to posture, Head Ball Coach (again, no "the") turns corp-speak into just another play in his verbal Fun 'N Gun, mouthing the words offhandedly into his cell phone like someone who couldn't care less.
In summary: A heroic performance of a postmodern rhetorical cowboy. Bravissimo, Head Ball Coach. Bravissimo.
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