Have You Seen This Oh-So-“Nostalgic” ESPN Commercial?

Because it’s good.  Really good.  And has all the trappings of nostalgia.

Faux nostalgia, when done right, is awesome nostalgia.  If it was made in the 2000s (and beyond, but manages to have the right look and feel, it is worth getting excited about.

When I worked at a golf course/semi-private country club in the mid-2000s (I worked there from 2006 until 2010), I spent two of the seasons I was there in the club’s pro shop, subjected to far more ESPN than I would like.  That means probably hundreds of hours of Sportscenter, which is more than any perfectly sane person can handle.

Let’s just say that once you’ve seen an hour of Sportscenter, you’ve seen enough.

However, in all of those hours of watching ESPN (especially during the day, since I usually worked until early evening), there was one gem spotted among the rough of between eight and twelve hours of ESPN watching.

The “gem” was a commercial from 2008, and my co-worker (equally sick of ESPN) and I both spotted it on a Saturday afternoon while straightening up the shop.  It honestly should not have been that exciting, since it was a commercial for an upcoming bowling championship.  But it was, if only for the subject of the commercial.

Pure nostalgic feels.

In a total throwback to ABC’s Wide World of Sports, professional bowler Sean Rash channels his inner 1985 in the most glorious way possible…sporting an epic mullet wig, along with multiple animal prints.

And if you think gloriously over-crimped blonde mullet wigs are epic, wait till you see him bowl the heck out of the tenth frame!

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Air guitar, rock star bowling clothes, the old-school ABC chyrons and film quality – I would have thought ESPN was airing an old episode of The Wide World of  Sports (which was a Saturday afternoon staple for so many years). In reality, the commercial was actually promoting the Lake County Indiana Golden Anniversary Championship, in its fiftieth year as part of the Professional Bowlers Association Tour, held November 4-9, 2008 in Hammond, Indiana.

The bowler featured in the commercial, Sean Rash, had gone professional only three years prior to this commercial (he was twenty-six years old at the time), but had been bowling since his time on the Junior USA Team beginning, in 1998.  The previous tour year (2007-2008), he was a titleholder at USBC Masters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  He clearly has a great sense of humor to put his all into making this commercial hilarious.

As for this televised tournament, Rash didn’t win any honors that day, or any other major titles that bowling season, but he did win the honor of appearing in the greatest commercial featuring bowling.

And that’s a win for me, after all those hours of watching ESPN.