The Billionaire, the Billboards and the Star of the Worst Ad in Sports History (PTFO Vault)

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Pablo Torre: Okay, so hello, it is me, Pablo, entering, invading even your ears because I have done something I have not done before, which is take the advice of someone who once told me that if people wish to support you financially, if they wish to support your journalism, your very strange future of journalism, meaning your newsroom, your ambitions, your desire to investigate things people don't want you to investigate, you should let them. And so I am. On Substack, my newsletter, at www.pablo.show, we'll put a link in the show notes of this episode, I have turned on paid subscriptions. And if you didn't know I have a Substack, guess what? It's free, and that's still there for you, and it's worth it. But the paid subscribers who support this show and us will get legitimately cool, personalized benefits to come. We will make it worth your while. We are figuring out here at PTFO our post-DraftKings future. And, more good news on that front, I hope, to come. But in the meantime, pablo.show is where you sign up. Click the link in the show notes. Help support us, please. Thank you, thank you, thank you on that front.

Pablo Torre: And this episode today is a hand-picked episode from deep inside the PTFO vault that we sincerely hope you enjoy. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. And today, we're going to find out what this sound is.

[Sound clip from commercial: "I touched it. I touched the ball before it went out, coach."]

Pablo Torre: Right after this ad.

[Ad break]

Pablo Torre: I have this issue when I go out and I talk to people in real life. And they're like, "So what do you do?" And I have to explain what my show is. And I've settled upon a summary, which is basically I use journalism to solve mysteries that are technically about sports.

Zach Schwartz: It's a good way to put it. It's a very good way to put it.

Pablo Torre: I know I just recently started calling myself a journalist because I produced some stuff. And then I did social media and made memes for people for a long time.

Zach Schwartz: But the real lead of your bio now is Zach Schwartz, guy who is truly unparalleled in a very specific obsession about the worst commercial in the history of sports. My wife said, "That's when I found out you're a real sports pervert is when you were trying to find this guy and how obsessed you were with it." It was very early on in our relationship and I had to find him.

Pablo Torre: I want to explain what this commercial is because it's not really selling a product, I guess. It stuck with me, the ad. I remember seeing it in the wild, on television, obviously, before it started going viral. It ran all the time, especially during March Madness. If you Google the term "worst commercial ever" in quotes on YouTube, this is right there in the first couple results. It's over a million views on that video alone. There are many, many more. It goes viral seemingly all of the time.

Zach Schwartz: I feel like we should just play it.

Pablo Torre: Yeah.

[Commercial audio plays]

Narrator: Any high school gym in America sort of looks like this. We see the scoreboard to start the game. It says 63-65, nine seconds left.

Zach Schwartz: Oh god.

Narrator: We see the team in the white jerseys on a fast break, uncontested, easy dunk.

Zach Schwartz: Yeah.

Narrator: Here comes the trap. They're bringing a press trap. Quick ball goes to the sideline, which is not really where you're supposed to throw it in that situation.

Zach Schwartz: No.

Narrator: We see a player, white, tip the ball out of bounds. The important part is the ref didn't see the ball go off the kid in a white jersey. Coach calls his time out. "I got the perfect sideline out of bounds for this. I'm gonna cook here." They all go to the huddle to get the play.

Zach Schwartz: Yeah.

Narrator: The player who we think tipped the ball out, but they didn't call it on him, has this very guilty look on his face. He has a truly, this is like the dictionary definition of a hang dog look. His eyes are as big as saucers, his lip is basically quivering. He is looking up apologetic, seemingly for what he's about to reveal.

[Commercial dialogue: "I touched it. I touched the ball before it went out, coach."]

Narrator: "Come on, Alex. The ref did not call that. You gotta be kidding me, Alex. It's the championship game. Talk to him, coach."

[Commercial dialogue: "I touched it. It's their ball."]

Narrator: His teammates are furious. Quite upset. A kid with acne is as mad at Alex as a person can be.

Zach Schwartz: That's that Accutane rage.

Narrator: "How's it going, Alex?"

[Commercial dialogue: "Sorry, coach."]

Narrator: And the coach gives Alex the, "You know what? You do what you think is right. Good call. Sportsmanship. Pass it on." And we see Alex brought over to the ref to snitch on himself. And the commercial ends with a "Sportsmanship, Pass It On" message.

[Commercial dialogue: "Values.com, the foundation for a better life."]

Zach Schwartz: It feels like a commercial about sports made by people who have never seen sports before.

Pablo Torre: Yes.

Zach Schwartz: It's like, "This is what you should do," as if this is a plausible thing that anybody in that very specific circumstance would ever actually do.

Pablo Torre: Totally.

Zach Schwartz: And there's so many other ways to do this ad that would be plausible. Like someone sets a really hard ball screen and you run over and help the guy up. That's sportsmanship. But no one's snitching at this level. If anything, the player's turning to the other guy like, "I totally tipped that to the opponent," and walking off. You're not telling the ref that.

Pablo Torre: And just to give a sense of the level of obsession that people have had with this specific scenario played out this way. I heard Ron Rusillo and Bill Simmons talk about this at one point a couple years back. And then the player looks at Coach. He's like, "Coach, it was off me." And Coach is looking at him being like, "There's a real lesson here. A teaching moment." And the whole team's looking at the kid. And then the kid goes up to the ref for the first time in the history of anything where he goes to the ref, he's like, "Hey, it was off me." And the ref's like, "All right, ball's the other way." And then it's like, "That's the lesson." And I think it had to have been a religious thing.

Zach Schwartz: For bounty towels?

Pablo Torre: Or it was for towels.

Zach Schwartz: Yeah, it was one of those. One of the two things.

Pablo Torre: And people have been fascinated with this ad for years. You've never seen this ad. I remember it, but it was, what, 10, 15 years ago? Who's to say?

Zach Schwartz: Wow.

Pablo Torre: Scholars have argued it's timeless. TikTok captions, because it's obviously made its way over there, include things like, quote, "They definitely jumped Alex in the locker room." A lot of those. And the cultural spectrum on this extends to Barstool Sports, which has labeled this with a headline, quote, "March Madness commercial about sportsmanship features the biggest nerd ever." And the write-up says, "Fuck Alex. Alex deserves to have all of his clothes thrown in the shower." End quote. It just recirculates because everybody is cringing and then choosing to dunk on this incredibly implausible morality play. And God, Alex kind of became the lightning rod for all of it. And so for you, when did you begin to wonder, okay, everybody keeps talking about Alex.

Zach Schwartz: Yeah.

Pablo Torre: Who is he? When does that question first enter your mind?

Zach Schwartz: So I used to host this podcast for Wave called Out of Pocket. And it was Josiah Johnson and LeJetron Jenkins, two guys who are very good at NBA Twitter. And the whole center of all this is NBA Twitter. Anyone that's spent any time on NBA Twitter knows this ad. It basically goes viral every six months. So we were doing our show. Wave had just brought in Paul George. Paul George's show is blowing ours out of the water. And I'm like, "I got to find a guest for our show that Paul George could never get for his." So I was like, "What's the most viral basketball thing that people would be like, 'Oh my God, you found that guy,' and it was Alex." It became pretty clear as soon as I started looking into this myself that Alex was not eager to be discovered. That's where the journey sort of started. I was like, "I'm going to do it for our season finale episode." I think I had three weeks. Like, "I'll find him."

Pablo Torre: That's so much time.

Zach Schwartz: It took a lot longer than three weeks. It took, I think, like two and a half years basically to find him.

Pablo Torre: How did you start your quest to find Alex?

Zach Schwartz: So first it was reverse image searching his face and seeing if I could find anything off of that. Because maybe the reason no one's done this video or found him is because they weren't using the modern tools that we have today. Didn't work. So then, for those that don't know, IMDb is a database where you can look up actors for movies. They have something similar for actors and commercials. So I was like, "Okay, I'll use that." Nothing. Couldn't find anything there. I started reaching out to friends of mine that directed commercials in LA, like, "Hey, is there a database or a casting director you could put me in touch with?" And they kind of were like, "From an ad that long ago, no one I know would work on it." And so, okay, let's see if the charity can help. So this charity, this foundation, which again, in the commercial, it's flashed on screen to the very end, "The Foundation for a Better Life" at values.com.

Pablo Torre: Values.com, yeah.

Zach Schwartz: When you start to look into this website, what do you begin to see? There's just not enough information out there about the foundation. There's no interviews or articles. And it kind of triggered this siren in my head, like something weird is happening here because no one talks. No one's ever written a profile about the foundation or what they do. The website, for the most part, looks like it was designed in 2011 and just left.

Pablo Torre: The text on the website, Zach, it's so anodyne. I'll read it off of the site right now. They say, quote, "We choose values we hope most individuals would find encouraging and relevant. Then we provide an uplifting message based on each value in an effort to encourage people to bring out the best in themselves." And they go on, "As a nonpartisan, nonsectarian organization, we carefully design our public service messages to have general universal appeal." And then they say, "The foundation's small staff worked with a network of writers, art directors, and production professionals." And none of that is very helpful.

Zach Schwartz: No.

Pablo Torre: None of that is giving us an actual detail as to, like, so what do you guys do here?

Zach Schwartz: And so, I called them. It's one of those calls where you put on the nicest voice. "Hi, my name's Zach, and I have an obsession with this really famous ad that you guys made from a long, long time ago." Yeah, this ad that I definitely haven't made fun of online with millions upon millions of people exactly like me. And I was like, "Can you please just help me locate the actor?" The secretary was very kind. "I would love to help you. What a neat project. Unfortunately, I can't release any names. You basically have to write the CEO and get his consent and he'll release the information to you." So then I emailed the CEO and he was really dismissive. I read his message. He's very like, "I'm not releasing the name to you. Sorry, go away."

Pablo Torre: And that made you more mad.

Zach Schwartz: Oh, yeah.

Pablo Torre: So then I'm like, "What is this foundation? Why are you being secretive? Why are you trying to hide who this person is?" So I did the next logical thing and I pulled like 13 years worth of their tax records.

[Ad break]

Pablo Torre: So the limited research that I have done compared to your mountain of deep diving, Zach, the first thing you realize when you research the Foundation for a Better Life on YouTube is that Alex is not alone. Because apparently, there is a whole catalog of commercials beyond simply the story of Alex and sportsmanship that are about stuff like not shoplifting CDs.

[Commercial audio: "Come on, man. Just do it quick. No one's watching. The other one, too. Good job. Do the right thing. Pass it on. A message from the Foundation for a Better Life."]

Pablo Torre: And then there's also this one that I wanted to play for everybody, because it's called Umpire.

[Commercial audio: "My father was a great hitter, but he knew that life was about more than just one game. Who you are today and who you'd like to be. And no matter the decision, there'll be one more coming through. Oh, he was so safe. The umpire has called a man out who was safe by a zillion miles. So when that umpire made a bad call that ended the game for dad and then needed help with his car, my father made the right call. Helping others. The right choice. Pass it on. A message from the Foundation for a Better Life."]

Pablo Torre: And so who is the person behind these ads, Zach? Who is the person that the secretary and the CEO unhelpfully in the end would not connect you to?

Zach Schwartz: His name is Philip Anschutz. He is a billionaire. And he's been a billionaire for a very long time. Forbes magazine has their list of the wealthiest Americans, and four Coloradans make the top 400. They got money. Number one, as a surprise, Philip Anschutz, the wealthiest person in our state, with a net worth of $16.9 billion. That makes him 45th for the USA.

Pablo Torre: Only?

Zach Schwartz: Only. CNN called him the richest American you've never heard of. Fortune also called him the greediest executive. He started running his dad's oil business at the age of 20, made his money drilling, fracking, also ran Union Pacific Railroad.

[Audio clip: "As an adult, I've spent my business career working on companies and in industries that have always been firmly rooted in the West, opt-in companies that are quite historic in nature."]

Zach Schwartz: And then, things that maybe are more in our lives than oil and railroads is that he owns AEG, the Angelus Entertainment Group, who does Coachella. They own Crypto.com Arena. And he's also managed to scoop up a few different sports teams.

Pablo Torre: Right. LA Kings, LA Galaxy.

Zach Schwartz: And then he's financed movies, Chronicles of Narnia. He did the movie Ray. He's kind of everywhere, but you have no idea that he's there because he is truly one of the most behind the scenes billionaires ever. He has his name on the championship trophy in Major League Soccer. And yet I have never until talking to you for this episode thought, "Who the fuck is that guy?"

Pablo Torre: I found it very interesting that this person who has Coachella, which is about as godless of a place you can go legally, also pushes these very conservative, God-forward, church-forward messages.

Zach Schwartz: And so that was very interesting, kind of as I dove deeper and deeper and found out about the different groups that he was financing and funding and some of the initiatives that they were behind.

Pablo Torre: Yes. So just to tick off some of them here, the Federalist Society, which is a very famous, historic at this point, conservative and libertarian legal organization. He's a big donor to them, it turns out. The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank. Anschutz is also a big donor to them. He also appears in New York Times headlines, such as, quote, "Neil Gorsuch has web of ties to secretive billionaire." The billionaire being Philip Anschutz. Neil Gorsuch, aforementioned, being the Supreme Court justice now. This goes back to the 2000s, I guess, when Anschutz and his companies hired said future Supreme Court justice as their outside counsel. He is simply, Zach, one of the most conservative owners in all of sports. He's given to Republican candidates. And Anschutz has reportedly funded anti-gay ballot measures, anti-union, anti-weed, anti-science. There's a lot of things that he's done over these years. And you're kind of like, okay, so the Foundation for a Better Life is sort of just like the diet version of those messages, if you will. He's sort of stripped off all the nasty parts that he's doing over on the side there.

Zach Schwartz: The part that I do need to say, I guess, for legal reasons, is that Philip Anschutz is the type of guy also who does not grant interviews. The New Yorker, by the way, has reported previously that he does not even use a cell phone or email. But he also declared that reports about his donations to homophobic political organizations were, quote, "fake news and garbage." And he indicated that he stopped funding said groups, which, to his apparent surprise, did support such causes.

Pablo Torre: But as much as he is trying to not actually be heard in public, we did find a bit of rare video of this man. This is at the 84th annual U.S. Conference of Mayors. It was 2016, and it's a translator who is translating for the Dalai Lama. And next to them is Lady Gaga. Here is Philip Anschutz actually speaking out loud.

[Audio clip: "You have the leader of one of the world's great religions. You have a world-class entertainer. And then you have this obscure business guy. And it's unlikely that we're discussing kindness, of all things, not a very precise term."]

Pablo Torre: So if you're wondering how rich Philip Anschutz is, he has the kind of money where Lady Gaga and the Dalai Lama are just chilling on stage listening to him talk about sportsmanship or whatever.

[Audio clip: "Things like fairness, trust, learning, perseverance, love, patience, optimism, humility, confidence, civility. These are universal values that transcends race and religion."]

Zach Schwartz: I like that he had to go into his coat to take out the values that he wanted to specifically name. Like, brother, you can't just name like loyalty, sportsmanship, honesty, respect off the top. You had to go to the note.

Pablo Torre: Yeah.

Zach Schwartz: But all of it is to say that, yeah, the diet religiosity of this meant for broad appeal. It feels like a motivational college dorm room poster. That's what this whole thing is. All the ads read very much like the poster of the cat hanging from the tree and it's like "Hang in there." All the ads kind of read like that. And this whole operation that Anschutz has funded, it seems like their mission, if nothing else, is to be as omnipresent as they can be.

Pablo Torre: Yeah, it's billboards, radio ads, TV ads.

Zach Schwartz: The billboards were really mocking me and seeing them everywhere, seeing them on Santa Monica Boulevard near the 405. It sort of led me on my spiral where I felt like Gyllenhaal in Zodiac, where it's just like, this thing is sort of taking over my life to a degree that it really shouldn't.

Pablo Torre: There's this wonderful one that Shaq is a part of. He's holding a basketball, wearing a cap and gown, and it looks like he loves civility.

Zach Schwartz: Yeah, I mean, it says perseverance. He's holding a basketball like he got his doctorate's degree in basketball, which he did too.

Pablo Torre: But in your defense, just psychologically speaking, the foundation did release the following statistic. The campaign has apparently aired in more than 200 countries. Nielsen says that the ads at one point had more than 10 million impressions each day on U.S. network television. And then Current Affairs Magazine estimated that there were once as many as 10,000 billboards, Zach, across the United States. Apparently, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, it is the most widespread and successful PSA billboard campaign in United States history. They're everywhere, and their reach for these campaigns is so impressive. And I reached out to a friend of mine that worked in advertising, actually for Viacom for a long time. He did TV ad sales. The way he kind of broke it down for me is that, you know, we talk about the Alex ad running during March Madness. Well, those spots for March Madness could be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so he kind of gave me a wide range of what they could be. Like, you know, something like late at night could be in the tens of thousands of dollars to a March Madness spot that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. So these spots are obviously very valuable. They're running all the time. Because the foundation doesn't have some huge operating budget to go out and buy ad times, I was trying to figure out how they're getting these ads on billboards or on TV. And the way it works is if you as a network have ad inventory, you could take that and donate it to them and write it off on your taxes and basically say, "Hey, that inventory that I gave away was worth a million dollars, a hundred thousand dollars, a couple million dollars. Good on me. Pat on the back. I did my thing. I'm writing that off on my taxes as a network saying, I made this wonderful charitable donation." And so that's sort of what this foundation has become, is that it's sort of a way for people to write off, "Hey, I did this wonderful deed," without having to do research or find charities to actually go approach.

Pablo Torre: Somehow tax write-offs on a big poster underneath a kitten, not as inspirational.

Zach Schwartz: And I think part of it that frustrated me was that while I understand the messages and it's important to teach people about perseverance or honesty or being truthful — we are a pro perseverance podcast, yes, for the record — it's important and I'm not saying it isn't, but shouldn't that be going to a foundation that's trying to help get people clean water? There are just so many things out there that are bigger issues in my mind, then, you know, "Hey, I'm really happy Shaq got his degree in perseverance." But I need more.

Pablo Torre: So this is where I should jump in to say that Philip Anschutz's company, the Anschutz Corporation, did decline our request here at Pablo Torre Finds Out for an interview with the 45th richest man in the world himself. And that the executive director of the Anschutz Foundation also didn't respond to messages that we left at a phone number and also an email address that were provided by the Anschutz Corporation. Also, for the record, neither the Foundation for a Better Life nor its president, the guy who runs the nonprofit behind all of those pass-it-on ads for sportsmanship and love and learning and so forth, responded to our multiple requests for comment, which also included a detailed list of our questions. But what we found out, thanks to the years of tax returns that Zach Schwartz had pulled, is that these organizations are all, in fact, intertwined and saving seven figures via tax deductions in the process. In 2021, for instance, the Anschutz Foundation gave a $2.4 million grant for general operating support to the Foundation for a Better Life, whose tax returns that same year listed nearly $2 million in production costs for TV commercials and billboards and other ads under the heading of direct charitable activities. And even more specifically, the promotion of, quote, "quality values for all individuals, regardless of their race or religion." It's a line which may now sound familiar.

[Audio clip: "These are universal values that transcends race and religion and politics."]

Pablo Torre: All of which is to say that the other thing being passed on here beyond these values is tax benefits. Because yes, also the networks and the billboard companies that broadcast these ads, they also get to deduct the fair market value of that ad slot from their taxes. But what all of this paperwork and uncovering all of this accounting really did for us was something even more important for the purposes of this episode. Remember, months earlier, Zach had started this whole quest by calling up an ultimately unhelpful secretary. And now he had these documents, documents with all of these details that wound up pushing Zach in what felt like a new direction in his search for the whole reason he was here in the first place. Alex.

Zach Schwartz: So I've got their tax returns in front of me and there are production company names on some of these tax returns that they've filed. And my process was take the name on the tax return, put it into LinkedIn, take the name on the tax return, put it into Instagram. And in doing that, I found two former employees and just DMed both of them and was like, "Hey guys, very odd question here, but I'm trying to find this person. Can you help me?" And one of them got back to me. He said, "I'd love to help. I wasn't working on that ad campaign or I wasn't there at that time, but I know someone who can help. They've been there for forever. I'd love to connect you. Give me your email." So I get in an email thread with them and they sent me right back to the original secretary.

Pablo Torre: Oh no.

Zach Schwartz: And at that point I was sort of embarrassed because I was like the secretary definitely thinks I'm a weirdo. So it's very much back to square one. Huge bummer. Really thought I was moving in the right direction at that particular moment. I was like, "I have to go to Twitter and ask them for help for this because I need some sort of closure on this." And part of me not wanting to tweet it was because I was worried someone else would beat me to the story.

Pablo Torre: To be very fair to you, it is absolutely a journalist's last resort when they are beating their head against the wall and are like, "Fine. What does the internet have for me?"

Zach Schwartz: It killed me. Because I was like, "All right, I'll wave the white flag."

Pablo Torre: You remember getting that message and being like, "Fuck, how did I not have the story ID already?"

Zach Schwartz: So I put out there, "Okay, this is an odd request, but can anyone on here help me find this actor from the famous sportsmanship basketball ad?" And 29 minutes later, a motion graphic designer for the Las Vegas Golden Knights replied and said, "Might be former player, now current assistant coach at the University of Denver named BJ Porter."

Pablo Torre: Wow.

Zach Schwartz: I mean, my hands were shaking when I got that one. I go to the Denver page and I'm looking, and it looks a lot like him, 15, 20 years older. I'm like, "That might be him." And then I go and I click on his Twitter and he was following me already. He'd been following me the entire time.

Pablo Torre: The answer was actually following you while you were searching for him.

Zach Schwartz: And the best part, I reached out and he agreed to meet up.

Pablo Torre: By the way, that is perseverance.

[Ad break]

Pablo Torre: Want to get your hands dirty for a good cause?

Narrator: Volunteer with Gardeneers and help support students in Chicago's South and West Side schools as they learn to grow fresh food, care for gardens, and build healthier futures. No gardening experience needed. Just your time, energy, and a desire to help local youth thrive. Best of all, you'll be making a direct impact where it matters most. Sign up to volunteer today at gardeners.org.

Pablo Torre: And current athletic director at a private school in Orange County, California, putting you and BJ Porter, slash Alex, in the same room at a podcast studio in LA where you guys finally got to meet each other in person. What was the moment like when he walked in the door?

Zach Schwartz: I was so happy to finally get to meet him. Levels are all good. Great. He's 35 now. He's got a bit of scruff. You may not necessarily recognize him initially as Alex, but got a big, bright smile. Truly one of the nicest people you will ever meet.

BJ Porter: I want people to know about me. I'm a chill, simple guy.

Zach Schwartz: His best friend and best man in his wedding was a guy that I worked with at Arizona State.

Pablo Torre: Wait, what? This is now a little creepy, Zach. Did he know you? Had you ever actually met him before in real life?

Zach Schwartz: We hadn't met, but we had been in the same room a couple of times. So he played basketball at Portland with my friend Luke Sikma. This is of the basketball playing Sikmas.

Pablo Torre: Yes, Jack Sikma's son. Amazing.

Zach Schwartz: So when Portland would come to LA and play Pepperdine or LMU in their set schedule, my whole family would go to the game. So I was in the stands. BJ was on this team, and I had no idea.

Narrator: [Audio clip from a game broadcast] Oh, Wally throws down the oop to BJ Porter. Thanks, man.

Zach Schwartz: This is in January of 09. So memory's a little foggy. This is before I went to Arizona State, which did some damage to my brain. But as for the question of how this basketball player becomes the basketball player that we became obsessed with, how he becomes Alex, how did BJ Porter get the worst role in the history of sports commercials? He was a child actor.

Pablo Torre: You did?

Zach Schwartz: Yes. So just basically from the age of around 12 when we moved out to Utah. He talked a bit about having to prioritize hoops over acting, but he has some serious acting credits to his name as a kid. The acting credits that child actor BJ Porter has to his name include...

BJ Porter: I actually was involved in another kind of like bad basketball scene. Double Team.

Zach Schwartz: That's a win.

Narrator: [Audio clip from "Double Team"] Girls, bring it in here. Game time. Let's go. Gather in. Teamwork.

Zach Schwartz: There was that. There was an episode of Touched by an Angel with Scott Baio.

Narrator: [Audio clip from "Touched by an Angel"] Check it out. Mixed drugs all night, plays baseball all day. Old American guy.

BJ Porter: I actually was a child named Jamal, and during that time, it was kind of like with police brutality.

Narrator: [Audio clip from a police drama] Mommy! Ah!

BJ Porter: So what basically wound up happening was my mother was at work. I got spooked, and I called the police department. They come in, and they accidentally shoot me.

Narrator: [Audio clip] Oh, God, I shot a kid. Paul, I shot a kid! Call an ambulance. Go!

Zach Schwartz: So he's got those roles. He's a senior in high school, and it's pre-basketball season, which is sort of important for eligibility, and this is pre-NIL. So you obviously can't be paid once you're in your senior season of the sport you're going to go play in college.

BJ Porter: My agent reached out, talked to my father and my mother, and said, "Hey, we think this would be a good opportunity for BJ. We know this is the last one that he would be able to do."

Pablo Torre: And how vivid is BJ's memory now of that day?

Zach Schwartz: His memories of the actual shoot were very clear.

BJ Porter: It was funny the whole entire time. If you watch it, I'm trying basically not to laugh.

Pablo Torre: I was going to say.

BJ Porter: I'm looking like I'm trying not to laugh because my cousin, who was actually my teammate at the time, he's the biggest jokester ever. And he's laughing the whole entire time. He's like, "Hey, Alex, Alex," the whole entire time, like behind the camera a little bit. So it was fun at the same time.

Zach Schwartz: It was this wild family affair where BJ becomes Alex. BJ's cousin is the teammate that kind of shoulder checks him.

Narrator: [Audio clip from the commercial] How's it going, Alex? Sorry, coach.

Zach Schwartz: All the players in the huddle that had speaking roles are BJ's teammates from high school basketball. It's like the guy that's like, "It's a championship game." The guys who very plausibly hated this kid's guts were actually his real-life friends. Friends and teammates and some family.

BJ Porter: My dad, they wanted him to do the basketball scene.

Pablo Torre: Oh, so they wanted your dad in it.

BJ Porter: Yes, yes. My dad actually is the coach on the other team who does that.

Zach Schwartz: And ironically, his dad has this unique role in the whole shoot where apparently the original script was even worse than this.

BJ Porter: It was actually supposed to be something worse. I can't remember what it was, but my dad had to change it a little bit because he was like, "A basketball player would never do this." His dad had to go to the producers and be like, "This is how I would try to fix this mess of a thing that you guys have come up with."

Pablo Torre: Wait, it was worse before it became the version we came to know?

Zach Schwartz: It was worse, and unfortunately that original is lost to time. So this pretty dramatically changes everything if you were to rewatch it now through the lens of what you've reported for us. The haunting decision that forced BJ Porter into hiding. The acting required when it came to him having to give his confession that in fact he committed the crime. It's him. It was him the entire time. The ball went out of bounds off of Alex. What does he recall?

BJ Porter: It's my favorite moment from sitting down with him where he kind of says, "The best part is I didn't even touch the ball. I did not touch the ball."

Pablo Torre: You did not touch the ball.

BJ Porter: I did not touch the ball. This whole thing is a lie.

Pablo Torre: Yeah.

Zach Schwartz: Yeah, let that be a lesson about the magic of Hollywood. This is all a lie. There were multiple takes. The take they ended up using, he didn't even touch the ball. And it's funny because if you read the YouTube comments, there are people that actually point this out saying, "He didn't even touch the ball."

Pablo Torre: Yes, he admits he did not touch the ball. So just to be very clear about this, the whole point of this ad is that the ball went out of bounds off of Alex. In the commercial, we don't actually see it going off of the real-life BJ Porter's hands in the scene. This is the story of this ad in a nutshell. Of course it didn't actually happen the way that everybody thought it did. In the Foundation for a Better Life cinematic universe, it's pretty perfect. So, how long did it take from production and filming to release? When did Alex actually get to see his work?

Zach Schwartz: It took about a year and a half. So he went through his football season, his basketball season. He gets to Portland. The first time BJ actually saw the ad, he was watching Law & Order with his teammates on USA Network, as most college athletes do, trying to pass the time. And there it is.

BJ Porter: I'll never forget the first time I actually watched it was with my teammates. And we were sitting there and it pops up and I was just kind of in shock. I was just like, "Oh." And I was like, "Yeah, that's me." And they're like, "Wait a minute, that is you, right?" And I was like, "Yeah." And it was just kind of one of those things where we just laughed it off. Like it wasn't as big of a deal during that time because it was just like, "Okay, this was just something that was just getting started."

Pablo Torre: As somebody who watched a lot of Law & Order in college with his roommates, the idea that you'd be watching an episode and be in a commercial that would then render you the victim in an internet murder mystery, where you have to go into hiding as a result. You truly cannot script this, Zach.

Zach Schwartz: No. And it would be so cool to get to be in an ad in college and be like, "Guys, that's me." But then the crux of this ad is so tough for him. I can't imagine.

Pablo Torre: Yes.

Narrator: [Dramatic voiceover] In the sports criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups. The memes and the people who dunk on them.

Pablo Torre: So just to set us in internet time in the history of our culture, Zach, this is 2008. BJ Porter is trying to be a real life actual college basketball player and this commercial comes on. And now we're beginning to see the spread. I think he probably got his first inkling of it when Portland goes to play at Gonzaga.

Narrator: [Audio clip from a game broadcast] BJ Porter into the game now for Portland, number 24. Guy who brings energy to the pilots.

Zach Schwartz: I mentioned being a basketball sicko myself. There are plenty in the kennel at Gonzaga games. Those are diehard college basketball fans.

Narrator: [Audio clip from a game broadcast] Free with the ball. Sikma backdoor. And free throws coming for BJ Porter, a sophomore out of Leighton, Utah.

Zach Schwartz: And one of the kids in the stands yells, "You look like the sportsmanship kid." And if you know about Gonzaga, when you go there, especially during that time, that's when the Kendall craziness, that's when they had the zombie nation right before you play. And we're right there warming up.

BJ Porter: It's like, "Hey, you look like the sportsmanship kid."

Pablo Torre: Did your heart sink?

BJ Porter: It kind of did because me and my other teammate Jason Hannibal kind of laughed. And Jason's kind of like, he would be like, "Yeah, that is." But I was like, "You better not."

Pablo Torre: So as this is now being noticed in specific instances by these college kids who are also presumably watching Law & Order with their friends in their dorm, when did it feel like virality had come to pass?

Zach Schwartz: So he ended up transferring to Weber State. He gets there around 2010.

Pablo Torre: Yes, the home of Damian Lillard.

Zach Schwartz: And they were teammates. They were teammates at Weber together. And this is sort of where it starts to, like Twitter introduced this video. And that's kind of where the problems start to arise for our good friend BJ here.

BJ Porter: I just never forget, I walked into the locker room one time with my teammate and he's just dying laughing. He was like, "Man, they're roasting you. They're going after you." And I was just like, "What's going after me?" And he showed me the video of it and all the comments. And I was like, "Wow, this really is kind of starting to take a turn a little bit."

Zach Schwartz: They're dying at the comments on the video.

Narrator: [Reading comments] "Alex, the kid who reminds the teacher about the homework she forgot to give out." "If this was real, he'd be benched for the season." "This is why bullying exists."

Zach Schwartz: Yeah, I just looked up the comments today and someone wrote, "Sounds like something Drake would do."

Pablo Torre: Damn. Getting roasted unto eternity. Which is all to say, Zach, that you found BJ Porter, the guy who played Alex, who played at Weber State alongside Damian Lillard. And one of the people who remembers vividly this very true fact pattern happens to be Dame Lillard, who we sent a correspondent to interview in Miami.

Damian Lillard: One day we had class and we was all sitting in the dorms. And I don't remember exactly how the conversation came up, but it came up. We was like, "You're the person that was in this commercial. You know, you said the ball went off you and it came up." And we stopped calling him BJ and we started calling him Bobby because it's like, "Man, you're a snitch." You know, like, you in that commercial, and it was a joke from there.

Pablo Torre: We got the vibe while talking to Dame that he didn't co-sign Alex's coat of honor.

Damian Lillard: I've never been in that situation, but if it came down to it, I'm cheating. I'm not. That ain't going to be a moment where I show sportsmanship. And I think that's why he got clowned a lot for it. Even to this day, when a commercial come on, I'm telling my teammates here, "Man, I played with him in college." So it's like a forever joke. When we first started getting on him about it, he was like, "Man, I know." Almost like he looked back at it like, "Man, if I would have known it would have turned into this, I probably wouldn't have did it," like that type of vibe.

Pablo Torre: Oh, my God. And that's what's so fun about this ad. We as people who consume basketball know this ad. But the people that are the greatest basketball players playing right now also know this ad. That's how engrossed in the basketball culture it is. Doing better promotion than Philip Anschutz could ever have dreamed of. But the whole thing, as BJ Porter is making his way through college and his basketball journey, as he's trying to be a real player, how did he deal with this? How did he deal with the attention that was already obvious to him?

Zach Schwartz: He's a very good basketball player. And I think that's the part that's funny with all this. These people like, "I'd give Alex buckets. I'd cook Alex." And BJ's sitting there like...

BJ Porter: What would you say to any of those people? Please come try.

Zach Schwartz: He was a very good shooter. Very good player. He plays at Azusa Pacific after his time with Dame at Weber. Even while there, the coach in film would put his picture up on the projector and say, "Nice going, Alex," and things like that. The ad hung with him. He told me a story when we sat down that he gets engaged and he's at Disneyland. At some point they were at ESPN Zone with his family and they look up and there's the ad all these years later playing on the TV at ESPN Zone.

Pablo Torre: Right. He's trying to start a family. And meanwhile, Alex is still watching him.

Zach Schwartz: Even that day, the ride operator sneaks up to him and whispers, "Hey, I touched it."

BJ Porter: I was like, "What do you mean?" I kind of looked at him. And he goes, "I touched the ball, coach." And I was just like, "All right, you're a funny guy."

Pablo Torre: At a certain point, it must be the case that his own kids, now that he's like a grown man, also are pointing this out to him.

Zach Schwartz: His kids have seen the ad. The friend that I know that's their godfather, who's a coach in college actually right now, showed them the ad. Took out his phone and said, "Hey, you got to see what your dad did. Let me show you this thing. Your dad was a star." And played it for him. So my daughter the whole entire time is like, "Daddy, you're in a commercial. Daddy, you touched the ball. Daddy." And my son's like, "Daddy, why did they call you Alex? I dislike someone."

Pablo Torre: All of which is to say that he could not escape this at home, at the happiest place on earth, in any locker rooms, on the internet. It's enough to make someone become a recluse, truly.

Zach Schwartz: He deactivated his accounts on all social media at one point because he went into coaching. That's such a necessary tool for recruiting that his coach at Denver was like, "Hey, you have to reactivate your social accounts to reach out to kids." So he kind of got forced back into this place where it's constantly being brought up.

Pablo Torre: Right, which brings him back to you, following you. And just to complete the circle here, the beautiful part of this story to me, the symmetrical part of the story, is that BJ Porter became a real-life basketball coach. He became the other person in the commercial that haunts him. And I guess my question near the end here is, how does Coach BJ Porter view Alex? How would he handle a kid who did what he himself did in this ad that he can never escape?

Zach Schwartz: He, grinning through a grin, said to me, "Thank you for your honesty. And there's a reason why they have refs and refs are supposed to do their job. So whatever the refs let them decide, let them decide." It's such a perfect summary on the whole ad and kind of his outlook on life in general.

BJ Porter: I asked him, "Hey, if you were going against Alex, what would the scouting report be?"

Zach Schwartz: What's Alex's scouting report?

BJ Porter: Physical. Knock him around. He'll lose you the game.

Pablo Torre: What I feel like I found out, Zach, what I found out thanks to your reporting today, is what actual sportsmanship in the age of the internet actually looks like. Which is far more vivid now, thanks to BJ Porter, the embodiment of that principle online, than it was in the ad that started that literally had the word "sportsmanship" in big letters trying to drill into us. Values.com, totally.

Zach Schwartz: I mean, his whole outlook on it, even asking him, "Do you regret doing it? If you could go back in time, would you still do the ad?" And he's like, "Yeah, it's a part of who I am. I'm Alex. It's like an alter ego."

BJ Porter: So it is.

Zach Schwartz: It's awesome. So that's what I'll say too. It was very special to have him sitting across the table from me and lean into the microphone and say, "I am Alex."

Pablo Torre: It's so rare to have a story about a child star who gets eaten by Twitter and comes out on the other side being like, "I think I'm better for this."

Zach Schwartz: Totally. He's a very profound and awesome dude. I was very glad to have gotten to know him and find him.

Pablo Torre: Zach Schwartz, you're now free from a journalistic prison of your own devising. And all I can do now is shoulder check you off of my show and tell you earnestly, nice going, Zach. Really nice going.

Zach Schwartz: It was an honor. Thank you.

Pablo Torre: This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metal Ark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

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