Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out We Finally Found the Star of the Worst (and Most Mysterious) Commercial in Sports History About this episode It is an infamous basketball ad that keeps going viral as much for its cringe-worthiness as the mystery of its simple message: "sportsmanship." But correspondent Zach Schwartz embarked on a two-and-a-half-year quest to meet the anonymous actor who's gotten dunked on by Twitter for more than a decade. Now, he helps us untangle a web of links from March Madness to Madison Avenue; a Supreme Court justice to a secretive billionaire; and the Dalai Lama to Damian Lillard (who agreed to go on the record). And we learn the true meaning of "perseverance" in the process.
For more Zach Schwartz, you can visit his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@zach_schwartz
And special thanks to Goodnight, Texas for blessing this episode with their hit song, "The Railroad": https://youtu.be/1sp33WgVWMA https://youtu.be/1sp33WgVWMA?si=rh0EYdpDWigKSfN3
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:56 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're going to find out what this sound is.
3:03 Speaker 02 I touched it.
3:06 Speaker 02 I touched the ball before it went out, Coach.
3:08 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
3:11 Speaker 03 You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.
3:26 Pablo Torre? 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?" And I have to explain what my show is. And I've settled upon, Zach, a summary, which is basically, "I use journalism to solve mysteries that are technically about sports."
3:44 Speaker 04 It's a good way to put it. It's a very good way to put it. I only just recently started calling myself a journalist, because like, I produce some stuff. And then I like, did social media and made memes for people for a long time.
3:56 Pablo Torre? But the real like lead 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."
4:12 Speaker 04 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 I had to find him.
4:27 Pablo Torre? I want to explain what this commercial is because it's not really selling a product, I guess.
4:35 Speaker 04 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 all the time, especially during March Madness.
4:47 Pablo Torre? If you Google the term "worst commercial ever" in quotes on YouTube, this is right there in the first couple of results. It has over a million views on that video alone. There are many, many more. It goes viral seemingly all of the time? I feel like we should just play it.
5:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:06 Pablo Torre? Because this is what this, again, viral commercial, sounds like.
5:15 Speaker 04 Any high school gym in America sort of looks like this.
5:21 Speaker 04 We see the scoreboard to start the game. It says 63, 65, 9 seconds left.
5:26 Pablo Torre? Oh, God.
5:27 Speaker 04 We see the team in the white jerseys on a fast break, uncontested. Easy dunk.
5:34 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
5:34 Speaker 04 And 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.
5:42 Pablo Torre? No.
5:42 Speaker 04 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 the white jersey.
5:52 Speaker 04 Coach calls his timeout. I got the perfect sideline out of bounds for this. I'm gonna cook here. They all go to the huddle to get the play.
6:00 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
6:00 Speaker 04 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.
6:05 Pablo Torre? He has a, truly, this is like the dictionary definition of a hangdog look. His eyes are as big as saucers, his lip is basically quivering, he is looking up apologetic, seemingly, for what he's about to reveal.
6:20 Speaker 02 I touched it.
6:23 Speaker 02 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. I touched it, it's their ball.
6:31 Speaker 04 His teammates are furious, quite upset.
6:35 Pablo Torre? A kid with acne is as mad as...
6:37 Speaker 04 Bad at Alex as a person can be. That's that Accutane rage. How's it going Alex? Sorry Coach. Alex. And the coach gives Alex the like, you know what? You do what you think is right.
6:53 Speaker 05 Good call. Sportsmanship, pass it on.
6:56 Speaker 04 Right. And we see Alex crawl over to the ref to snitch on himself. And the commercial ends with a sportsmanship pass it on message.
7:06 Pablo Torre? Yeah, values.com, the foundation for a better life. It feels like a commercial about sports made by people who have never seen sports before.
7:16 Speaker 04 Yes.
7:17 Pablo Torre? 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.
7:25 Speaker 04 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. I mean, if anything, the player is like turning to the other guy like, I totally tipped that to the opponent and walking off. Like, you're not telling the ref that.
7:46 Pablo Torre? 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 Ruscillo and Bill Simmons talk about this at one point a couple of years back.
7:57 Speaker 06 And then the player looks at Coach, he's like, Coach, it was off me. And Coach is like, looking at him being like, this is a real lesson, lesson here, this is 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 [BLEEP] anything where he goes to the refs like, hey, it was off me. And the ref's like, alright, ball's the other way. And then it's like, that's the lesson. And I think it had to have been a religious thing.
8:20 Speaker 04 For Bounty towels?
8:21 Speaker 06 Or it was for towels. Yeah, it was one of those, one of the two things. And people have been fascinated with this ad for years. You've never seen this ad.
8:28 Speaker 04 I remember it, but it was, it was what, 10, 15 years ago?
8:32 Speaker 06 Who's to say?
8:33 Speaker 04 Wow.
8:34 Speaker 06 Scholars have argued it's timeless.
8:36 Pablo Torre? TikTok captions, because it's obviously made its way over there. They include things like, quote, "They definitely jumped Alex in the locker room."
8:43 Speaker 04 A lot of those.
8:44 Pablo Torre? 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." And the write-up says, "Fuck Alex. Alex deserves to have all of his clothes thrown in the shower." End quote. It just recirculates because everybody is cringing and then choosing to dunk on this incredibly implausible morality play.
9:10 Speaker 04 And, uh, God, Alex kind of became the lightning rod for all of it.
9:14 Pablo Torre? And so for you, when did you begin to wonder? Okay, everybody keeps talking about Alex.
9:20 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:21 Pablo Torre? Who is he? When does that question first enter your mind?
9:25 Speaker 04 So I used to host this podcast for Wave called Out of Pocket. And it was Josiah Johnson and Jethro Jenkins. Two guys who are very good at NBA Twitter. 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 we were doing our show. Wave had just brought in Paul George. Paul George's show is blowing ours out of the water. And I'm like, I gotta find a guest for our show that Paul George could never get for his. So I was like, what's the most viral basketball thing that people would be like, oh, my God, you found that guy? And it was Alex.
10:07 Pablo Torre? It became pretty clear as soon as I started looking into this myself that Alex was not eager to be discovered.
10:16 Speaker 04 That's where the journey sort of started. I was like, I'm gonna do it for our season finale episode. I think I had three weeks, like, I'll find him. That's so much time. It took a lot longer than three weeks. It took, I think, like, two and a half years, basically, to find him.
10:48 Pablo Torre? How did you start your quest to find Alex?
10:52 Speaker 04 So first, it was reverse image searching his face and seeing if I could find anything off of that. So it's like that, 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. 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, 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? 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.
11:35 Pablo Torre? So this charity, this foundation, which again, in the commercial, it's flashed on screen to the very end, the Foundation for a Better Life at values.com.
11:44 Speaker 04 Dot com, yeah.
11:45 Pablo Torre? When you start to look into, into this website, what do you begin to see?
11:51 Speaker 04 There's just not enough information out there about the foundation. There's no interviews or articles. And it kind of triggered this sort of siren in my head, like, something weird is happening here because no one talks.
12:07 Speaker 04 No one's ever written a profile about the foundation or what they do. The website, for the most part, looks like it was designed in 2011 and just left.
12:21 Pablo Torre? The text on the website, Zach, it's so anodyne. I'll read it off of the site right now. They say, quote, "We choose values we hope most individuals would find encouraging and relevant. Then we provide an uplifting message based on each value in an effort to encourage people to bring out the best in themselves." And they go on, "As a nonpartisan, nonsectarian organization, we carefully design our public service messages to have general, universal appeal." And then they say, "The foundation's small staff works with a network of writers, art directors, and production professionals." And none of that is very helpful.
12:58 Speaker 04 No.
12:59 Pablo Torre? None of that is like giving us an actual detail. It's like, so what do you guys do here?
13:03 Speaker 04 And so, you know, I called them.
13:08 Speaker 04 It's one of those calls where you put on like the nicest voice.
13:16 Speaker 04 Hi, um, my name's Zach and I have an obsession with this really famous ad that you guys made from a long, long time ago.
13:25 Pablo Torre? Yeah, this ad that I definitely haven't made fun of online with millions upon millions of people exactly like me.
13:30 Speaker 04 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. 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 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.
14:01 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
14:02 Speaker 04 So then I'm like, what is this foundation? 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.
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18:02 Pablo Torre? 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. 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. This one's titled "Do the Right Thing." Come on, man.
18:32 Pablo Torre? Just do it, quick. No one's watching.
18:42 Pablo Torre? The other one, too?
18:48 Pablo Torre? Good job.
18:50 Pablo Torre? "Do the Right Thing. Pass it on."
18:54 Pablo Torre? A message from the Foundation for a Better Life. And then there's also this one that I wanted to play for everybody because it's called "Umpire."
19:04 Pablo Torre? My father was a great hitter, but he knew that life was about more than just one game.
19:11 Pablo Torre? It's like a sepia-toned,
19:14 Pablo Torre? almost old-timey baseball kind of aspect here.
19:29 Speaker 04 He was so safe.
19:33 Pablo Torre? The umpire has called a man out who was safe by a zillion miles.
19:38 Speaker 01 So when that umpire made a bad call that ended the game for dad, and then needed help with his car, my father made the right call. Helping others, the right choice. Pass it on, a message from the foundation for a better life.
19:56 Pablo Torre? And so who is the person behind these ads, Zach? Who is the person that the secretary and the CEO unhelpfully, in the end, would not connect you to?
20:06 Speaker 04 His name's Philip Anshus.
20:11 Speaker 04 He is a billionaire. And he's been a billionaire for a very long time.
20:16 Speaker 05 Forbes magazine has their list of the wealthiest Americans, and four of a Coloradans make the top 400. They got money. Number one isn't a surprise. Philip Anshus, the wealthiest person in our state, with a net worth of $16.9 billion. That makes him 45th for the USA. Only? Only.
20:40 Speaker 04 CNN called him the richest American you've never heard of. Fortune also called him the greediest executive.
20:49 Speaker 04 He started running his dad's oil business at the age of 20. Made his money drilling, fracking, also ran Union Pacific Railroad.
20:58 Speaker 05 As an adult, I've spent my business career working on companies and in industries that have always been firmly rooted in the West. Often companies that are quite historic in nature.
21:16 Speaker 04 And then, you know, things that maybe are more in our lives than oil and railroads is that he owns AEG, Anshus Entertainment Group, who does Coachella. They own Crypto.com Arena. And he's also managed to kind of scoop up a few different sports teams.
21:33 Pablo Torre? Right.
21:34 Speaker 04 L.A. Kings, L.A. Galaxy. And then he's financed movies, Chronicles of Narnia. 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.
21:52 Pablo Torre? 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 is that guy?
22:03 Speaker 04 I found it very interesting that this person who has Coachella, which is about as godless of a place as you can go legally, also pushes these very conservative, God-forward, church-forward messages.
22:31 Speaker 04 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.
22:40 Pablo Torre? 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. The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank. Ann Schutz is also a big donor to them. He also appears in New York Times headlines such as, quote, "Neil Gorsuch Has Web Of Ties To Secretive Billionaire." The billionaire being Philip Ann Schutz. Neil Gorsuch, aforementioned, being the Supreme Court Justice now. This goes back to the 2000s, I guess, when Ann Schutz and his companies hired said future Supreme Court Justice as their outside counsel. He is simply, Zach, one of the most conservative owners in all of sports. He's given to Republican candidates.
23:21 Speaker 04 Ann Schutz has reportedly 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 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. Like, he's sort of stripped off all the nasty parts that he's doing over on the side there.
23:45 Pablo Torre? The part that I do need to say, I guess for legal reasons, is that Philip Ann Schutz is the type of guy also who does not grant interviews. The New Yorker, by the way, has reported previously that he does not even use a cellphone or email, but he also declared that reports about his donations to homo- phobic political organizations were quote fake news and garbage. And he indicated that he stopped funding said groups, which to his apparent surprise, did support such causes. 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. This is at the 84th Annual U.S. Conference of Mayors. It was 2016 and it's a translator who is translating for the Dalai Lama. And next to them is Lady Gaga.
24:31 Pablo Torre? Here is Philip Anschutz actually speaking out loud.
24:36 Speaker 05 The leader of one of the world's great religions. You have a world-class entertainer. And then you have this obscure business guy. And it's unlikely that we're discussing kindness of all things, not a very precise term.
24:58 Pablo Torre? 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.
25:09 Speaker 05 Things like fairness, trust, learning, perseverance, love, patience, optimism, humility, confidence, civility.
25:21 Speaker 05 These are universal values that transcends race and religion and politics.
25:30 Speaker 04 I like that he had to go into his coat 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 like you had to go to the note. Yeah.
25:44 Pablo Torre? 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. Like, that's what this whole thing is.
25:57 Speaker 04 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 of the ads kind of read like that.
26:04 Pablo Torre? This whole operation that Anschutz has funded, it seems like their mission, if nothing else, is to be as omnipresent as they can be.
26:14 Speaker 04 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 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. There's this wonderful one that Shaq is a part of.
26:37 Pablo Torre? He's holding a basketball, wearing a cap and gown, and it looks like he loves civility.
26:42 Speaker 04 I mean, it says perseverance, he's holding a basketball like he got his doctorate's degree in basketball, which he did do.
26:49 Pablo Torre? But in your defense, just psychologically speaking, the foundation did release the following statistic, the campaign has apparently aired in more than 200 countries. Nielsen says that the ads at one point had more than 10 million impressions each day on US network television. And then Current Affairs Magazine estimated that there were once as many as 10,000 billboards, Zach, across the United States. Apparently, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, it is the most widespread and successful PSA billboard campaign in United States history.
27:22 Speaker 04 They're everywhere and their their their reach for these campaigns is 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. 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. 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 late at night could be in the 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.
28:04 Speaker 04 They're running all the time 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, $100,000, a couple million dollars. 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. 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
28:44 Speaker 04 this wonderful deed without having to do research or find charities to actually go approach.
28:51 Pablo Torre? Somehow tax write offs on a big poster underneath a kitten, not as inspirational.
29:00 Speaker 04 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 or whatever.
29:10 Pablo Torre? We are a pro perseverance podcast.
29:12 Speaker 04 Yes.
29:13 Pablo Torre? For the record.
29:14 Speaker 04 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.
29:35 Speaker 04 But I need more.
29:41 Pablo Torre? So this is where I should jump in to say that Philip Anschutz's company, The Anschutz Corporation, did decline our request, here at Publutori Finds Out, for an interview with the 45th richest man in the world himself. 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. 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.
30:23 Pablo Torre? 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. In 2021, for instance, the Ann Schutts 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,
31:02 Pablo Torre? quote, "quality values for all individuals regardless of their race or religion." It's a line which may now sound familiar.
31:14 Speaker 05 These are universal values that transcends race and religion and politics.
31:24 Pablo Torre? All of which is to say that the other thing being passed on here beyond these values is tax benefits. 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. 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. Remember, months earlier, Zach had started this whole quest by calling up an ultimately unhelpful secretary. And now, he had these documents, documents with all of these details that wound up pushing Zach in what felt like a new direction
32:09 Pablo Torre? in his search for the whole reason he was here in the first place.
32:17 Speaker 04 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 process was take the name on the tax return, put it into LinkedIn, take the name on the tax return, put it into Instagram. And in doing that, I found two former employees and just DM'd both of them and was like, hey, guys, very odd question here, but I'm trying to find this person. Can you help me? And 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 I know someone who can help. They've been there for forever. I'd love to connect to 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.
33:01 Speaker 04 So, and at that point, I was sort of embarrassed because I was like, the 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, I have to go to Twitter and ask them for help for this because I need some sort of closure on this. And a part of me not wanting to tweet it was because I was worried someone else would beat me to the story.
33:28 Pablo Torre? 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?
33:39 Speaker 04 It, yeah, it killed me because I was like, all right, I'll wave the white flag.
33:44 Pablo Torre? You remember getting that message and being like, how did I not have the story idea already?
33:50 Speaker 04 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? 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.
34:13 Speaker 04 I mean, like, like, my hands were shaking when I got that one. I go to the Denver page, and I'm looking in, I'm like, looks a lot like him, you know, 15, 20 years older. 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.
34:32 Pablo Torre? The answer was actually following you while you were searching for him.
34:38 Speaker 04 And the best part, I, you know, I reached out and he, he agreed to meet up. By the way, that is perseverance.
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38:14 Pablo Torre? This was a thrill, Zach. I don't know, 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. 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. What was the moment like?
38:46 Speaker 04 When he walked in the door. I was so happy to finally get to meet him. Levels are all good on our. Great. 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 the not one of the nicest people you will ever meet.
39:10 Speaker 02 Oh, I want people to know about me. Um, I'm a chill, simple guy.
39:15 Speaker 04 Yeah.
39:15 Speaker 02 You know.
39:16 Speaker 04 His best friend and best man in his wedding was a guy that I worked with at Arizona State.
39:22 Pablo Torre? Wait, why? There's this is, this is, this is now a little creepy, Zach. Did he know you? Had you ever actually met him before in real life?
39:31 Speaker 04 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.
39:39 Pablo Torre? This is of the basketball playing Sikmas.
39:42 Speaker 04 Yes, Jack Sigma's son.
39:44 Pablo Torre? Amazing.
39:45 Speaker 04 So when Portland would come to LA and play Pepperdine or LMU in their, you know, set schedule, my whole family would go to the game. So I was in the stands. BJ was on this team and I had no idea.
40:01 Speaker 04 While he throws down the hoop to BJ Porter. Thanks, man. 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.
40:14 Pablo Torre? But as for the question of how this basketball player becomes 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?
40:29 Speaker 04 He was a child actor.
40:32 Speaker 02 So I actually started, I used to act.
40:34 Speaker 04 You did?
40:34 Speaker 02 Yes. So just basically, um, from the age of around 12, when we moved out to Utah.
40:39 Speaker 04 Okay.
40:41 Speaker 04 You know, he, 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.
40:50 Pablo Torre? The acting credits that child actor BJ Porter has to his name include.
40:56 Speaker 02 I actually was involved in another kind of like bad basketball scene, uh, double team, you know.
41:02 Speaker 04 No kidding?
41:04 Speaker 02 Yeah. So it's an extra.
41:08 Pablo Torre? Girl, bring it in here. Game time. Let's go.
41:17 Speaker 04 There was that, there was an episode of Touched by an Angel with Scott Baio.
41:21 Speaker 05 Check it out. Makes drugs all night, plays baseball all day. Old American guy.
41:28 Speaker 05 I actually was a child named Jamal, and during that time, it was kind of like with, um, police brutality.
41:41 Speaker 05 So what basically what wound up happening was is my mother was at work, um, I got spooked and I called the, um, police department. They come in and they accidentally shoot me.
41:51 Speaker 05 Oh God, I shot a kid. Paul, I shot a kid. Call an ambulance. Go!
42:05 Speaker 04 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. So you obviously can't be paid once you're in your senior season of the sport you're gonna go play in college.
42:19 Speaker 05 My agent reached out, um, 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.
42:28 Speaker 04 And how vivid is BJ's memory now of, of that day? His memories of the actual shoot were very clear.
42:37 Speaker 05 It was funny the whole entire time. If you watch it, I'm trying basically not to laugh. I was gonna say. I'm looking like I'm trying not to laugh because my cousin, who was actually my teammate at the time, he's the biggest like jokester ever. And he's like laughing the whole entire time. He's like, hey, Alex, Alex, the whole entire time, like behind the camera a little bit. So it was fun at the same time.
42:56 Speaker 04 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.
43:04 Speaker 05 How's it going, Alex?
43:06 Speaker 04 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.
43:18 Pablo Torre? The guys who very plausibly hated this kid's [bleep] guts were actually his real life friends.
43:25 Speaker 04 Friends and teammates in some family.
43:28 Speaker 05 My dad, they wanted him to do the basketball scene. Oh, so he, you.
43:32 Speaker 04 Wanted your dad in it.
43:33 Speaker 02 Yes, yes. My dad actually is the coach at the on the other team who does that.
43:37 Speaker 04 And ironically, his dad sort of has this unique role in the whole shoot where apparently the original script was even worse than this.
43:44 Speaker 02 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's like, a basketball player would never do this.
43:51 Speaker 04 And his dad had to kind of go to the producers and be like, this is how I would try to fix this mess of a thing that you guys have come up with.
43:59 Pablo Torre? Wait, it was worse before it became the version we came to know?
44:04 Speaker 04 It was worse and unfortunately that that that original is lost to time.
44:10 Pablo Torre? So this pretty dramatically changes everything if you were to rewatch it now through the lens of what you've reported for us. 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. It's him. It was him the entire time. The ball went out of bounds off of Alex. What does he recall?
44:33 Speaker 04 It's my favorite moment from sitting down with him where he he he kind of says, the best part is I didn't even touch the ball.
44:42 Speaker 02 I did not touch the ball.
44:44 Speaker 04 You did not touch the ball. So this whole thing is a lie.
44:48 Speaker 04 Let that be a lesson about the magic of Hollywood. This is all a lie. There were multiple takes to take the hint of using, he didn't even touch the ball. And it's 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. Yes, he he admits. He did not touch the ball.
45:08 Pablo Torre? So just just to be very clear about this. The whole point of his ad is that the ball went out of bounds off of Alex. In the commercial, we don't actually see it going off of the real life BJ Porter's hands in the scene. 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.
45:29 Speaker 04 In the Foundation for a Better Life Cinematic Universe, it's pretty perfect.
45:36 Pablo Torre? So how long did it take from production and filming to, to release? When did Alex actually get to see his work?
45:45 Speaker 04 It, it took about a year and a half. So like, he went through his football season, his basketball season, he gets to Portland. 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, and there it is.
46:03 Pablo Torre? I'll 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. 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. 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 [BLEEP] like this, Zach.
46:44 Speaker 04 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, the, the crux of this ad is so tough for him, you know? And like, that I can't imagine.
47:00 Pablo Torre? Yes. In the sports criminal justice system, people are represented by two separate but equally important groups, the memes and the people who dunk on them.
47:22 Pablo Torre? So just to set us in, in internet time, in, in the history of our culture, Zach, this was 08, BJ Porter is trying to be a real life, actual college basketball player, and this commercial comes on, and now we're, we're beginning to see the, the spread, right?
47:39 Speaker 04 I think he probably got his first inkling of it, Portland goes to play at Gonzaga. BJ Porter into the game now for Portland, number 24, a guy who brings energy to the Pilots. You know, I mentioned being a basketball sicko myself, there are plenty in the kennel at Gonzaga games, like those, in the best way, like those are diehard college basketball fans.
48:02 Speaker 04 Coming for BJ Porter, sophomore out of Leighton, Utah.
48:06 Speaker 05 And one of the kids in the stands yells, "You look like the sportsmanship kid." And if you know about Gonzaga, when you go there, especially during that time, it's like that's when Kendall craziness, that's when they had the zombie nation right before you play. And like, we're right there warming up. And like, alright, really good at that time, too. And it's like, hey, you look like the sportsmanship kid.
48:26 Pablo Torre? Did your heart sink?
48:27 Speaker 05 It kinda did, because me and my other teammate, Jason Hannibal, kinda like laughed. And Jason's kinda like, he would be like, "Yeah, that is..." But I was like, "You better not." You know, so it kinda...
48:37 Pablo Torre? So as this is now being noticed in specific instances by these college kids, who are also presumably watching Law & Order with their friends in their dorm, when did it feel like virality had come to pass?
48:50 Speaker 04 So he ended up transferring to Weber State. Okay, you know, he gets there around 2010.
48:57 Pablo Torre? Yes, the home of Damian Lillard.
48:59 Speaker 04 And they were teammates, like, they were teammates at Weber together. And this is sort of where it starts to, like, Twitter introduces this video. And that's kinda where the problems start to arise for our good friend BJ here.
49:12 Speaker 05 And I just never forget, I walked into the locker room one time with my teammate, and he's just dying laughing. He was like, "Man, they're roasting you. They're going after you." 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 kinda like, it's starting to take a turn a little bit."
49:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, they're dying at the comments on the video. And it's like, "Alex, the kid who reminds the teacher about the homeworks you forgot to give out." "If this was real, he'd be benched for the season. This is why bullying exists."
49:43 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I just looked up the comments today, and someone wrote, "Sounds like something Drake would do."
49:51 Speaker 04 Damn.
49:52 Pablo Torre? "Getting roasted unto 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, 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 Miami. One day we had class, and we was all sitting in the dorms.
50:17 Pablo Torre? And I don't remember exactly how the conversation came up, but it came up. We was like, "You the person that was in this commercial, you know?"
50:24 Speaker 05 You said the ball went off you and it came up and we stopped calling him BJ and we started calling him Bobby because it was like, man, he was snitch, you know, like you in that commercial and it was, it was a joke from there.
50:36 Pablo Torre? We got the vibe while talking to Dame that he didn't cosign Alex's code of honor.
50:42 Speaker 05 I've never been in that situation, but if it came down to it, I'm cheating. I'm not. 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 commercials come on, I'm telling like my teammates here, like, man, I played with him in college, you know, so it's like a, that's a forever joke. 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.
51:09 Speaker 04 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, the people that are like the greatest basketball players playing right now also know this ad. Like, it's, that's how engrossed in the basketball culture it is.
51:31 Pablo Torre? Doing better promotion than Philip Anshutz could ever have dreamed of. 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, how did he deal with this? How did he deal with the attention that was already obvious to him?
51:51 Speaker 04 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 BJ's sitting there like, what would you say to any of those people? Please come try. He was a very good shooter, very good player, you know, plays at Azusa Pacific after his time with Dame at, at Weber. And even while there, you know, the coach in film would put his, you know, picture up on the, on the projector and say, you know, nice going Alex and things like that.
52:26 Speaker 04 The ad hung with him.
52:30 Speaker 04 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.
52:44 Pablo Torre? Right. He's trying to start a family and meanwhile, Alex is still watching him.
52:50 Speaker 04 Even that day, the ride operator sneaks up to him and whispers, "Hey, I touched it." I was like, "What do you mean?" I kinda like looked at him and he goes, "I touched the ball, coach."
53:00 Pablo Torre? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And I was just like, "All right, dude, you're a funny guy." 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.
53:12 Speaker 04 His kids have seen the ad. The friend that I know that's their godfather, who's a coach in college actually right now, showed them the ad, took out a phone and said, "Hey, you gotta see what your dad did. Let me show you this thing. Your dad was a star and played it for him." So my daughter at home at the time is like, "Daddy, you're in a commercial. Daddy,
53:33 Speaker 06 you touched the ball. Daddy." And my son's like, "Daddy, why did they call you Alex?"
53:39 Pablo Torre? All it wishes to say that he could not escape this at home, at the happiest place on earth, in any locker rooms, on the internet, is enough to make someone become a recluse, truly.
53:52 Speaker 04 He deactivated his accounts on all social media at one point 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."
54:06 Pablo Torre? Right.
54:07 Speaker 04 So he kinda got forced back into this place where it's constantly being brought up.
54:15 Pablo Torre? Right. Which brings him back to you, following you. 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 [BLEEP] basketball coach.
54:33 Speaker 04 Yeah.
54:33 Pablo Torre? He became the other person in the commercial that haunts him. And I guess my question near the end here is, how does Coach BJ Porter, how did he view Alex? How would he handle a kid who did what he himself did in this ad that he can never escape?
54:56 Speaker 04 He, you know, grinning, through a grin, said to me, you know, "Thank you for your honesty."
55:01 Speaker 05 And there's a reason why they have refs, and refs are supposed to do their job. So whatever the refs.
55:06 Speaker 04 Let them decide.
55:07 Speaker 05 Let them decide.
55:08 Speaker 04 It's like such a perfect sort of summary on the whole ad and kind of his outlook on life in general.
55:13 Pablo Torre? Yes.
55:14 Speaker 04 I asked him, like, "Hey, if you were going against Alex, what would the scouting report be?"
55:19 Pablo Torre? Yeah, what's Alex's scouting report?
55:20 Speaker 05 Be physical, knock him around, he'll lose you the game.
55:26 Pablo Torre? 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.
55:52 Speaker 04 Totally. I mean, his whole outlook on it, even asking, like, "Would you, do you regret doing it? Like, if you could go back in time, would you still do the ad?" And he was like, "Yeah."
56:01 Speaker 05 It's a part of who I am. Like, you know what I mean? I'm Alex, you know? It's like an alter ego, so it is.
56:06 Speaker 04 That's awesome.
56:08 Speaker 05 So that's what I'll say, too.
56:09 Speaker 04 It was very special to have him sitting across the table from me and lean into the microphone and say, "I am Alex."
56:17 Pablo Torre? 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."
56:27 Speaker 04 Totally. He's a very profound and awesome dude. I was very glad to have gotten to know him and find him.
56:34 Pablo Torre? Zach Schwartz, you're now free from a journalistic prison of your own devising, and all I can do now is shoulder-check you off of my show and tell you earnestly, "Nice going, Zach. Really nice going."
56:49 Speaker 04 It was an honor. Thank you.
56:59 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.
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