NFLVideo

Your New Sunday Night Football Intros Star: The Chargers’ Atari Bigby

Usually, those player intro segments that run on the bottom of the screen during Sunday Night Football are of minimal interest. Sure, maybe a starter went to your school, and you either think, “Yeah, that’s right. My territory,” with a self-satisfied smirk as he lists off his name and your alma mater. Or you might plaintively wonder, “Why’d he just diss us?!” and start a frantic message board discussion of equally concerned fans if he mentions his high school instead. Maybe you just wait for someone to say “THE Ohio State University,” so you can resist the strong urge to throw something at the TV. Either way, beyond that, they’re not terribly gripping.

Usually, that is. Because sometimes, a player goes the extra mile and has a little fun with his intro. Think Terrell Suggs and Ball So Hard University. Or Jared Allen’s repeated claim that he attended “Culinary Academy.” And after last night’s Saints-Chargers game, we have another in the “creative player intro” fold: Chargers safety Atari Bigby. Here’s what he did:

University of Jah? I had no idea Bigby went to an Estonian school! How’d he wind up playing American football? And Rastafari High? Must have been founded by Lester “Rasta” Speight, of Terry Tate: Office Linebacker fame.

Honestly, though, good work by Bigby: the combination of the fake schools, the Marleyesque hair, the fact that he looked like he was barely awake while saying it, and that on top of everything else, “Atari Bigby” sounds like a fake name, this was maximum quirkiness packed into those precious few seconds. And re: the accent, Bigby’s originally from Jamaica, but based on this clip and this one, he has a very slight accent but one that only occasionally comes out, so that might have been part of the performance, too. Either way, a dedicated act. Pretty sure Ball So Hard University would take Bigby in.

Follow @glennrd