In April 2016, the Seattle Seahawks decided to have a little fun with what was then typically a pretty vanilla moment in the NFL offseason: the day the league released its full schedule.
Instead of just publishing a list of games, the club created a playful video in the style of the short baking tutorials that were popular on social media. The 100-second film featured 16 cupcakes, each with ingredients specific to an opponent on the schedule—buffalo sauce for the Bills; clam chowder for the Patriots; etc.
And with that, an NFL tradition was born. Over the next half decade, more and more teams worked to one-up each other with their schedule release videos. Now it’s all 32 franchise. The schedule release day has become one of the most important days of the year for people who work in an NFL team’s social media, marketing or ticket sales departments.
Some teams spend months—and tens of thousands of dollars—to craft their final product. When it goes well, it can go mega-viral. When it goes poorly, it becomes an internet laughingstock (or requires an apology, evidently!).
In Friday’s Club Sportico column, four reporters watched all 32 videos from this year’s drop, rating each from 0-10. It’s a full power rankings, from worst to best.
32. Arizona Cardinals — Club Sportico rating: 2.73
A lot of thought seemingly went into this, but I’m not sure anyone stopped to ask, Why? (Jacob Feldman)
If you feature mascots, it’s basically impossible to get anything less than a 8 from me. I gave this a 3.9 (Eben Novy-Williams)
As of 9:30 a.m. ET this has 883 likes on Twitter… the next lowest team has 2.6K (Lev Akabas)
31. San Francisco 49ers — Club Sportico rating: 2.83
Cool intro, then everything is downhill (Feldman)
30. Jacksonville Jaguars — Club Sportico rating: 3
I assume the haircut is fake. I hope the haircut is fake. It appears the haircut is not fake. But does it actually matter? (Novy-Williams)
You can see the rest of the rankings, read the reviews, and yes—watch the videos—on the Club Sportico website via this link.
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