The 10 most annoying commercials of March Madness

Being forced to actually watch live television in an era of DV-R, NetFlix and straight-up illegal downloading can be a somewhat refreshing, but mostly sobering, reminder of what the days were like before you were able to avoid seeing the same commercials over and over again. And over. And over. If you've been a diligent March Madness viewer this year, by the time the First Four round was over, you probably already knew a handful of ads by heart, and you don't need me to tell you they are NOT as much fun to sing along to as "Happy" or "Drunk in Love." 

It only gets worse from there. It's a testament to what a cool thing March Madness is when you're still willing to sit through one of those NAPA commercials with Patrick Warburton as a talking paint can--which doesn't even make this list, incredibly--for the 70th time, because you just gotta know what's going on with Iowa State and UNC at the other end of the break. When you've seen some of these ads enough times that you get a sort of Stockholm Syndrome and want to find ways to start justifying their existence, that's when things really get scary. 

Anyway, here's the ten most horrifying recurring ads of this year's March Madness go-round. Relive the nightmares, and be grateful that you only have to sit through the Super Bowl once. 

10. Enterprise Rent-a-Car, "Spirit"

Nothing so terribly objectionable in the actual content of this one: "Rent our cars because our employees went to college" is kind of a weird selling point, but the Oregon Duck doing his crotch-swively thing is cute enough, and whatever, you have to have at least one commercial every NCAAs where a bunch of universities and team names get rattled off in rapid succession for some reason. May as well be this one. 

The real sticking point here is the soundtrack. For those of us who grew up in the era of the HORDE Festival, Rusted Root's "Send Me On My Way" has a particular and unique sentimental attachment, the sound of pure youthful innocence and wonder, a feeling that's managed to stay mostly uncorrupted even throughout its use in countless movies and TV shows of the past two decades. Do we really have to associate it with uncomfortably over-eager rent-a-car peddlers for the rest of our lives? 

After a couple hundred combined spins of this commercial over the last several years, we won't have a choice. Matilda must be heartbroken. 

9. Taco Bell, "Afternoon Delight"

Another soundtracking issue--if you're going to use a cliched and overused joke of a song to create a (frankly unsettling) comparison between sneaking away for a midday quickie to sneaking away for a Taco Bell "Happier Hour" bargain, may as well pay those Starland Vocal Band prices and get the original instead of some lame indie cover version. Considering that Taco Bell is a veritable dynasty when it comes to terrible commercials during big-ticket sporting events, though, only being #9 on this list is a big step up for them.

8. AT&T Commercial, "Network Guys - Office"

One of the bigger mysteries of the tournament thusfar is why AT&T has deemed these two dorky, uncharismatic tech dudes the new faces of the franchise, but the good news is that if that they keep going around throwing stilted pick-up lines at all of their moderately attractive female coworkers (INAPPROPRIATE WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT) they won't be around much longer anyway. Just bring back the super-dry dude an his focus group of five-year-olds, AT&T, those seemed to be working OKand were somehow way less creepy.

7. Coca-Cola, "The Sound of AHH"

Nobody likes "Little Talks" that much, Cello Guy. 

6. Southwest Airlines, "Seat Monitors"

This must be the first airline ad in the history of advertising to make the primary selling point a feature that they don't offer on flights. Like, yeah, we probably don't need seat monitors at this point in our commercial travel, and great that not having them means you can shave a couple bucks off ticket prices, but no one's gonna be like "Wow, what forward thinkers they have there at Southwest for not giving us our own televisions!" It just sounds kinda cheap, so may as well just lead with the cheap prices, no?

Plus, some of us actually relish the opportunity to watch We Bought a Zoo or King of Queens reruns or whatever as our inflight entertainment. We might not get the opportunity otherwise. 

5. Bud Light, "Up for Whatever"

Here's how this commercial always should have gone: 
 

Mystery Woman: "If I give you this Bud Light, are you up for whatever happens next?" 
 

Bro: "Does it include me drinking that Bud Light?" 

Mystery Woman: "...uhhh, probably?" 

Bro: "Pass." 

[Cut to Reggie Watts, Don Cheadle, Arnold Schwarzenegger and OneRepublic standing around anxiously, occasionally glancing at their watches.] 

4. Draft Day, "Legends" Preview

There's not a single person who watched this preview and didn't have the exact same reaction: 

"That's a REAL movie?"

EVERYTHING about it screams "parody that's going to actually turn out to be a GEICO commercial in the final five seconds." The too-perfect casting. The preposterous trailerspeak of the dialogue. The Requiem for a Dream-esque high-tension score and NFL Films-type voiceover. The quick cuts to office fires (??) and Kevin Costner turning around dramatically. The fact that THIS IS ACTUALLY A MOVIE ABOUT THE CLEVELAND BROWNS ON DRAFT NIGHT THAT PEOPLE ARE EXPECTED TO WANT TO PAY MONEY TO WATCH FOR PRESUMABLY NON-IRONIC PURPOSES WHAT THE HELL. 

If it actually is the "Tiny House" of sports movies, the big reveal has yet to come. Until then, it will have to do with being theSKIN of sports movies, a very different but equally legendary legacy.

3. Burger King, "2 for $5 Deal: Chris Webber"

The five most implausible Chris Webber-related elements of this commercial, in chronological order. 

1. As unlikely as it is that Chris Webber would attend a March Madness party with a bunch of Burger King-eating goons that actually yell out "YEAH!!! SCORE!!!" when their team makes a basket, if there was even the slightest chance he would, it would certainly be advertised (or at least whispered about) to the extent that if you did see a seven-foot-tall black man with a Chris Webber-like haircut wearing a Chris Webber jersey from the back, you'd probably have a pretty good guess of who it actually was even before he turned around.

2. Were Chris Webber to go to such a party, it seems rather unlikely that he would wear his own jersey. Look at the rest of those partygoers--hoodies, argyle sweaters, some flannels, but not a throwback in the bunch. The one guy in the room wearing a jersey is the guy who actually played at the highest level of college hoops--and it's his own jersey, which is probably a wearing-the-T-shirt-of-the-band-you're-seeing-type faux pas times about 1000? Way to blend in with the commoners, C-Webb. 

3. Chris Webber is not going to be impressed by a Burger King deal that offers two sandwiches for five bucks. Chris Webber has made nearly $180 million dollars as a professional basketball player and who knows how much more as an analyst and spokesperson; on the off chance he gets a BK craving, he simply calls up his accountant and has him purchase the Burger King franchise within the closest proximity. Two sandwiches for a couple bucks off is not gonna move the needle for this guy. 

4. Trading the privilege of letting a guy sit on your shoulders for half of a two-sandwiches-for-$5 deal would be like C-Webb signing with the Kings for six years and 600 bucks at the height of his basketball powers. The richest kings and queens of Europe barter half their fortunes for the opportunity to watch March Madness from such a lofty perch. No way this dude gets in for one moderately priced Big King. 

5. Nobody sandwich-toasts. After already taking a bite, seriously? Nobody. 

2. DISH, "Watch TV Everywhere with DISH Anywhere"

If you weren't already deathly sick of Rebel Wilson--and really, what's been taking you so long?--after hearing her have the "Dish?" "Deesh!" "Dish?" "ONNLEEEE DISSSSSHHH!!!" argument a million times with her stupid sneering co-worker in the first week of March Madness alone, that's gonna about do it for you and Reb. 

DISH really seems to be taking the approach with its recent ads that the way to ingratiate the product its selling into your subconscious desires is by having people with irritating voices say its name about 100 times per. Can't judge the effectiveness until the next time you're in Best Buy and find yourself naturally gravitating towards Dish products for reasons you can't quite explain or not, I suppose, but at the very least, it's not the most humanitarian of strategies. 

Plus, it's hard enough for talking, computer-animated kangaroos to get good office jobs in this country as is, without the media portraying them as argumentative, anti-social slackers. Way to perpetuate the stereotype, DISH. 

1. Audi, "Dues"

It's hard to explain just how insulting this commercial is. A bunch of miscellaneous vignettes of people doing...professional stuff, I guess?...while sing-talking lines from Queen's "We are the Champions," ending with Ricky Gervais biting his lip in the passenger seat of an Audi with the message "Whatever you do, stay uncompromised" supposedly providing the connecting tissue. 

It uses one famous person and one very famous song to tie together a totally thematically incoherent montage, with all attempts at humor or visual interest falling horribly flat. It's as artistically lazy as Gervais going "You know how it goes" instead of at least delivering the damn chorus line. And as bad as it is in its full-length version, it's ten times worse in the abridged, 30-second version that's been airing non-stop this March Madness--giving you just a couple lines of the Queen song and a couple examples of people doing stuff before going all "CARS!!! UNCOMPROMISINGNESS!!!" 

It may or may not be more annoying than KangaRebel Wilson or AHHHHHHHHHHHH CHRIS WEBBER, but its aspirations to some kind of artistic loftiness make it much more sickening. It's the anti-"Fritos on My Sub," and it must be destroyed.