If you watched last night’s episode of The Simpsons on Fox instead of the blowout on Sunday Night Football, you probably noticed a familiar voice: ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
Here’s a brief synopsis of the episode, entitled The Longest Marge.
Marge and Mr. Burns fight for the soul of a brash young football prodigy.
Schefter voiced himself in his NFL insider role, reporting on the whereabouts about the “brash young football prodigy” (named Grayson Mathers) in question.
https://twitter.com/TheSimpsons/status/1477828691916906496
This leads to Marge getting an invitation for “the sports channel’s awards show” (clearly, the ESPYs), which Homer calls “the sportswardsies” and describes as “the one night where pro athletes finally get to thank their agents.”
I got a kick out of so many little things in this episode: the Michigan-logo blocks behind Schefter in his video hit, the ticker with betting odds (of course), the ridiculous callouts during Mathers’ speech at the sportswardsies (hard seltzer! Instagram influencers! Celebrity boxing!), and the other categories at the awards show (including, but not limited to “best press conference meltdown,” “least racist team name,” and “least funny State Farm ad”).
Simpsons executive producer Matt Selman also tweeted out an in memorium pic of John Madden, who voiced himself in a season ten episode (which also featured Troy Aikman, Dan Marino, and Pat Summerall, airing after Super Bowl XXXIII on Fox).
— Matt Selman (@mattselman) January 3, 2022
Anyway, while The Simpsons might not be the cultural force it once was, it’s still cool for a familiar voice to pop up on an episode. The amount of call-outs to the sports and sports media industries were also pretty great.
[Photo via Matt Selman]
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.