Bingo!
Does Cooper have the commercial of March Madness?
How's your bracket going?
Mine's a disaster. But isn't that the fun? You try like hell to read the tea leaves and make educated guesses and then you sit there and laugh maniacally as you watch it all fall apart. At least that's what I do.
In my house, Thursday and Friday are referred to as "the High Holy Days", which was very confusing to the new boyfriend who had to wonder what sort of weird religion he had found himself in.
But not everyone's bracket is in shambles. The top of the bracket pool on ESPN is pretty competitive.
This was a fun surprise.
And apparently not just for Mainers, as Cooper's grandmother went viral for her awesome sweater.
, For The Win
It's a really fun commercial! From what I can tell, they actually shot it in Maine (I've heard on Facebook those extras are locals) and of all the March Madness commercials they're playing to death, it's the only one I'm not sick of. And I think Cooper's pretty good in it. He's way better than Chet Holmgren has been in any commercial ever.
But don't take it from me. Take it from advertising exec (and former Brunswick Dragon) Mike Lobikis
Maybe this is the echo chamber of Maine (I don't think so), but as a Duke fan (Bobby Hurley was my favorite player as a kid), it feels like by this point everyone is actively rooting against Duke and especially rooting against the typical white Duke star, but I don't get that feeling with Cooper. It seems like he's pretty popular, nationally. Again, this could be the Maine bias, but I wonder between that and how well-received this commercial has been if maybe Cooper has a potential star power beyond what, say, J.J. Reddick ever had. Just a thought.
And in case you haven't seen this:
I had thoughts about this Celtics (potential) sale, so I had Celtics expert and Camden Hills parent (spokesman?) Jon Duke back on to go over different ways this sale could go badly or hopefully not. We talked a little about the HBO Celtics doc, then very quickly ended up talking about Cooper Flagg and how just ridiculously awesome that is, but more importantly, the downstream effects of that on the larger Maine youth basketball world, especially how it relates to Quinn Pelletier. Then, for fun, I had him try and make the case for why Tyrie James was the favorite for Mr. Basketball over his guy, Nolan Ames. I think those are the 2 front-runners, but I'm assuming I'm missing someone obvious.
And my kid crashed it to talk about Mario Odyssey (dig that hat). As always with Jon, whether on a podcast or a sideline, it was a fun chat.
I know you hear "smash that subscribe button" a lot, but on YouTube it really does help a lot (and costs nothing). Getting to certain benchmarks gets you into their monetization program (basically you get a cut on YouTube's ad revenue) and the more I (and places like Eastern Maine Sports and whoever) can monetize stuff, the more we can cover.
So! Take 5 seconds and do the thing.
Also you should subscribe to the streams of schools games you watch. You name it. Help take more money away from Google and put in our ecosystem.
The goal is to keep the podcasts coming weekly, so send me any guest suggestions or feedback to mainebasketballrankings@gmail.com. If I get some good questions, maybe I'll do a mailbag, like a real podcast.
Speaking of real podcasts...
Celtics beat writer Noa Dalzell has been shipping up to Portland lately to work on a story on the Maine Celtics that's coming later this week, but in the meantime, she previewed the impact of Maine on the current Celtics success on her essential podcast "You Got Boston".
You should also subscribe to Noa. She's awesome.
Subscribe to people you like. Vote for the content you want. The media landscape is a nightmare. They (we) need all the help possible.
I'm also planning on keeping the newsletters at once a week. Spring sports are coming!
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