Thanks to an ESPN marketing campaign, the Nimrods of Watersmeet have hit the big time.
Nimrods is the nickname of the basketball team at Watersmeet Township School, in the rural township of 1,500 in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The name inspired a series of commercials within ESPN’s “Without Sports” advertising campaign, which celebrates the social and cultural importance of athletics.
Two ads show the Nimrods playing and a third has 81-year-old Dale Jenkins, who played with the original Nimrods in the 1930s, singing the school fight song.
Each ends with the narrator asking, “Without sports, who would cheer for the Nimrods?”
The K-12 school has 228 students (including 77 high school students) and it has sold more than $35,000 in T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, coffee mugs and other items.
To top it all off, Jenkins and the school representatives will appear Monday on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
How about on the court?
At 17-5, the Nimrods had their best season in a decade but lost last week in the state playoffs.
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Edited by the Sports staff of RedEye.
