Flores gets commercial boost for his Hall of Fame candidacy
It’s the natural order of things for former Raiders head coaches en route to the Pro Football Hall of Fame — advertise for a light beer and get measured for a bust to be displayed in perpetuity in Canton, Ohio.
In the case of John Madden, it took 25 years after he burst through wallpaper, arms waving fanatically, while hawking Miller Lite. The commercial aired in 1981, Madden was inducted in 2006. If there’s any justice, Tom Flores won’t wait more than another month. Twice denied entry to the Hall, Flores, 83, got a boost last weekend in a commercial for Coors Light.
The ad, which debuted during NFL playoff games and aired again Monday night during the Alabama- Ohio State game, is set at a private pool in Palm Springs. It opens with a narrator listing all the reasons Flores should be in the Hall of Fame, then asking why he isn’t. Flores, nicknamed “The Iceman” for his cool demeanor, just shrugs.
Then he suggests Coors put his face on the can.
“Way ahead of you, Coach,” says the narrator.
“It kind of lightens things up a little bit. I had fun doing it,” Flores said Monday in a phone interview. “If the voters haven’t made up their minds by now, something’s really wrong.”
Flores was the first Latino quarterback in the NFL. He was the first Latino head coach. He won four Super Bowl rings, two as head coach of the Raiders, another as a Raiders assistant, and the first as a player for
the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Hall of Fame vote is the weekend of the Super Bowl on Feb. 7. Flores needs 80 percent approval from a voting body of 48. While it’s not a rubber stamp, Flores won’t be going against currently eligible players. If he gets 39 votes, he’s in.
Flores said last year after his second snub he was contacted by a group interested in promoting his case. Coors Light, which has a sponsorship deal with the Raiders at Allegiant Stadium, eventually took up the cause. The end result was a commercial that properly portrayed the placid Flores much as the Miller Lite ad played up
Madden as the crazed coach stalking the sidelines.
Told by the narrator that his face already is on the can, Flores looks at the image — it appears to be from his coaching days — and coolly says: “I had more hair then.”
The comment is directed at Flores’ grandson, or more accurately an actor playing Flores’ grandson. As it turns out, Flores has a grandson who is an actor and wanted to play the role. But he was on the East Coast and COVID-19 quarantining made a trip to Palm Springs for the filming impossible.
“I had a lot of fun,” Flores said, “but there’s a lot of sitting
around. They picked me up at 7 in the morning and dropped me off at 4 in the afternoon. There’s a lot of sitting around when they change the set.”
Doing a commercial is a very un-Flores-like thing to do. He worked for Al Davis, who cast an imposing shadow over the organization. Flores wasn’t an ubiquitous figure like Madden, and his name won’t be associated with a video game any time soon.
Yet Flores was the perfect choice to succeed Madden as coach. He was calm, rational and unrattled by any situation. It was Flores who guided the Raiders on the
field through two of the most difficult transitions in franchise history — the trade of the immensely popular Ken Stabler to the Houston Oilers following the 1979 season and keeping his team focused on the 1980 season when the move to Los Angeles was announced.
The Raiders in 1980 became the first wild- card team to win a Super Bowl, beating the Philadelphia Eagles in XV in New Orleans, and then won again in XVIII over Washington in Tampa following the 1983 season as the Los Angeles Raiders.
In addition to his two Super Bowl wins and his status as the first Latino quarterback and head coach in the NFL, Flores can boast a 19-13 record against Hall of Fame coaches Don Shula, Chuck Noll and Bill Parcells.
Having been told twice before that his chances were good to be enshrined, Flores is hesitant to predict. He’s not sure he’d even be able to be in Tampa for the announcement because of the pandemic.
For now, all that is taking a back seat to the sight of a deadpan Flores sitting poolside with a Coors Light.
“My darn cell phone. I’ve got so many messages I couldn’t receive any more,” Flores said. “It’s full.”