NFL Pro Bowler Gets Big Backlash After Starring in Bud Light Ad, Battles with Critics
Somehow, some way, Roger Goodell’s NFL has a massive PR issue looming over the 2023-2024 NFL season — and spring training hasn’t even kicked off yet.
The NFL, no stranger itself to cultural firestorms, has found itself in another conglomerate’s firestorm thanks to San Francisco 49ers superstar tight end George Kittle.
The perennial Pro Bowler found himself smack dab in the middle of this raging cultural debate thanks to an otherwise innocuous ad for the beleaguered Bud Light.
(For the unaware, Bud Light has effectively tanked its business and angered swathes of beer-drinkers by associating itself with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.)
And as with most Bud Light controversies of late, this one appears to have begun on social media:
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On his Instagram account, Kittle (clearly denoting that this was a “Paid partnership”) posted a simple little advertisement showing him picking out an admittedly neat (at least to this writer) shirt for an evening out and, as he’s leaving his home, a friend holding a can of Bud Light is shown.
The tagline “Easy To Drink, Easy To Enjoy” — a sentiment most beer drinkers probably would’ve disagreed with before this Mulvaney debacle — is also shown briefly at the end.
Had this ad been for literally any other beer, Kittle’s Instagram post would’ve come and gone like any number of Niners quarterbacks since Steve Young retired.
But it wasn’t for any other beer. It was for the most toxic beer brand in all of America.
And that toxicity is a big problem for the NFL given that the beer is an inextricably-linked advertiser with the most popular professional sport in America.
Given that it feels like the NFL just shed itself of the anthem protest issues, here comes a beer brand that is about as reviled as it gets by everyday Americans.
Exacerbating matters is that Kittle, never one to back down from a confrontation, isn’t backing down from his endorsement of the downtrodden beer brand.
Kittle, who originally only commented “Favorite shirt, full fridge, can’t lose” as part of the ad, began responding directly to some of the more critical comments underneath his post.
Most of the comments under the post were negative, with comments ranging from calling this an “L” to calling Kittle a “sellout.”
According to OutKick, that last remark didn’t sit too well with the tight end.
“Been a bud light athlete since 2020 actually!” Kittle said in direct response to one Instagram user. “Talk about what you know not what you think!”
Look, Kittle may be technically correct with his rebuttal. The only thing he appears to have sold out on in 2020 is the fact that Bud Light is consumable swill.
As for the nuclear hot transgender issue at the heart of this, Kittle did seem to avoid that pitfall — for now.
But it does feel far more inevitable than unlikely that at some point in this season (when the NFL’s popularity and attention is at a fever pitch), an NFL player is going to have to directly confront whether or not he thinks men can be women through mutilation and drugs, due largely to that Bud Light advertisement.
And when that happens, the NFL probably won’t like what happens regardless of how that player responds.
If the player speaks up that transgenderism is a perversion of God’s intended will, you can be assured that any number of the Alphabet Mafia will rage about it.
If a player goes in lockstep with the LGBT agenda, it may as well be the national anthem issue all over again, given that there’s probably a strong overlap between the people who think there are only two genders and people who think “The Star-Spangled Banner” should be respectfully observed.
Buckle up, NFL fans. This is going to be a fascinating season.
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