Brilliant - NCAA's 'Going Pro'

You may criticize the NCAA for taking advantage of their student athletes. While the league is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars year after year, it doesn't even allow its athletes a free meal. But that's another story.

What they have done right for many years, however, is their advertising. Year after year after year. There is a consistent message. Actually, it is exactly the same message. The only thing that changes is the creative execution that keeps it fresh, keeps it contemporary. The commercial above actually ran last year, but it doesn't matter, as you will see many versions on tv this year that all play the same tune.

"There are over 400,000 student athletes, and just about all of us will be going pro in something other than sports."

Wow! Speaking of strong messages. It cannot get any more powerful than this one. While the rest of the sports media focuses on the very few, lucky ones that get drafted by the NFL or the NBA every year, and hundreds of sports writers try to top each other with their draft, and pre-draft, and pre-pre draft predictions, the NCAA spends money to focus on the other 399,600 athletes, reminding us that there are more important things in life than signing a multimillion dollar pro-sports contract. That's a powerful message. I hope the NCAA will keep it this way. Forever.

After all, imagine you're a rookie on a NFL team, your knee gets shattered in the first game of the season, and you end up with a doctor such as the one in the Sprint commercial reviewed yesterday. Better to get a degree, and a real job, no?