LOL, metaphors.

Last season, the NBA claimed that 22 of the teams had lost money, and now the league and commissioner David Stern have revealed that the majority of teams will again lose their butts in 2012. Thankfully, the result won’t be another lockout, because profits aren’t expected to increase for three more years. Well, fingers crossed anyway.

Unfortunately, there will be repercussions as the league and owners of the small and middle market teams that seem to be bleeding the most cash struggle to find the best idea on how to make some extra coin while remaining competitive. First up? Selling ad space on team jerseys. Hell, the WNBA already started, so why wouldn’t the owners put that on the agenda for next month’s meeting?

A study released last year by Horizon Media calculated that a brand logo across the middle of an NBA team’s jersey occupying 3.5 percent of the TV screen would produce $31.18 million in exposure value.

However, the study did not factor in ancillary exposure on highlights and news shows, nor did it account for any online exposure.

“Jersey ads are one of the last pieces of inventory that club marketers haven’t been able to sell, and for a local sponsor they could be a real boon, since it would give them exposure with a team at home and away,” said Michael Neuman, managing partner of Horizon’s Scout Sports and Entertainment. (Via Sporting News)

A lot of people are going to roll their eyes at this inevitable evolutionary step in sports business, but it’s really not that bad. In fact, I spoke with some league insiders who already had the prototype for the league’s first advertising deals, and the jersey really doesn’t look that bad at all…

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The McCann Ad Agency in Mumbai recently released the above ad for Shivam handloom deep sleep mattresses, which shows a sleeping Tiger Woods dreaming of a bevy of provocatively dressed white women. There’s also an unconscious cameraman, which references Tiger hitting cameraman Mark Pain in the face with a chip shot at the 2010 Ryder Cup (which also gave us this famous image).

But this isn’t the first time that Tiger’s likeness has been used in clever marketing campaigns. Last year, PETA tried to capitalize on his sex scandal with a billboard emphasizing the importance of spaying and neutering pets near his home in Windermere, Florida. While that campaign was scrapped at the request of Tiger’s lawyers, a few others, including Shivam’s mattress ad, have made their way into the mainstream.

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I’m an ass man by personal preference. Sure, you can give me your jugs and your gams and your bleach-blonde hair, but I’ll take a nice can any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. The people at K-Swiss figured this out when they sent Savannah to my door, and Nike is now on the trolley as well. This is a typical Nike ad; they’re not really selling a particular product as much as a particular attitude. And that attitude is, “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” I’m down with that.

Naturally, the bra-burners at Women Talk Sports hate it, calling it “blatantly sexist” and “shameless.” Which strikes me as hilarious, since it’s an ad (presumably) geared toward shame-stricken women.

Society likes big butts on women right now, the rates of butt injections and implants for the ass-less women among us have sky rocketed, and famous women don’t look like Calista Flockhart anymore. So Nike quickly connects the dots and creates an ad campaign meant to lure in women looking for less dramatic and less expensive ass-plumping products.

Wait a second. When did anyone ever like Calista Flockhart?

That is why Nike says next to that juicy bubble butt-having model, “10 thousand lunges have made it rounder, not smaller”. Because they want women to believe getting a big ass is not something only rich, sex-tape making socialites can pay for or something most of us are born with.

I don’t see how saying, “We like junk in the trunk” is loaded with any sort of oppressive undertones. But what do I know. I have a penis. UPDATE: Like I said, I know nothing. It’s a fake ad. That ass, however, is real enough for me. Thanks, Kyle, for the heads-up.

This is related to sports only tangentially, but anyone who has watched a single football game this year has certainly been inundated with, then grown tired of, then enraged by Toyota’s “Saved by Zero” commercial.  Esquire.com’s Peter Schrager was one of the first to delve in-depth into the irritating phenomenon, and now the AP is even picking up on the widespread loathing for the ad.

There’s a lot of info in the article (with good news like we’ll be seeing it again this weekend), but I just wanted to share this one quote from Toyota marketing spokesman Joe Tetherow.

“I think the fact that it’s being talked about is good, because the message is out there,” Tetherow said. “The [car dealerships] like the program, and customers do too.”

Joe Tetherow.  I’m going to remember that name.  That way, if I ever meet Joe, I can crush his windpipe and smash his orbital bones until his eyes have been reduced to a useless goo.

And guess what, Toyota?  I will never buy one of your cars.  Ever.  Because of this one ad.  I now hate your company, and the only way I might ever re-consider that position is if everyone in your marketing department died in a fire at the office holiday party, leaving their families to grieve through that Christmas and remember it bitterly the rest of their lives.  So tell me again, Joe, is it good people are talking about your ad?

A Chinese company called Elasun has rolled out these clever Olympic-inspired ads that combine the little sporty stick figures of the Olympics with condoms and the ill-translated phrase "Sports make you health".  I like them.  They imply that sex is a sport, or that sex is everywhere we look, or maybe that the Olympics are just all about fucking.  I dunno, I didn't really think all that hard about it.

The Sydney Morning Herald Olympics blog has the rest of the ads, plus this nugget of information:

Speaking of prophylactics, Reuters reports that the phrase "avoiding pregnancy" has become a euphemistic way of saying that you're going to avoid the Olympics. In Chinese, "bi-yun", means contraception. "Ao-yun" means the Olympics. So bi-yun in the context of the Games is a sort of double entendre meaning avoiding the Games.

Now if they can just tell me the double entendre for avoiding the clap at the Olympics, I'll be all set.  I'm guessing it has something to do with the Mandarin word for "Vietnamese hooker."

[The Sporting Blog]