We Finally Found the Star of the Worst (and Most Mysterious) Commercial in Sports History

Speaker 1 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

Speaker 3 I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to 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 8 You're listening to DraftKings Network.

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Speaker 18 Remy Martin Cognac, Veeen Champain, a 14 alcoholic volume, reported by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated, New York, York, 1738, Centaur Design. Please drink responsibly.

Speaker 15 I have this issue when I go out and I talk to people in real life and they're like, so what do you do? And I have to explain what my show is.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 3 I've settled upon, Zach, a summary, which is basically, I use journalism to solve mysteries that are technically about sports.

Speaker 26 It's a good way to put it. It's a very good way to put it.

Speaker 26 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 16 The, 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 26 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 26 I had to find him.

Speaker 23 I want to explain what this commercial is because it's not really selling a product, I guess.

Speaker 26 It stuck with me, the ad. Like, I remember seeing it in the wild, like on television, obviously before it started going viral.
It ran

Speaker 26 all the time, especially during March Madness.

Speaker 2 If you Google the term worst commercial ever in quotes on YouTube, this is right there in the first couple of results.

Speaker 9 It has over a million views on that video alone.

Speaker 32 There are many, many more.

Speaker 23 It goes viral seemingly all of the time.

Speaker 23 I feel like we should just play it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Because

Speaker 33 this is what this, again, viral commercial

Speaker 1 sounds like.

Speaker 26 Any high school gym in America sort of looks like this.

Speaker 26 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 26 Easy dunk. Yeah.
Here comes the trap. They're bringing a press trap quick.
Ball goes to the sideline, which is not really where you're supposed to throw it in that situation. No.

Speaker 26 We see a player white tip the ball out of bounds. The important part is the ref didn't see the ball go off the kid in a white jersey.

Speaker 26 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 26 The player who we think tipped the ball out, but they didn't call it on him has this very guilty look on his.

Speaker 31 He has a truly, this is like the dictionary definition of a hang dog look.

Speaker 24 His eyes are as big as saucers.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 30 Come on, Alex.

Speaker 6 The ref did not call that. You gotta be kidding me, Alex.
It's the championship game. Talk to him, coach.

Speaker 15 I touched it. It's their ball.

Speaker 26 His teammates are furious. Quite upset.

Speaker 1 A kid with acne is as mad at Alex as a person can be.

Speaker 26 That's that Accutane rage.

Speaker 6 How's it going, Alex?

Speaker 34 Sorry, coach.

Speaker 26 And the coach gives Alex the like, you know what, you do what you think is right.

Speaker 35 Good call.

Speaker 36 Sportsmanship. Pass it on.

Speaker 34 Right.

Speaker 26 And we see Alex prod over to the raft to snitch on himself. And the commercial ends with a sportsmanship pass it on message.

Speaker 20 Yeah, values.com, the foundation for a better life.

Speaker 9 It feels like a commercial about sports made by people who have never seen sports before.

Speaker 26 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 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 and you run over and help the guy out that's sportsmanship but no one's snitching at this level

Speaker 26 i mean if anything the player is like turning to the other guy like i totally tip that to the opponent and walking off like you're not telling the ref that and just to give a sense of like the level of obsession that people have had with this specific scenario played out this way i heard ron russillo and bill simmons talk about this at one point a couple years back and then the player looks at coach he's like coach

Speaker 40 it was off me

Speaker 40 and coach is like looking at him being like there's a real lesson lesson here it's a teaching moment and the whole team's looking at the kid And then the kid goes up to the ref for the first time in the history of anything where he goes to the ref is like, hey, it was off me.

Speaker 21 And the ref's like, all right, ball's the other way.

Speaker 40 And then it's like, that's the lesson. And I think it had to have been a religious thing.
For bounty towels? Or it was for towels. Yeah, it was one of those, one of the two things.

Speaker 40 And people have been fascinated with this ad for years. You've never seen this ad.

Speaker 9 I remember it, but it was, it was, what, 10, 15 years ago?

Speaker 13 Who's to say? A while ago.

Speaker 40 Scholars have argued it's timeless.

Speaker 15 TikTok captions, because it's obviously made its way over there.

Speaker 3 They include things like, quote, they definitely jumped Alex in the locker room.

Speaker 21 A lot of those.

Speaker 31 And the cultural spectrum on this extends, obviously, to like Barstool Sports, which has labeled this with a headline, quote, March Madness commercial about sportsmanship features the biggest nerd ever.

Speaker 15 And the write-up says,

Speaker 20 Alex, Alex deserves to have all of his clothes thrown in the shower, end quote.

Speaker 9 It just recirculates because everybody is cringing and then choosing to dunk on this incredibly implausible morality play.

Speaker 26 And,

Speaker 26 God, yeah, Alex kind of became the lightning rod for all of it.

Speaker 3 And so for you, when did you begin to wonder, okay, everybody keeps talking about Alex.

Speaker 21 Yeah. Who is he?

Speaker 39 When does that question first enter your mind?

Speaker 26 So I used to host this podcast for Wave called Out of Pocket, and it was Josiah Johnson and with Jethryn Jenkins, two guys who are very good at NBA Twitter.

Speaker 26 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 26 we were doing our show. Waved just brought in Paul George.
Paul George's show is blowing ours out of the water.

Speaker 26 And I'm like, I got to find a guest for our show that Paul George could never get for his.

Speaker 26 So I was like, what's the most viral basketball thing that people would be like, oh my God, you found that guy.

Speaker 26 And it was Alex.

Speaker 33 It became pretty clear as soon as I started looking into this myself that Alex was not eager to be discovered.

Speaker 26 That's where the journey sort of started. I was like, I'm going to do it for our season finale episode.
I think I had three weeks, like, I'll find him. That's so much time.

Speaker 26 It took a lot longer than three weeks. It took, I think, like two and a half years basically to find it.

Speaker 39 How did you start your quest to find Alex?

Speaker 26 So, first, it was reverse image searching his face and seeing if I could find anything off of that.

Speaker 26 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 26 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 and commercials.
So, So I was like, okay, I'll use that.

Speaker 26 Nothing. 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 26 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 19 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 26 Values.com. Yeah.

Speaker 3 When you start to to look into into this website, what do you begin to see?

Speaker 26 There's just not enough information out there about the foundation. There's no interviews or articles.

Speaker 26 And it kind of triggered this sort of siren in my head, like something weird is happening here because no one talks.

Speaker 26 No one's ever written a profile about the foundation or what they do.

Speaker 26 The website, for the most part, looks like it was designed in 2011 and just left.

Speaker 7 The text on the website, Zach,

Speaker 23 it's so anodyne.

Speaker 16 I'll read it off of the site right now.

Speaker 31 They say, quote, we choose values we hope most individuals would find encouraging and relevant.

Speaker 17 Then we provide an uplifting message based on each value in an effort to encourage people to bring out the best in themselves.

Speaker 17 And they go on, As a non-partisan, non-sectarian organization, we carefully design our public service messages to have general, universal appeal.

Speaker 2 And then they say, the foundation's small staff works with a network of writers, art directors, and production professionals.

Speaker 11 And none of that is very helpful.

Speaker 26 No,

Speaker 31 none of that is like giving us an actual detail as to like, so what do you guys do here?

Speaker 26 And so, you know, I called them.

Speaker 26 It's one of those calls where you put on like the nicest voice.

Speaker 26 Hi,

Speaker 26 my name is Zach, and I have an obsession with this really famous ad that you guys made from a long, long time ago.

Speaker 1 This ad that I definitely haven't made fun of online with millions upon millions of people exactly like me.

Speaker 26 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 26 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 26 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 26 Why are you being secretive? Why are you trying to hide who this person is? So I did the next logical thing and I pulled like 13 years' worth of their tax records.

Speaker 9 If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Speaker 13 This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Speaker 9 Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

Speaker 10 So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Speaker 10 Learn more at remymartin.com.

Speaker 18 Remy Martin Cognac, Feen Champion, African Alcohol by Volume 40 by Remy Control, USA Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Speaker 12 Please drink responsibly.

Speaker 16 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 37 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 9 This one's titled Do the Right Thing.

Speaker 34 Come on, man.

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

Speaker 26 The other one, too.

Speaker 34 Good job.

Speaker 44 Do the right thing. Pass it on.

Speaker 44 A message from the Foundation for a Better Life.

Speaker 3 And then there's also this one that I wanted to play for everybody because it's called Umpire.

Speaker 34 My father was a great hitter, but he knew that life was about more than just one game.

Speaker 15 It's like a sepia-toned,

Speaker 17 almost old-timey baseball kind of aspect here.

Speaker 18 Oh,

Speaker 26 he was so safe.

Speaker 15 The umpire has called a man out who was safe by a zillion miles.

Speaker 34 So when that umpire made a bad call that ended the game for dad

Speaker 34 and then needed help with his car,

Speaker 34 my father made the right call.

Speaker 46 Helping others, the right choice.

Speaker 8 Pass it on.

Speaker 34 A message from the foundation for a better life.

Speaker 4 And so who is the person behind these ads, Zach?

Speaker 3 Who is the person that the secretary and the CEO, unhelpfully in the end, would not connect you to?

Speaker 26 His name's Philip Anschus.

Speaker 26 he is a billionaire and he's been a billionaire for a very long time

Speaker 46 forbes magazine has their list of the wealthiest americans and four of the coloradans make the top 400 they got money number one is a surprise philip and shuts the wealthiest person in our state with a net worth of 16.9 billion dollars that makes him 45th for the usa only only

Speaker 26 CNN called him the richest American you've never heard of.

Speaker 26 Fortune also called him the greediest executive.

Speaker 26 He started running his dad's oil business at the age of 20, made his money drilling, fracking, also ran Union Pacific Railroad.

Speaker 47 As an adult, I've spent my business career.

Speaker 47 working on companies and in industries that have always been firmly rooted in the West,

Speaker 47 often companies that are quite historic in nature.

Speaker 26 And then, you know, things that maybe are more in our lives than oil and railroads is that he owns AEG, the Angelou Entertainment Group who does Coachella. They own Crypto.com Arena.

Speaker 26 And he's also managed to kind of scoop up a few different sports teams,

Speaker 26 LA Kings, LA Galaxy. And then he's financed movies, Chronicles of Narnia.

Speaker 26 He did the movie Array, 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 16 He has his name on the championship trophy in Major League Soccer, and yet I have never, until talking to you for this episode, thought, who the fk is that guy?

Speaker 26 I found it very interesting that this person who has Coachella,

Speaker 26 which is about as godless of a place as you can go legally,

Speaker 26 also pushes these very conservative, God-forward, church-forward messages. Raise me up

Speaker 26 to more

Speaker 26 than I

Speaker 26 can

Speaker 26 be.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 24 Yes.

Speaker 24 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 17 He also appears in New York Times headlines, such as, quote, Neil Gorsuch has web of ties to secretive billionaire.

Speaker 31 The billionaire being Philip Anschutz.

Speaker 3 Neil Gorsuch, aforementioned, being the Supreme Court justice now.

Speaker 23 This goes back to the 2000s, I guess, when Anschutz and his companies hired said future Supreme Court justice as their outside counsel.

Speaker 31 He is simply, Zach, one of the most conservative owners in all of sports.

Speaker 3 He's given to Republican candidates.

Speaker 26 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

Speaker 26 done over these years. 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 26 Like he's sort of like stripped off all the nasty parts that he's doing over on the side there.

Speaker 3 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 24 The New Yorker, by the way, has reported previously that he does not even use a cell phone or email.

Speaker 7 But he also declared that reports about his donations to homophobic political organizations were, quote, fake news and garbage.

Speaker 7 And he indicated that he stopped funding said groups, which to his apparent surprise did support such causes.

Speaker 4 But as much as he is trying to not actually be heard in public, we did find a bit of rare video of this man.

Speaker 32 This is at the 84th annual U.S.

Speaker 2 Conference of Mayors.

Speaker 17 It was 2016, and it's a translator who is translating for the Dalai Lama.

Speaker 8 And next to them is Lady Gaga.

Speaker 32 Here is Philip Anschutz actually speaking out loud.

Speaker 47 You have the leader of one of the world's great religions,

Speaker 47 you have a world-class entertainer.

Speaker 47 And then you have this obscure business guy.

Speaker 47 And

Speaker 47 it's unlikely that

Speaker 47 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 him talk about sportsmanship or whatever.

Speaker 47 Things like fairness, trust, learning, perseverance, love, patience, optimism, humility,

Speaker 47 confidence, civility.

Speaker 47 These are universal values that transcends

Speaker 47 race and religion and politics.

Speaker 26 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 26 Like, you had to go to the note.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 7 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 27 Like, that's what this whole thing is.

Speaker 26 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 23 This whole operation that Ann Schutz has funded, it seems like their mission, if nothing nothing else, is to be as omnipresent as they can be.

Speaker 26 Yeah,

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 It sort of led me on my spiral where I felt like Gyllenhaal in Zodiac, where it's just like, this thing is sort of taking over my life to a degree that it really shouldn't.

Speaker 26 There's this wonderful one that Shaq is a part of.

Speaker 3 He's holding a basketball, wearing a cap and gown, and it looks like he loves civility.

Speaker 26 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 31 But in your defense, just psychologically speaking, the foundation did release the following statistic.

Speaker 38 The campaign has apparently aired in more than 200 countries.

Speaker 11 Nielsen says that the ads at one point had more than 10 million impressions each day on U.S.

Speaker 2 network television.

Speaker 14 And then Current 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 26 They're everywhere and

Speaker 26 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 TV ad sales.

Speaker 26 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 26 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.

Speaker 26 Like, you know, it's something like late at night could be in the

Speaker 26 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 26 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 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 Good on me, pat on the back.

Speaker 26 I did my thing. I'm writing that off on my taxes as a network saying, I made this wonderful charitable donation.

Speaker 26 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 26 to actually go approach somehow tax write-offs on a big poster underneath a kitten not as inspirational 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.

Speaker 26 we are a pro-perseverance podcast 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 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 26 but I need more.

Speaker 49 So this is where I should jump in to say that Philip Anschutz's company, the 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 49 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 49 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 49 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.

Speaker 49 and saving seven figures via tax deductions in the process.

Speaker 49 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 and 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 49 It's a line which may now sound familiar.

Speaker 47 These are universal values that transcends

Speaker 47 race and religion and politics and nature.

Speaker 49 All of which is to say that the other thing being passed on here beyond these values is tax benefits.

Speaker 49 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 49 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 49 Remember, months earlier, Zach had started this whole quest by calling up an ultimately unhelpful secretary.

Speaker 49 And now he had these documents, 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 49 Alex.

Speaker 26 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 26 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 26 And in doing that, I found two former employees and just DM'd both of them and was like, hey, guys, very odd question question here but i'm trying to find this person can you help me and

Speaker 26 one of them got back to me he said i'd love to help i wasn't working on that ad campaign or i wasn't there at that time but uh i know someone who can help they've been there for forever i'd love to connect you 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 so and at that point i was sort of embarrassed because i was like this secretary definitely thinks i'm a weirdo so it was very much back to square one huge bummer like really thought i was moving in the right direction 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?

Speaker 26 It, yeah, it killed me because I was like, all right, I'll wave the white flag.

Speaker 25 You ever getting that message and being like,

Speaker 39 how did I not have this story idea already?

Speaker 26 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 26 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 26 and i mean like like my hands were shaking when i got that one 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 and i'm like that might be him and then i go and i click on his twitter and he was following me already he'd been following me the entire time the answer was actually following you while you were searching for him and the best part i you know i reached out and he agreed to meet up.

Speaker 3 By the way, that is Perseverance.

Speaker 27 This was a thrill, Zach.

Speaker 7 I don't know.

Speaker 43 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 38 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 20 What was the moment like when he walked in the door?

Speaker 26 I was so happy to finally get to meet him.

Speaker 18 And levels are all good on our.

Speaker 18 great.

Speaker 26 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 one of the nicest people you will ever meet.

Speaker 18 Oh, well, I want people to know about me.

Speaker 45 I'm a chill, simple guy.

Speaker 18 Yeah. You know.

Speaker 26 His best friend and best man in his wedding was a guy that I worked with at Arizona State.

Speaker 21 Wait, what?

Speaker 20 This is now a little creepy, Zach.

Speaker 23 Did he know you?

Speaker 29 Had you ever actually met him before in real life?

Speaker 26 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 27 This is of the basketball playing Sigmas.

Speaker 26 Yes, Jack Sigma's son.

Speaker 30 Amazing.

Speaker 26 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 26 I was in the stands. BJ was on this team and I had no idea.

Speaker 18 Oh,

Speaker 34 Wally throws down the oop to BJ Porter.

Speaker 1 Thanks, man.

Speaker 26 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 31 But as for the question of how this basketball player becomes

Speaker 27 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 he was a child actor

Speaker 45 so i actually started i used to act um yes so just basically um from the age of around 12 when we moved out to utah okay um

Speaker 26 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 3 the acting credits uh that child actor bj porter has to his name include

Speaker 45 I actually was involved in another kind of like bad basketball scene

Speaker 18 double team.

Speaker 45 You know,

Speaker 45 it's an extra.

Speaker 45 Girl, bring it in here. Game time.
Let's go. Got her in.
Teamwork.

Speaker 26 There was that. There was an episode of Touch by an Angel with Scott Bayo.
Check it out.

Speaker 50 Nick Scrums all night, plays baseball all day. All American guy.

Speaker 45 I actually was a child named Jamal, and during that time, it was kind of like with

Speaker 45 police brutality.

Speaker 45 So, what basically what wound up happening was my mother was at work. I got spooked, and I called the police department.
They come in and they accidentally shoot me.

Speaker 50 Oh, God, I shot a kid. Paul, I shot a kid.

Speaker 49 Call an ambulance. Go!

Speaker 49 911 was the nature of your emergency.

Speaker 26 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 26 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 45 My agent reached out,

Speaker 45 talked to my father and my mother and said, hey, we think this will be a good opportunity for BJ. We know this is the last one that he would be able to do.

Speaker 20 And how vivid is BJ's memory now of that day?

Speaker 26 His memories of the actual shoot were very clear.

Speaker 45 It was funny the whole entire time. If you watch it, I'm trying basically not to laugh.

Speaker 18 I was going to say,

Speaker 45 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. And he's like laughing the whole entire time.

Speaker 45 He's like, hey, Alex, Alex, the whole entire time, like behind the camera a little bit. So it was fun.
Same time.

Speaker 26 It was this wild family affair where, you know, BJ becomes Alex. BJ's cousin is the teammate that kind of like shoulder checks him.

Speaker 6 How's going, Alex?

Speaker 34 Sorry, coach.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 23 The guys who very plausibly hated this kid's guts were actually his real life friends.

Speaker 26 friends and teammates and some family my dad they wanted him to do the basketball scene oh so he you they wanted your dad in it yes yes my dad actually is the coach at the on the other team who does that so and ironically his dad sort of has this unique role in the whole shoot where

Speaker 26 apparently the original script was even worse than this it was actually supposed to be something worse 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 and his dad had to kind of go to the producers and be like

Speaker 26 this is how I would try to fix this mess of a thing that you guys have come up with.

Speaker 7 Wait, it was worse before it became the version we came to know.

Speaker 26 It was worse. And unfortunately, that original is lost to time.

Speaker 17 So this pretty dramatically changes everything if you were to rewatch it now through the lens of what you've reported for us.

Speaker 31 The haunting decision that forced BJ Porter into hiding. The acting required when it came to him having to give his confession that in fact he committed the crime.

Speaker 25 It's him.

Speaker 3 It was him the entire time. The ball went out of bounds off of Alex.

Speaker 2 What does he recall?

Speaker 26 It's my favorite moment from sitting down with him where he

Speaker 26 kind of says, the best part is, I didn't even touch the ball.

Speaker 45 I did not touch the ball.

Speaker 18 You did not touch the ball.

Speaker 18 This whole thing is a lie.

Speaker 30 Yeah, let that be a lesson about the magic of Hollywood.

Speaker 14 This is all a lie.

Speaker 26 There were multiple takes, the take they ended up using. He didn't even touch the ball.

Speaker 26 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 26 Yes. He

Speaker 26 admits he did not touch the ball.

Speaker 27 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 31 In the commercial, we don't actually see it going off of.

Speaker 25 the real life BJ Porter's hands in the scene.

Speaker 33 This is the story of his ad in a nutshell is that, of course, it didn't actually happen the way that everybody thought it did.

Speaker 26 In the Foundation for a Better Life cinematic universe, it's pretty perfect.

Speaker 31 So, how long did it take from production and filming to release?

Speaker 24 When did Alex actually get to see his work?

Speaker 26 It took about a year and a half. So, like, he went through his football season, his basketball season.
He gets to Portland.

Speaker 26 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 the time.

Speaker 36 And there it is.

Speaker 45 I'll never forget the first time I actually watched it was with my teammates. And we were sitting there and it pops up.

Speaker 18 And I was just like, I kind of was in shock.

Speaker 45 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.

Speaker 45 And it was just kind of one of those things where you just kind of like laugh.

Speaker 45 We just laughed it off. 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 33 As somebody who watched a lot of Law and Order in college with his roommates, did he?

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 19 You truly cannot script like this, Zach.

Speaker 26 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 26 the crux of this ad is so tough for him, you know, and like that I can't imagine.

Speaker 33 Yes, in the sports criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups: the memes and the people who dunk on them.

Speaker 9 So, just to set us in internet time in the history of our culture, Zach, this is 08.

Speaker 3 BJ Porter is trying to be a real life actual college basketball player.

Speaker 9 And this commercial comes on.

Speaker 36 And now

Speaker 29 we're beginning to see

Speaker 27 the spread, right?

Speaker 26 I think he probably got his first inkling of it. Portland goes to play at Gonzaga.

Speaker 35 BJ Porter into the game now for Portland, number 24, a guy who brings energy to the pilots.

Speaker 26 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 are die-hard college basketball fans.

Speaker 35 And free throws coming for BJ Porter, a sophomore out of Lake, Utah.

Speaker 26 And one of the kids in the stands yells, you look like the sportsmanship kid.

Speaker 45 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 45 And like, we're right there warming up. We're like, all right, really good at that time, too.
And it's like, hey, you look like the sportsmanship kid.

Speaker 33 Did your heart sink?

Speaker 45 It kind of did. Because me and my other teammate, Jason Hannibal, kind of like laughed.
And Jason's kind of like, he would be like, yeah, that is. But I was like, you better not.

Speaker 45 You know, so it kind of.

Speaker 1 So, as this is now being 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 come to pass?

Speaker 26 So he ended up transferring to Weber State. Okay.
You know, he gets there around 2010.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's the home of Damian Lillard.

Speaker 26 And they were teammates, like, right? They were, they were teammates at Weber together. And this is sort of where it starts to, like, Twitter introduces video.

Speaker 26 And that's kind of where the problems start to arise for our good friend BJ here.

Speaker 45 And I just never forget. I walked into the locker room one time with my teammate and he's just dying laughing.

Speaker 14 He was like, man, they're roasting you.

Speaker 14 They're going after you.

Speaker 45 And I was just like, what's going after me? And he showed me the video of it and all the comments. And I was like, Wow, like, this really is kind of like starting to take a turn a little bit.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 If this was real, he'd be benched for the season. This is why bullying exists.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I just looked up the comments today, and someone wrote, sounds like something Drake would do.

Speaker 18 Damn.

Speaker 30 Getting roasted up to eternity.

Speaker 3 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 18 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 48 One day we had class and we was all sitting in the dorms.

Speaker 48 And I don't remember exactly how the conversation came up, but it came up, we was like,

Speaker 48 you the person that was in this commercial.

Speaker 48 You know, where you say the ball went off you and it came up and uh we stopped calling him bj and we started calling him bobby because it was like man you a snitch you know like you in that commercial and it was it was a joke from there 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 48 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 come on i'm telling like my teammates here uh, like, man, I played with him in college, you know, so it's like a that's a forever joke.

Speaker 48 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 done it like that type of vibe.

Speaker 26 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 26 Like, that's how engrossed in the basketball culture it is.

Speaker 9 Doing better promotion than Philip Anschutz could ever have dreamed of.

Speaker 7 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 29 How did he deal with this?

Speaker 32 How did he deal with the attention that was already?

Speaker 36 obvious to him.

Speaker 26 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 46 what would you say to any of those people?

Speaker 14 Please come try.

Speaker 26 He was a very good shooter, very good player, you know, plays at Azusa Pacific after his time with Dame at Weber.

Speaker 26 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 26 the ad

Speaker 26 hung with him

Speaker 26 he told me a story when we sat down that he gets engaged and he's at disneyland 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 right he's he's trying to start a family and meanwhile alex is still watching him

Speaker 26 Even that day, the ride operator sneaks up to him and whispers, hey, I touched it.

Speaker 11 i was like what do you mean i kind of like looked at him and he goes he goes i touched the ball coach ha ha ha ha ha and i was just like all right dude you're you're funny guy at a certain point it it must be the case that his own kids now that he's like a grown man also are are pointing this out to him his his kids have seen the ad the friend that I know that's their godfather, who's a coach in college actually right now,

Speaker 26 showed them the ad, took out his phone and said, hey, you got to see what your dad did.

Speaker 26 Let me show you this thing. Your dad was a star and played it for him.

Speaker 18 So, my daughter the whole entire time is like, Daddy, you're in a commercial. Daddy, you touched the ball, daddy.
And my son's like, Daddy, why do they call you Alex?

Speaker 18 I'm just like, 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,

Speaker 4 is enough to make someone become a recluse.

Speaker 26 Truly, he deactivated his accounts on all social media at one point

Speaker 26 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 right

Speaker 26 so he kind of got forced back into this place where it's constantly being brought up

Speaker 19 Right, which brings him back to you, following you.

Speaker 31 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 5 basketball coach.

Speaker 29 Yeah. He became the other person in the commercial that haunts him.

Speaker 29 And

Speaker 32 I guess my question near the end here is, how does coach BJ Porter,

Speaker 5 how did he view?

Speaker 29 Alex?

Speaker 23 How would he handle a kid who did what he himself did in this ad that he can never escape?

Speaker 26 He, he, you know, grinning, through a grin, said to me, you know, thank you for your honesty.

Speaker 45 And there's a reason why they have rests and refs are supposed to do their job. So whatever the refs,

Speaker 36 let them decide.

Speaker 26 It's like such a perfect sort of summary on the whole ad and kind of his outlook on life in general.

Speaker 36 Yes.

Speaker 26 I asked him, like, hey, if you were going against Alex, what would the scouting report be?

Speaker 45 Yeah, what's Alex's scouting report? Be physical, knock him around.

Speaker 45 He'll lose you the game.

Speaker 27 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 26 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? And he's like, yeah.

Speaker 18 It's a part of who I am.

Speaker 45 Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? I'm Alex.
You know, he's like

Speaker 45 an alter ego.

Speaker 18 So it is exhausting. So that's what I'll say too.

Speaker 26 It was very special to have him sitting across the table from me and lean into the microphone and say, I am Alex.

Speaker 7 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 26 Totally.

Speaker 26 He's a very profound and awesome dude. I was very glad to have gotten to know him and find him.

Speaker 31 Zach Schwartz, you're now free from a journalistic prison of your own devising.

Speaker 1 And all I can do now is

Speaker 31 shoulder check you off of my show and tell you earnestly:

Speaker 1 nice going, Zach.

Speaker 13 Really nice going.

Speaker 26 It was an honor. Thank you.

Speaker 49 This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metalark Media production,

Speaker 49 and I'll talk to you next time.