Yesterday, some anonymous hero forwarded a casting call to Awful Announcing, who in turn posted it. The casting call was for a series of school-specific ESPN college basketball commercials; the conceit was to have a call center representative call up fans and encourage them to watch basketball. It should be noted that ESPN wasn’t directly responsible for it - the project was outsourced. Shortly after posting this casting call, Awful Announcing was told by ESPN that it was being retracted. Why? Well, in short, the author of the casting call seemed to lack a basic grasp of the English language or the world at large.

This is the role carved out for the University of Memphis:

MALE. What can we say about Memphis? He’s a southern BLACK kid, really culinary and polite. He’s artistic, and draws comic books really well.

Aside from the hilarious “he’s from Memphis, of course he’s black” tone, the description of the guy as “culinary” is the funniest thing here. “Yeah, this guy, he’s polite and he pertains to cooking in the kitchen.” This is the role they have in mind for Louisville:

MALE. Louisville is very true to place. He’s short. He’s HISPANIC. And one day he hopes to carry on in proud Louisville tradition and race thoroughbreds.

The person who wrote this evidently lives on the coast and regards the Ohio Valley region as flyover country. I get where he/she is coming from. When you look out the window of an airplane, everyone looks short.

Finally, here’s Oklahoma State:

FEMALE. She’s a fun loving girl, Oklahoma born and bred. Decided not to travel out of State so she should be closer to home. She’s a flirt. She’s a hot chick.

It’s possible that I’m just not well-schooled on casting-call vernacular. Maybe it’s supposed to be written on a very base level, more concerned with communicating simple descriptors than actually demonstrating command of the English language. But seriously, is this a casting call or the transcript of a seven-year-old attempting to describe each member of the Burger King Kids Club to his mother?

To complement this strange worldview, the entire text is rife with misspellings. I actually take comfort in this. In the year 2008, a person can possess both wholly inarticulate writing skills and a job description that involves communicating through written word. This tells me that our economic state, or at least our job market, isn’t so bad after all.