In a move surely cheered by the late James K. Polk, the Big Ten released an updated version of its map commercial this morning. It is as happy and dreamy as ever:
There was no guarantee the commercial would survive conference expansion, which is funny in hindsight, because the commercial originally started thanks to realignment. When the Big Ten added Nebraska, Maryland, and Rutgers, it needed to convince college sports fans that this was good. The best way to do that? An animation of the United States making our nation look like a picturesque version of the board game Life. There is no America more beautiful than the one conceived in what I assume was a Chicago ad agency’s animation studio. Continuing an ancient Western tradition, the Big Ten grabbed its constituents, pointed to the coasts, and said, “That looks cool. We should make it ours.”
Ten years later, they’ve done exactly that, and those snow-capped mountains…Wow. It’s gorgeous. I think they even got Mount Rainier and Mount Hood in there, though I think they made them tiny to make them stand out.
There’s a debate over this commercial, and the debate goes like this: We love it. We all agree we love it. The only people who don’t love it are the unhappiest haters in the world, the kind of people who hate donuts or kittens or children’s Christmas plays at school on the last afternoon before winter break. But would we love it this much had that Chicago ad agency (TeamWorks Media) not found the perfect song to accompany the original version? Basically, do we love the commercial because of the song, or do we love the song because of the commercial?
We know the song and the commercial must accompany one another. There is no other way for it to be. The commercial without the song is like Garfunkel without Simon. Nothing is inherently wrong with it, but it is alarming nonetheless. We know this because the Big Ten tried it, in 2021. The Big Ten tested it out. The result was catastrophic. Thankfully, the original song accompanies this version, and lord almighty, it is beautiful.
What is the song? It’s called “Silver Lining,” and it’s by a band named Guards. I can’t tell if Guards is still active. Their last Instagram post came six months ago, and before that, they hadn’t posted since 2022. Nobody updated their Wikipedia page to include the cover album they released in ’22, and attempts to find their official website eventually lead to guards.me, which redirects to something advertising gutter guards. Silver Lining came from the band’s 2013 debut LP, In Guards We Trust. That album received a lot of critical praise, but aside from the commercial, it never seems to have achieved much commercial success, even if it did also land a song in FIFA 14 (“I Know It’s You”).
If you’ve never listened to Silver Lining in full, here’s the Spotify link. Sometimes, like TV show theme songs, commercial songs aren’t as good as their best 30 seconds. Don’t worry, though. Silver Lining holds up.
“I wanna live forever on a boat out in the sea. I wanna build a happy home, a home for you and me. I wanna touch the silver lining. We’ll be shining everywhere. I wanna live forever. I don’t care.”
