During the NBC Olympic coverage, a commercial for the upcoming football season coverage, to the effect of “You’re not the only one awaiting football season–so are Peyton & Eli Manning. Until then, what else are you going to do?” At this point it cuts to a scene of the two quarterbacks deep in thought in a chess game. Anyways, I won’t comment on its actual assessment of chess, but some more celebrity exposure during primetime nationwide coverage is rarely a negative thing. And, if it’s like any of the other commercials during Olympics past, I suspect it will be shown many more times over the remaining days of the Games, if you want to try and view it for yourself.
I saw that commercial as well, and I considered it something of a back-handed slap at chess.
But maybe (almost) any reference to chess on TV is a good one?
Chess shows up in a number of TV shows, such as ‘NUMB3RS’.
I think my favorite references to chess on TV in the last few years were during the 2006 Winter Olympics, where they continually referred to curling as ‘chess on ice’.
I also saw this commercial. It seems to me that there were 2 or 3 others with the same theme using other activities the brothers were doing instead of football. One of them was a game called Connect or something like that.
Like Mike, I thought the commercial was a bit of a backhand against chess. But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It was pretty funny seeing these quarterback brothers hovering over a smallish chess set and board. If they would have used a tournament sized setup, it would have actually looked like chess was a better substitute than football.
Yeah, I also liked that Olympic chess reference.
I also really like NUMB3RS and the placement of chess in that show. Chess is shown for what it is there, an intellectual activity that is also a past time.
I like you think , that whatever the reason it was good to see chess mentioned. Perhaps it will stimulate memories of a game learned, and forgotten about. Or maybe even interest one in learning the game.
That reminds me of a real-life situation several years ago at the Illinois Class, where the players furnished their own sets. One of the games was being playing on a peg-in set, with a board 8 inches square. But they made up for it with their Garde clock, one of the largest clocks ever made.
Bill Smythe