Can Paul Rabil Make Lacrosse Sexy?

"Can Paul Rabil Make Lacrosse Sexy?" is one of the ten most popular stories this week from [www.nytimes.com]. This from the Fashion & Style section, not from sports.

Story on ex-Hopkins middle Paul Rabil ["the LeBron James of lacrosse"] talks about the tough times for players trying to earn a living in professional lacrosse. It's getting better with promotional days and even some modeling in ads: "What this means to Mr. Rabil is that he can eke out a living doing nothing but lacrosse." It also talks about lax player stereotypes: On the one hand, the article notes, Rabil grew up in a middle class home as son to a parochial school art teacher and a salesman (i.e. not as a pampered rich kid), but, "His teammates are mostly clean-cut J. Crew types; one had shown up to practice on that hot August afternoon complaining about the difficulty he’d had finding a place to dock his boat. [meow] Mr. Rabil, with his shaggy, dark hair, cast-iron jaw and brooding eyes, looked more as though he’d rolled up on a skateboard."

Max, this could have been your story, for better or worse.

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In the new "say Boom" Nike commercial I noticed the generic lacrosse player they showed (amongst all the various celebrities) plowing through 2 defenders and scoring a behind-the-back goal (in the pouring rain, no less) was wearing a red #42 jersey.





It's very brief between 0:22 and 0:25 seconds of the video.

Care to pontificate the inspiration for that, billhoward?

Me, pontificate?

Maybe it's artistic / poetic license on Seibald's single-handed-drive winning goal starting with the clock at 0:08 against Syracuse in the Carrier Dome. Maybe the roof leaks.

It's Seibald in the ad.

Weder
It's Seibald in the ad.

That's awesome. Great find, Weder. Makes me feel like the 10 seconds it took me to go back and freeze it on my tivo the first time I saw it to verify that it was #42 Red and my subsequent daydream was worthwhile.

He's a lot more confident when he's talking now, and that commercial is really cool. When we were in Freshman Writing Seminar, he wasn't too confident about himself, or maybe he just wasn't too confident about his writing. I wonder if he'll become a household name for Lacrosse the way some soccer players (Beckham, Adu, Donovan) carried their sport to higher popularity.