The Billionaire, the Billboards and the Star of the Worst Ad in Sports History (PTFO Vault)

Speaker 1 Okay, so hello, it is me, Pablo, entering, invading even your ears, because I have done something I have not done before,

Speaker 1 which is take the advice of someone who once told me that if people wish to support you financially, if they wish to support your journalism, your very strange future of journalism, meaning your newsroom, your ambitions, your desire to investigate things people don't want you to investigate, you should let them.

Speaker 1 And so I am On Substack, my newsletter at www.pablo.show. We'll put a link in the show notes of this episode.
I have turned on paid subscriptions.

Speaker 1 And if you didn't know, I have a Substack, guess what? It's free, and that's still there for you, and it's worth it.

Speaker 1 But the paid subscribers who support this show and us will get legitimately cool, personalized benefits to come. We will make it worth your while.

Speaker 1 We are figuring out here at PTFO our post-DraftKings future and, you know, more good news on that front, I hope, to come. But in the meantime, Pablo.show is where you sign up.

Speaker 1 Click the link in the show notes. Help support us, please.
Thank you, thank you, thank you on that front.

Speaker 1 And this, this episode today, is a hand-picked episode from deep inside the PTFO vault that we sincerely hope you enjoy.

Speaker 4 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find find out what this sound is.

Speaker 6 I touched it.

Speaker 6 I touched the ball before it went out, coach.

Speaker 7 Right after this ad.

Speaker 7 I have this issue when I like go out and I talk to people in real life and they're like, so what do you do?

Speaker 9 And I have to explain what my show is.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 17 I've settled upon, Zach, a summary, which is basically I use journalism to solve mysteries that are technically about sports.

Speaker 20 It's a good way to put it. It's a very good way to put it.

Speaker 20 I know, I only just recently started calling myself a like journalist because like produced some stuff and then I like did social media and made memes for people for a long time.

Speaker 24 But the real like lead of your of your bio now is Zach Schwartz, guy who is truly unparalleled in a very specific obsession about the worst commercial in the history of sports.

Speaker 20 My wife said, that's when I found out you're a real sports pervert is when you were like trying to find this guy and how obsessed you were with it. Because it was very early on in our relationship and

Speaker 20 I had to find him.

Speaker 14 I want to explain what this commercial is because it's not really selling a product, I guess.

Speaker 20 It stuck with me, the ad. Like I remember seeing it in the wild, like on television, obviously before it started going viral.

Speaker 20 It ran

Speaker 20 all the time, especially during March Madness.

Speaker 21 If you Google the term worst commercial ever in quotes on YouTube, this is right there in the first couple of results.

Speaker 4 It has over a million views on that video alone.

Speaker 24 There are many, many more.

Speaker 14 It goes viral seemingly all of the time.

Speaker 30 I feel like we should just play it.

Speaker 15 Yeah. Because

Speaker 30 this is what this, again, viral commercial

Speaker 11 sounds like.

Speaker 20 Any high school gym in America sort of looks like this.

Speaker 20 We see the scoreboard to start the game. It says 63, 65, nine seconds left.
Oh, God. We see the team in the white jerseys on a fast break, uncontested.

Speaker 20 Easy dunk.

Speaker 20 Here comes the trap. They're bringing a fresh trap quick.
Ball goes to the sideline, which is not really where you're supposed to throw it in that situation. No.

Speaker 20 We see a player white tip the ball out of bounds.

Speaker 20 The important part is the ref didn't see the ball go off the kid in a white jersey.

Speaker 20 Coach calls his timeout. I got the perfect sideline out of bounds for this.
I'm going to cook here. They all go to the huddle to get the play.

Speaker 20 The player who we think tipped the ball out, but they didn't call it on him has this very guilty look on his face.

Speaker 10 He has a, truly, this is like the dictionary definition of a hang dog look.

Speaker 18 His eyes are as big as saucers.

Speaker 10 His lip is basically quivering. He is looking up apologetic, seemingly, for what he's about to reveal.

Speaker 6 I touched it.

Speaker 6 I touched the ball before it went out, coach. Come on, Alex.
The ref did not call that. You gotta be kidding me, Alex.
It's the championship game. Talk to him, coach.

Speaker 32 I touched it. It's their ball.

Speaker 20 His teammates are furious, quite upset.

Speaker 10 A kid with acne is as mad at Alex as a person can be.

Speaker 20 That's that accutane accutane rage.

Speaker 34 How's going Alex?

Speaker 32 Sorry, coach.

Speaker 20 And the coach gives Alex the like, you know what, you do what you think is right.

Speaker 35 Alex is right.

Speaker 32 Good call.

Speaker 35 Sportsmanship.

Speaker 32 Pass it on.

Speaker 20 And we see Alex crawled over to the raft to snitch on himself. And the commercial ends with a sportsmanship pass it on message.

Speaker 28 Yeah, values.com, the foundation for a better life.

Speaker 4 It feels like a commercial about sports made by people who have never seen sports before.

Speaker 15 Yes. It's like, this is what you should do as if this is a plausible thing that anybody in that very specific circumstance would ever actually do.

Speaker 20 Totally. And like, there are so many other ways to do this ad that would be plausible.
Like someone sets a really hard ball screen at you run over and help the guy out. That's sportsmanship.

Speaker 20 No one's snitching at this level.

Speaker 20 I mean, if anything, the player is like turning to to the other guy, like, I totally tipped that to the opponent and walking off. Like, you're not telling the ref that.

Speaker 9 And just to give a sense of like the level of obsession that people have had with this specific scenario played out this way.

Speaker 13 I heard Ryan Rosillo and Bill Simmons talk about this at one point a couple of years back.

Speaker 36 And then the player looks at Coach. He's like, Coach,

Speaker 36 it was off me.

Speaker 2 And Coach is like looking at him being like, there's a real lesson.

Speaker 36 lesson here. It's a teaching moment.
And the whole team's looking at the kid.

Speaker 36 And then the kid goes up to the ref for the first time in the history of anything where he goes to the refs like, hey, it was off me. And the ref's like, all right, ball's the other way.

Speaker 37 And then it's like, that's the lesson.

Speaker 36 And I think it had to have been a religious thing.

Speaker 37 For bounty towels? Or it was for towels. Yeah.

Speaker 36 It was one of those, one of the two things.

Speaker 37 And people have been fascinated with this ad for years.

Speaker 36 You've never seen this ad.

Speaker 5 I remember it, but it was, it was, what, 10, 15 years ago?

Speaker 36 Who's to say?

Speaker 36 Scholars have argued it's timeless.

Speaker 9 TikTok captions, because it's obviously made its way over there. They include things like, quote, they definitely jumped Alex in the locker room.

Speaker 5 A lot of those.

Speaker 24 And the cultural spectrum on this extends, obviously, to like Barstool Sports, which has labeled this with a headline, quote, March of Madness commercial about sportsmanship features the biggest nerd ever.

Speaker 9 And the write-up says,

Speaker 27 Alex, Alex deserves to have all of his clothes thrown in the shower.

Speaker 7 End quote.

Speaker 3 It just recirculates because everybody is cringing and then choosing to dunk on this incredibly implausible morality play.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 20 God, yeah, Alex kind of became the lightning rod for all of it.

Speaker 4 And so, for you, when did you begin to wonder, okay, everybody keeps talking about Alex.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Who is he?

Speaker 17 When does that question first enter your mind?

Speaker 20 So, I used to host this podcast for Wave called Out of Pocket, and it was Josiah Johnson and with Jethro and Jenkins, two guys who are very good at NBA Twitter.

Speaker 20 And the whole sort of center of all this is NBA Twitter. Anyone that's spent any time on NBA Twitter knows this ad.
It basically goes viral every six months. So

Speaker 20 we were doing our show. Waved just brought in Paul George.
Paul George's show is blowing ours out of the water.

Speaker 20 And I'm like, I got to find a guest for our show that Paul George could never get for his.

Speaker 20 So I was like, what's the most viral basketball thing that people would be like, oh my God, you found that guy?

Speaker 20 And it was Alex.

Speaker 7 It became pretty clear as soon as I started looking into this myself that Alex was not eager to be discovered.

Speaker 20 That's where the journey sort of started. I was like, I'm going to do it for a season finale episode.
I think I had three weeks. Like, I'll find him.
That's so much time.

Speaker 20 It took a lot longer than three weeks. It took, I think, like two and a half years basically to find him.

Speaker 19 How did you start your quest to find Alex?

Speaker 20 So, first it was reverse image searching his face and seeing if I could find anything off of that.

Speaker 20 Because I was like, hey, like maybe the reason no one's done this video or found him is because they weren't using the modern tools that we have today. Didn't work.

Speaker 20 So then for those that don't know, IMDB is a database where you can look up actors for movies. They have something similar for actors in commercials.
So I was like, okay, I'll use that. Nothing.

Speaker 20 Couldn't find anything there. I started reaching out to friends of mine that directed commercials in LA.
Like, hey, is there a database or a casting director you could put me in touch with?

Speaker 20 And they kind of were like, from an ad that long ago, no one I know would work on it. And so, okay, let's see if the charity can help.

Speaker 38 So this charity, this foundation, which again, in the commercial, it's flashed on screen at the very end, the foundation for a better life at values.com.

Speaker 20 Values.com. Yeah.

Speaker 18 When you start to look into this website, what do you begin to see?

Speaker 20 There's just not enough information out there about the foundation. There's no interviews or articles.
And

Speaker 20 it kind of triggered this sort of siren in my head: like something weird is happening here because no one talks.

Speaker 20 No one's ever written a profile about the foundation or what they do.

Speaker 20 The website, for the most part, looks like it was designed in 2011 and just left.

Speaker 19 The text on the website, Zach,

Speaker 15 it's so anodyne.

Speaker 15 I'll read it off of the site right now.

Speaker 17 They say, quote, we choose values we hope most individuals would find encouraging and relevant.

Speaker 42 Then we provide an uplifting message based on each value in an effort to encourage people to bring out the best in themselves.

Speaker 21 And they go on, as a non-partisan, non-sectarian organization, we carefully design our public service messages to have general, universal appeal.

Speaker 19 And then they say, The foundation's small staff works with a network of writers, art directors, and production professionals.

Speaker 43 And none of that is very helpful.

Speaker 16 No, none of that is like giving us an actual detail as to like, so what do you guys do here?

Speaker 20 And so,

Speaker 20 you know, I called them.

Speaker 20 It's one of those calls where you put on like the nicest voice

Speaker 20 hi um my name is zach and i have an obsession with this really famous ad that you guys made from a long long time ago this ad that i definitely haven't made fun of online with millions upon millions of people exactly like me and i was like can you please just help me locate the actor the secretary was very kind i would love to help you and like what a neat project you know unfortunately, I can't release any names.

Speaker 20 You basically have to write the CEO and get his consent and he'll release the information to you. So then I emailed the CEO and he was really

Speaker 20 dismissive. I read his message.
He's very like, I'm not releasing the name to you. Sorry, go away.
And that made me more mad. Oh, yeah.
So then I'm like, what is this foundation?

Speaker 20 Why are you being secretive? Why are you trying to hide who this person is? So I, I did the next logical thing and I pulled like 13 years' worth of their tax records.

Speaker 8 So, in the limited research that I have done compared to your mountain of deep diving, Zach, the first thing you realize when you research the foundation for a better life on YouTube is that Alex is not alone.

Speaker 9 Because apparently, there is a whole catalog of commercials beyond simply the story of Alex and sportsmanship that are about stuff like not shoplifting CDs.

Speaker 10 This one's titled Do the Right Thing.

Speaker 32 Come on, man.

Speaker 44 Just do it quick. No one's watching.

Speaker 20 The other one, too.

Speaker 39 And then there's also this one that I wanted to play for everybody because it's called Umpire.

Speaker 32 My father was a great hitter, but he knew that life was about more than just one game.

Speaker 9 It's like a sepia-toned,

Speaker 29 almost old-timey baseball kind of aspect here.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 20 he was so safe.

Speaker 7 The umpire has called a man out who was safe by a zillion miles.

Speaker 32 So when that umpire made a bad call that ended the game for dad

Speaker 32 and then needed help with his car. My father made the right call.

Speaker 32 Helping others, the right choice.

Speaker 33 Pass it on.

Speaker 32 A message from the foundation for a better life.

Speaker 18 And so who is the person behind these ads, Zach?

Speaker 9 Who is the person that the secretary and the CEO, unhelpfully in the end, would not connect you to?

Speaker 20 His name is Philip Anschus.

Speaker 20 He is a billionaire, and he's been a billionaire for a very long time.

Speaker 34 Forbes magazine has their list of the wealthiest Americans and four of the Coloradans make the top 400. They got money.

Speaker 34 Number one is a surprise, Philip Anschutz, the wealthiest person in our state with a net worth of $16.9 billion.

Speaker 34 That makes him 45th for the USA.

Speaker 11 Only. Only.

Speaker 20 CNN called him the richest American you've never heard of.

Speaker 20 Fortune also called him the greediest executive.

Speaker 20 He started running his dad's oil business at the age of 20, made his money drilling, fracking, also ran Union Pacific Railroad.

Speaker 46 As an adult, I've spent my business career

Speaker 46 working on companies and in industries that have always been firmly rooted in the West, often companies that are quite historic in nature.

Speaker 20 And then, you know, things that maybe are more in our lives than oil and railroads is that he owns AEG, the Angelouse Entertainment Group who does Coachella. They own Crypto.com Arena.

Speaker 20 And he's also managed to kind of scoop up a few different sports teams,

Speaker 20 LA Kings, LA Galaxy. And then he's financed movies, Chronicles of Narnia.
He did the movie Array.

Speaker 20 Like he's kind of everywhere, but you have no idea that he's there because he is truly one of the most like behind the scenes billionaires ever.

Speaker 43 He has his name on the championship trophy in Major League Soccer.

Speaker 23 And yet I have never, until talking to you for this episode, thought, who the f ⁇ is that guy?

Speaker 20 I found it very interesting that this person who has Coachella.

Speaker 20 which is about as godless of a place as you can go legally,

Speaker 20 also pushes these very conservative god forward church forward messages raise me up

Speaker 20 to more

Speaker 20 than i

Speaker 20 can

Speaker 20 be

Speaker 20 and so that was very interesting kind of as i dove deeper and deeper and found out about the different groups that he was kind of financing and funding and some of the initiatives that they were behind yes so just to tick off some of them here the federalist society which is a very famous, historic, at this point, conservative and libertarian legal organization, he's a big donor to them, it turns out.

Speaker 9 The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank, Anschutz is also a big donor to them.

Speaker 13 He also appears in New York Times headlines, such as, quote, Neil Gorsuch has web of ties to secretive billionaire.

Speaker 9 The billionaire being Philip Anschutz. Neil Gorsuch, aforementioned, being the Supreme Court justice now.

Speaker 9 This goes back to the 2000s, I guess, when Anschutz and his companies hired said future Supreme Court justice as their outside counsel.

Speaker 15 He is simply, Zach, one of the most conservative owners in all of sports.

Speaker 10 He's given to Republican candidates.

Speaker 20 And Schutz has reportedly, you know, funded anti-gay ballot measures, anti-union, anti-weed, anti-science. I mean, there's a lot of things that he's done over these years.

Speaker 20 And you're kind of like, okay, so the foundation for a better life is sort of just like the. diet version of those messages, if you will.

Speaker 20 Like he's sort of like stripped off all the nasty parts that he's doing over on the the side there.

Speaker 4 The part that I do need to say, I guess for legal reasons, is that Philip Anjutz is the type of guy also who does not grant interviews.

Speaker 10 The New Yorker, by the way, has reported previously that he does not even use a cell phone or email, but he also declared that reports about his donations to homophobic political organizations were, quote, fake news and garbage.

Speaker 9 And he indicated that he stopped funding said groups, which to his apparent surprise, did support such causes.

Speaker 3 But as much as he is trying to not actually be heard in public, public, we did find a bit of rare video of this man.

Speaker 29 This is at the 84th annual U.S.

Speaker 10 Conference of Mayors.

Speaker 13 It was 2016, and it's a translator who is translating for the Dalai Lama.

Speaker 3 And next to them is Lady Gaga.

Speaker 15 Here is Philip Anschutz

Speaker 41 actually speaking out loud.

Speaker 46 You have the leader of one of the world's great religions,

Speaker 46 you have a world-class entertainer,

Speaker 46 and then you have this obscure business guy.

Speaker 46 And

Speaker 46 it's unlikely that

Speaker 46 we're discussing kindness, of all things. Not a very precise term.

Speaker 3 So, if you're wondering how rich Philip Anschutz is, he has the kind of money where Lady Gaga and the Dalai Lama are just chilling on stage, listening to him talk about sportsmanship or whatever.

Speaker 46 Things like fairness, trust, learning, perseverance, love, patience, optimism, humility,

Speaker 46 confidence, civility.

Speaker 46 These are universal values that transcend

Speaker 46 race and religion and politics.

Speaker 20 I like that he had to go into his code to take out the values that he wanted to specifically name. Like, brother, you can't just name like loyalty, sportsmanship, honesty, respect off the top.

Speaker 20 Like, you had to go to the note.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 48 But all of it is to say that, yeah, like the diet religiosity of this meant for broad appeal, it feels like a motivational college dorm room poster.

Speaker 30 Like that's what this whole thing is.

Speaker 20 All the ads read very much like the poster where the cat is like hanging from the tree and it's like hanging in there. All the ads kind of read like that.

Speaker 14 This whole operation that Ann Schutz has funded, it seems like their mission, if nothing else, is to be as omnipresent as they can be.

Speaker 20 Yeah, it's it's billboards radio ads tv ads the billboards were really mocking me and seeing them everywhere seeing them on santa monica boulevard near the 405 it sort of led me on my spiral where i felt like gyllenhaul in zodiac where it's just like this thing is sort of taking over my life to a degree that it really shouldn't there's this wonderful one that shaq is a part of he's holding a basketball wearing a cap and gown and it looks like he loves civility yeah i mean it says perseverance he's holding a basketball like he got his doctorate's degree in basketball, which he did do.

Speaker 16 But in your defense, just psychologically speaking, the foundation did release the following statistic.

Speaker 21 The campaign has apparently aired in more than 200 countries.

Speaker 16 Nielsen says that the ads at one point had more than 10 million impressions each day on U.S.

Speaker 19 network television.

Speaker 43 And then Kern Affairs magazine estimated that there were once as many as 10,000 billboards, Zach, across the United States.

Speaker 14 Apparently, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, it is the most widespread and successful PSA billboard campaign in United States history.

Speaker 20 They're everywhere. And

Speaker 20 the reach for these campaigns is so impressive. And I reached out to a friend of mine that worked in advertising, actually for Viacom for a long time.
He did, you know, TV ad sales.

Speaker 20 The way he kind of broke it down for me is that like, you know, we talk about the Alex ad running during March Madness.

Speaker 20 Well, those spots for March Madness could be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so he kind of gave me a wide range of what they could be.
Like, you know, it's something like

Speaker 20 late at night could be in the

Speaker 20 tens of thousands of dollars to, you know, a March Madness spot that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. So these spots are obviously very valuable.
They're running all the time.

Speaker 20 Because the foundation doesn't have some huge operating budget to go out and buy ad times, I was trying to figure out how they're getting these ads on billboards or on TV.

Speaker 20 And the way it works is if you as a network have ad inventory, you could take that and donate it to them and write off on your taxes and basically say, hey, that inventory that I gave away was worth a million dollars, a hundred thousand dollars, a couple million dollars.

Speaker 20 Good on me, pat on the back. I did my thing.
I'm writing that off on my taxes as a network saying, I made this wonderful charitable donation.

Speaker 20 And so that's sort of what this foundation has become is that it's sort of a way for people to write off, hey, I did this wonderful deed without having to do research or find charities

Speaker 20 to actually go approach.

Speaker 19 Somehow, tax write-offs on a big poster underneath a kitten, not as inspirational.

Speaker 20 And I think part of it that frustrated me was that while I understand the messages and it's important to teach people about perseverance or honesty or being truthful, we are a pro-perseverance podcast.

Speaker 20 Yes. For the record.
It's important. And I'm not saying it isn't, but isn't, shouldn't that be going to like a foundation that's trying to help get people clean water?

Speaker 20 Or like, there are just so many things out there that are bigger issues in my mind than, you know, hey, I'm really happy Shaq got his degree in perseverance,

Speaker 20 but I need more.

Speaker 1 So this is where I should jump in to say that Philip Anschutz's company, the Anschutz Anschutz Corporation, did decline our request here at Pablator, I find out, for an interview with the 45th richest man in the world himself.

Speaker 1 And that the executive director of the Anschutz Foundation also didn't respond to messages that we left at a phone number and also an email address that were provided by the Anschutz Corporation.

Speaker 1 Also, for the record, neither the Foundation for a Better Life nor its president, the guy who runs the nonprofit behind all of those pass it on ads for sportsmanship and love and learning and so forth, responded to our multiple requests for comment, which also included a detailed list of our questions.

Speaker 1 But what we found out thanks to the years of tax returns that Zach Schwartz had pulled is that these organizations are all, in fact, intertwined and saving seven figures via tax deductions in the process.

Speaker 1 In 2021, for instance, the Anschutz Foundation gave a $2.4 million grant for general operating support to the Foundation for a Better Life, whose tax returns that same year listed nearly $2 million in production costs for TV commercials, billboards, and other ads under the heading of direct charitable activities, and even more specifically, the promotion of quote quality values for all individuals, regardless of their race or religion.

Speaker 1 It's a line which may now sound familiar.

Speaker 46 These are universal values that transcends

Speaker 46 race and religion and politics and nature.

Speaker 1 All of which is to say that the other thing being passed on here beyond these values is tax benefits.

Speaker 1 Because yes, also the networks and the billboard companies that broadcast these ads, they also get to deduct the quote fair market value of that ad slot from their taxes.

Speaker 1 But what all of this paperwork and uncovering all of this accounting really did for us was something even more important for the purposes of this episode.

Speaker 1 Remember, months earlier, Zach had started this whole quest by calling up an ultimately unhelpful secretary. And now he had these documents.

Speaker 1 Documents with all of these details that wound up pushing Zach in what felt like a new direction in his search for the whole reason he was here in the first place.

Speaker 1 Alex.

Speaker 20 So I've got their tax returns in front of me and it's their production company names on some of these tax returns that they've filed. And my

Speaker 20 process was take the name on the tax return, put it into LinkedIn, take the name on the tax return, put it into Instagram.

Speaker 20 And in doing that, I found two former employees and just DM'd both of them and was like, hey, guys.

Speaker 20 Very odd question here, but I'm trying to find this person. Can you help me? And

Speaker 20 one of them got back to me and said, I'd love to help. I wasn't working on that ad campaign or I wasn't there at that time, but I know someone who can help.
They've been there for forever.

Speaker 20 I'd love to connect you.

Speaker 20 You know, give me your email. So I get in an email thread with them and they sent me right back to the original secretary.

Speaker 20 So, and at that point, I was sort of embarrassed because I was like, this secretary definitely thinks I'm a weirdo.

Speaker 20 So it was very much back to square one, huge bummer, like really thought I was moving in the right direction.

Speaker 20 At that particular moment i was like okay i have to go to twitter and ask them for help for this because i need some sort of closure on this and part of me not wanting to tweet it was because i was worried someone else would beat me to the story to be very fair to you it is absolutely a journalist's last resort when they are beating their head against the wall and are like fine what does the internet have for me It yeah, it killed me because I was like, all right, I'll wave the white flag.

Speaker 22 You remember getting that message and being like,

Speaker 48 how did I not have this story idea already?

Speaker 20 So I put out there, okay, this is an odd request, but can anyone on here help me find this actor from the famous sportsmanship basketball ad?

Speaker 20 And 29 minutes later, a motion graphic designer for the Las Vegas Golden Knights replied and said, might be former player, now current assistant coach at the University of Denver named BJ Porter.

Speaker 20 And I mean, like, like my hands were shaking when I got that one.

Speaker 20 I go to the Denver page and I'm looking and I'm like, looks a lot like him, you know, 15, 20 years older.

Speaker 11 And I'm like, that might be him.

Speaker 20 And then I go and I click on his Twitter and he was following me already. He'd been following me the entire time.

Speaker 13 The answer was actually following you while you were searching for him.

Speaker 20 And the best part, I reached out and he agreed to meet up.

Speaker 18 By the way, that is Perseverance.

Speaker 13 This was a thrill, Zach.

Speaker 43 I don't know.

Speaker 33 It was kind of like the opposite of an episode of Catfish, I guess, on MTV, where it's actually like, hey, this person is who they say they were.

Speaker 31 But the genuine thrill I felt from putting you and BJ Porter, aka former assistant men's basketball coach at the University of Denver and current athletic director at a private school in Orange County, California, putting you and BJ Porter slash Alex in the same room at a podcast studio in LA where you guys finally got to meet each other in person.

Speaker 9 What was the moment like when he walked in the door?

Speaker 20 I was so happy to finally get to meet him.

Speaker 13 And levels are all good on our.

Speaker 11 Great.

Speaker 20 He's 35 now. He's got a bit of scruff.
You know, maybe you may not necessarily recognize him initially as Alex, but like, got a big, bright smile, like, truly

Speaker 20 one of the nicest people you will ever meet.

Speaker 51 Oh, what I want people to know about me.

Speaker 52 Um,

Speaker 50 I'm a chill, simple guy.

Speaker 52 Yeah. You know,

Speaker 20 his best friend and best man in his wedding was a guy that I worked with at Arizona State.

Speaker 11 Wait, what?

Speaker 7 This is, this is, this is now a little creepy, Zach.

Speaker 14 Did he know you? Had you ever actually met him before in real life?

Speaker 20 We hadn't met, but we had been in the same room a couple of times. So he played basketball at Portland with my friend Luke Sigma.

Speaker 16 This is of the basketball playing Sigmas.

Speaker 20 Yes, Jack Sigma's son.

Speaker 12 Amazing.

Speaker 20 So when Portland would come to LA and play Pepperdine or LMU in their set schedule, my whole family would go to the game. So

Speaker 20 I was in the stands. BJ was on this team, and I had no idea.

Speaker 11 Oh,

Speaker 30 Wally throws down the ooh to BJ Porter. Thanks, man.

Speaker 20 This is, you know, this is in January of 09. So like memory is a little foggy.
This is before I went to Arizona State, which Lord knows did some damage to my brain.

Speaker 10 But as for the question of how this basketball player becomes

Speaker 41 the basketball player that we became obsessed with, how he becomes Alex, how did BJ Porter get the worst role in the history of sports commercials?

Speaker 20 He was a child actor.

Speaker 50 So I actually started, I used to act.

Speaker 50 Yes. So just basically from the age of around 12 when we moved out to Utah.

Speaker 44 Okay.

Speaker 20 You know, he talked a bit about kind of having to prioritize hoops over acting, but he has some serious acting credits to his name as a kid.

Speaker 16 The acting credits that child actor BJ Porter has to his name include.

Speaker 50 I actually was involved in another kind of like bad basketball basketball scene uh double team you know with

Speaker 11 two

Speaker 30 extra

Speaker 30 girls bring it in here game time let's go get our ready teamwork

Speaker 46 there was that there was an episode of touch by an angel with scott bayo check it out makes drugs all night plays baseball all day old american guy

Speaker 50 frank don't I actually was a child named Jamal and during that time it was kind of like with

Speaker 50 police brutality

Speaker 50 So what basically what wound up happening was is my mother was at work I got spooked and I called the police department to come in and they accidentally shoot me

Speaker 50 I've been able to end the lunch in 398 to open drive. 911, what is the nature of your emergency?

Speaker 20 So he's got those roles. He's a senior in high school, and it's pre-basketball season, which is sort of important for eligibility.
And this is pre-NIL.

Speaker 20 So you obviously can't be paid once you're in your senior season of the sport you're going to go play in college.

Speaker 50 My agent reached out,

Speaker 50 talked to my father and my mother and said, hey, we think this would be a good opportunity for BJ. We know this is the last one that he would be able to do.

Speaker 42 And how vivid is BJ's memory now of that day?

Speaker 20 His memories of the actual shoot were very clear.

Speaker 50 And it was funny the whole entire time. If you watch it, I'm trying basically not to laugh.

Speaker 11 I was going to say,

Speaker 50 I'm looking like I'm trying not to laugh because my cousin, who was actually my teammate at the time, he is the biggest like jokester ever.

Speaker 51 And he's like laughing the whole entire time.

Speaker 44 He's like, hey, Alex, Alex, the whole entire time, like behind the camera a little bit.

Speaker 50 So it was fun at the same time.

Speaker 20 It was this wild family affair where, you know, BJ becomes alex uh bj's cousin is the teammate that kind of like shoulder checks him how's it going alex

Speaker 20 sorry coach all the players in the huddle basically that had speaking roles are bj's teammates from high school basketball so like the guy that's like it's the championship game like teammate the guys who very plausibly hated this kid's guts were actually his real life friends friends and teammates and some family my dad they wanted him to do the basketball scene.

Speaker 32 Oh, so they wanted your dad in it.

Speaker 50 Yes, yes. My dad actually is the coach on the other team who does that.

Speaker 20 And ironically, his dad sort of has this unique role in the whole shoot where

Speaker 20 apparently the original script was even worse than this.

Speaker 23 It was actually supposed to be something worse.

Speaker 50 I can't remember what it was, but my dad had to change it a little bit because he was like, a basketball player would never do this.

Speaker 20 And his dad had to kind of go to the producers and be like,

Speaker 20 this is how I would try to fix this mess of a thing that you guys have come up with.

Speaker 48 Wait, it was worse before it became the version we came to know.

Speaker 20 It was worse. And unfortunately, that original is lost to time.

Speaker 47 So this pretty dramatically changes everything if you were to rewatch it now through the lens of what you've reported for us.

Speaker 10 The haunting decision that forced B.J. Porter into hiding, the acting required.

Speaker 38 when it came to him having to give his confession that in fact he committed the crime.

Speaker 16 It's him. It was him the entire time.

Speaker 12 The ball went out of bounds off of Alex.

Speaker 26 What does he recall?

Speaker 20 It's my favorite moment from sitting down with him where he

Speaker 20 kind of says, the best part is I didn't even touch the ball.

Speaker 50 I did not touch the ball.

Speaker 11 You did not touch the ball.

Speaker 11 This whole thing is a lie.

Speaker 23 Yeah, let that be a lesson about the magic of Hollywood. This is all a lie.

Speaker 20 There were multiple takes, the take they ended up using. He didn't even touch the ball.

Speaker 20 And it's funny because if you read the YouTube comments, there are people that actually point this out saying, like, he didn't even touch the ball.

Speaker 11 Yes, he

Speaker 20 admits he did not touch the ball.

Speaker 8 So just to be very clear about this, the whole point of his ad is that the ball went out of bounds off of Alex.

Speaker 14 In the commercial, we don't actually see it going off of the real life BJ Porter's hands in the scene.

Speaker 21 This is the story of his ad in a nutshell.

Speaker 22 is that, of course, it didn't actually happen the way that everybody thought it did.

Speaker 20 in the foundation for a better life cinematic universe it's pretty perfect

Speaker 20 so how long did it take from production and filming to to release when did alex actually get to see his work it took about a year and a half so like he went through his football season, his basketball season.

Speaker 20 He gets to Portland.

Speaker 20 The first time BJ actually saw the ad, he was watching Law and Order with his teammates on USA Network, as most college athletes do, trying to pass pass the time and it there it is

Speaker 50 i never forget the first time i actually watched it was with my teammates and we're sitting there and it pops up and i was just like i kind of was in shock i was just like oh and i was like yeah like that's me and like they're like wait a minute that is you right and i was like yeah and it was just kind of one of those things where you just kind of like laugh We just laughed it off.

Speaker 50 Like it wasn't as big of a deal during that time because it was just like, okay, this was just something that was just getting started.

Speaker 19 As somebody who watched a lot of Law and Order in college with his roommates, did he the idea that you'd be watching an episode and be in a commercial that would then render you the victim in an internet murder mystery basically where you have to go into hiding as a result you truly cannot script like this zach no no and like it would be so cool to get to be in an ad in college and be like guys that's me but then it's like

Speaker 20 The crux of this ad is so tough for him, you know, and like that I can't imagine.

Speaker 16 Yes, in the sports criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups, the memes

Speaker 9 and the people who dunk on them.

Speaker 10 So just to set us in internet time in the history of our culture, Zach, this is 08.

Speaker 16 BJ Porter is trying to be a real life actual college basketball player.

Speaker 43 And this commercial comes on.

Speaker 12 And now

Speaker 29 we're beginning to see

Speaker 30 the spread, right?

Speaker 20 I think he probably got his first inkling of it. Portland goes to play at Gonzaga.

Speaker 53 BJ Porter into the game now for Portland, number 24, a guy who brings energy to the pilots.

Speaker 20 You know, I mentioned being a basketball psycho myself. There are plenty in the kennel at Gonzaga games.
Like those, in the best way, like those who die hard college basketball fans. 23 with the ball,

Speaker 53 And free throws coming for BJ Porter, a sophomore out of Leighton, Utah.

Speaker 20 And one of the kids in the stands yells, you look like the sportsmanship kid.

Speaker 50 And if you know about Gonzaga, when you go there, especially during that time, it's like that's when Kennel Craziness, that's when they have the zombie nation right before you play.

Speaker 50 And like, we're right there warming up. I'm like, all right, really good at that time, too.

Speaker 11 And it's like, hey, you look like the sportsmanship kid.

Speaker 23 Did your heart sink?

Speaker 51 It kind of did.

Speaker 7 Because me and my other teammate, Jason handibly kind of like laughed and jason's kind of like he would be like yeah that is but i was like you better not you know so it kind of so as this is now being uh noticed in specific instances by these college kids who are also presumably watching law and order with their friends in their dorm when did it feel like virality had had come to pass

Speaker 20 so he he ended up transferring to uh weber state okay you know he he gets there around 2010.

Speaker 21 yes the home of damian lillard and they were teammates like, right?

Speaker 20 They were, they were teammates at We Were Together. And this is sort of where it starts to, like, Twitter introduced this video.

Speaker 20 And that's kind of where the problems start to arise for our good friend BJ here.

Speaker 50 And I just never forget. I walked into the locker room one time with my teammate and he's just dying laughing.

Speaker 23 He was like, man, they're roasting you.

Speaker 23 They're going after you.

Speaker 50 And I was just like, what's going after me? And he showed me the video of it and all the comments.

Speaker 20 And I was like, wow, like this really is kind of like starting to take a turn a little bit yeah they're dying at the comments on the video and it's like alex the kid who reminds the teacher about the homework she forgot to give out yeah if this was real he'd be benched for the season this is why bullying exists yeah i just looked up the comments today and someone wrote sounds like something drake would do

Speaker 10 damn getting roasted up to eternity Which is all to say, Zach, that you found BJ Porter, the guy who played Alex, who played at Weber State, alongside Damian Lillard.

Speaker 8 And one of the people who remembers vividly this very true fact pattern happens to be Dame Lillard, who we sent a correspondent to interview in Biabe.

Speaker 45 One day we had class and we was all sitting in the dorms.

Speaker 45 And I don't remember exactly how the conversation came up, but it came up, we was like, you the... You the person that was in this commercial.

Speaker 45 You know, where you said the ball went off you and it came up.

Speaker 45 And we stopped calling him BJ and we started calling him bobby because it's like man you a snitch you know like you in that commercial and it was it was a joke from here we got the vibe while talking to dame that he didn't co-sign uh alex's coat of honor i've never been in that situation but if it came down to it i'm cheating i'm not

Speaker 45 that ain't gonna be a moment where i show sportsmanship and i think that's why he he got clowned a lot for it. Even to this day, when the commercial comes on, I'm telling like my teammates here,

Speaker 45 like, man, I played with him in college, you know, so it's like a, that's a forever joke.

Speaker 45 When we first started getting on him about it, he was like, Man, I know, like, almost like he looked back at it, like, man, if I would have known it would have turned into this, I probably wouldn't have did it like that type of vibe.

Speaker 20 But uh, oh my God, it's and that's what's so fun about this ad is that like we, as people who consume basketball, like know this ad, but the people that are like the greatest basketball players playing right now also know this ad.

Speaker 20 Like, it's that's how engrossed in the the basketball culture it is.

Speaker 4 Doing better promotion than Philip Anschutz could ever have dreamed of.

Speaker 39 And it's, but, but the whole thing, I mean, truly, like as BJ Porter is making his way through college and his basketball journey, as again, he's trying to be a real player.

Speaker 41 How did he deal with this?

Speaker 19 How did he deal with the attention that was already obvious to him?

Speaker 20 He's a very good basketball player. And I think that's the part that's like, that's what's funny with all this is these people like, I'd give Alex buckets.
I'd cook Alex. And DJ's sitting there like,

Speaker 32 what would you say to any of those people?

Speaker 4 Please come try.

Speaker 20 He was a very good shooter, very good player, you know, plays at Azusa Pacific after his time with Dame at Weber.

Speaker 20 And even while there, you know, the coach in film would put his, you know, picture up on the projector and say, you know, nice going, Alex, and things like that.

Speaker 20 The ad

Speaker 20 hung with him.

Speaker 20 He told me a story when we sat down that he gets engaged and he's at Disneyland.

Speaker 20 And at some point, they were at ESPN zone with his family and they look up and there's the ad all these years later playing on the TV at ESPN zone.

Speaker 30 Right. He's trying to start a family.

Speaker 22 And meanwhile, Alex is still watching him.

Speaker 20 Even that day, the ride operator sneaks up to him and whispers, hey, I touched it.

Speaker 44 I was like, what do you mean?

Speaker 41 I kind of like looked at him and he goes, he goes, I touched the ball, coach.

Speaker 11 Ha ha ha ha ha.

Speaker 51 And I was just like, all right, dude, you're a funny guy.

Speaker 16 At a certain point, it must be the case that his own kids, now that he's like a grown man, also are pointing this out to him.

Speaker 20 His kids have seen the ad.

Speaker 20 The friend that I know that's their godfather, who's a coach in college, actually, right now.

Speaker 20 showed them the ad, took out his phone and said, hey, you got to see what your dad did.

Speaker 20 Let me show you this thing.

Speaker 26 Your dad was a star and played it for him so my daughter the whole entire time's like daddy you're in a commercial yeah daddy you touched the ball daddy and my son's like daddy like why do they call you alex

Speaker 11 i'm just like so all of which is to say that he could not escape this at home at the happiest place on earth in any locker rooms on the internet yeah is enough to make someone become a recluse truly He deactivated his accounts on all social media at one point

Speaker 20 because he went into coaching. That's such a necessary tool for recruiting that his coach at Denver was like, hey, you have to reactivate your social accounts to like reach out to kids.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 20 So he kind of got forced back into this place where it's constantly being brought up.

Speaker 38 Right. Which brings him back to you, following you.

Speaker 10 And just to complete the circle here, like the beautiful part of this story to me, the symmetrical part of the story is that BJ Porter became a real life

Speaker 26 basketball coach.

Speaker 25 He became the other person in the commercial that haunts him.

Speaker 24 And

Speaker 42 I guess my question near the end here is, how does coach BJ Porter,

Speaker 41 how did he view Alex?

Speaker 15 How would he handle a kid who did what he himself did in this ad that he can never escape?

Speaker 20 He, you know, grinning, through a grin, said to me, you know thank you for your honesty and there's a reason why they have refs and refs are supposed to do their job so whatever the refs let them decide let them decide it's like such a perfect sort of summary on the whole ad and kind of his outlook on life in general yes i asked him like hey if you were going against alex what would the scouting report be yeah what's alex's scouting report be physical knock him around

Speaker 50 he'll lose you the game

Speaker 19 what i feel like i found out zach what i found out thanks to your reporting today is what actual sportsmanship in the age of the internet actually looks like, which is far more vivid now, thanks to BJ Porter, the embodiment of that principle online, than it was in the ad he started that literally had the word sportsmanship in big letters trying to drill into us, you know, values.com.

Speaker 20 Totally. I mean, his whole outlook on it, even asking him like, would you, do you regret doing it? Like, if you could go back in time, would you still do the ad?

Speaker 51 And he's like, yeah, it's a part of who I am. Yeah.

Speaker 50 Like, you know what I mean? I'm Alex. You know, he's like, he's an alter ego.
So it is.

Speaker 11 Exhausting. So that's what I'll say too.

Speaker 20 It was very special to have him sitting across the table from me and lean into the microphone and say, I am Alex.

Speaker 48 It's so rare to have a story about a child star who gets eaten by Twitter and comes out on the other side being like, I think I'm better for this.

Speaker 20 Totally.

Speaker 20 He's a very profound and awesome dude. I was very glad to have gotten to know him and find him.

Speaker 10 Zach Schwartz, you're now free from a journalistic prison of your own devising.

Speaker 13 And all I could do now is

Speaker 25 shoulder check you off of my show and tell you earnestly:

Speaker 42 nice going, Zach.

Speaker 7 Really nice going.

Speaker 20 It was an honor. Thank you.

Speaker 1 This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark media production,

Speaker 1 and I'll talk to you next time.