Sports adverts are, for the most part, dull as dishwater. Aside from using in-game footage it's hard to try and hype up a sport, with slick camera work and artificial games failing to get the heart racing.
Then there was the NFL's 'Pick Me' campaign, a series of videos whereby some of the biggest American football stars of the time performed outrageous trick shots to the amazement of the viewers in order to promote Fantasy Football.
Of course none of the feats attempted by any of the athletes were real, but back in 2009 we were all a little more naive and no doubt these clips led to many a visit to the doctor for a certain section of over-exuberant copycats.
One of the more notable spots in the series featured New England running back Laurence Maroney demonstrating how to jump through a parked SUV, entering in the passenger side window and exiting through the driver's. In another Houston receiver Andre Johnson feeds a ball into a jugs machine, before running the length of the field to catch the pass.
San Diego running back Darren Sproles bounds over the heads of two defenders in his clip, and then there's Green Bay Packers kicker Mason Crosby hitting a clocktower bell three times in a matter of seconds,
Washington tight end Chris Cooley blindly catches a football through a sheet of plaster from a pass thrown on the other side of the wall and in an interview with the LA Times, Cooley seemed to suggest his stunt was the real McCoy, revealing that the he was made to suffer for his art:
What was really the hardest part was ripping the ball back through the sheetrock. I kept dropping the ball trying to bring the ball back through. The harder you punched the sheetrock, the more it would explode, so the bigger the hole would be.
They ended up having to put makeup all over my arms because by the sixth or seventh ones, I had cuts all over my fists and my arms from the sheetrock cutting it.
Interesting. Could just be a well constructed bluff though. But nevertheless NFL's Pick Me series, succeeded in capturing the imagination of anyone who caught it, leaving us to debate with our friends for hours which ones were genuine and which ones were staged.
Now sit back and enjoy:
