vintage street & smith college football ad

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Vintage Ad #122 - Scoreline Man!

Look down there, buried in that pile of sports magazines!

Slower than a snapping turtle!

Less powerful than a broken-down Geo!

Able to push copies of the Football News out of the way with extreme pain!

It's a double chin! It's a cheap cap!

It's Scoreline Man!

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As the 1970s rolled into the 1980s, the number of handicappers ("experts" who promised to analyze sporting events, mostly football, to help their clients place winning bets) who advertised in the major college and pro football yearbooks rose rapidly. Services varied from phone lines providing the latest scores and quick tips, such as today's pick, to handicappers proudly showing off their luxury automobiles in Las Vegas to boast how their prowness for prediction made them wealthy. The proprietors ranged from dudes who later fled to Central America to the founder of the Psychic Friends Network (remember the Dionne Warwick informercials?).

These ads reached their peak in 1984, as handicapping companies snapped up newly-available full-colour ads. Cheap line drawings gave way to debonair businessmen, fans leaping from their Laz-E-Boys and busty babes. This Scoreline ad is one of the few that hints at being intentionally humourous. Our super-slob needs a phone badly - otherwise, he'll accidentally incinerate himself with his next cigarette.

Note the lesson in how to spell "Texas".

Source: Street & Smith College 1984 Football Yearbook 

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