Fast And Furious -- Mid-Morning Edition -- Nothing About The Bakken -- February 9, 2021

NASCAR race tonight: 6:00 p.m. CT -- Daytona. 

The market: who wudda guessed? Dow turns green. Barely. NASDAQ turns green. Russell 2000 green. Seven-day streak in the making? 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

From a reader:

Why is it wrong to call it the China Virus, but okay to call it UK variant or the South African variant?  Just wondering.

The headlines:

• Manhattan office supply soars to record as remote-working dominates;
• Tesla:
  
• excluding sunsetting emission credit sales Tesla still loses money, as it has every year in its 17-year existence;
• Tesla summoned by Chinese regulators over quality issues; The WSJ; at twitter;
• charging stations: 1;
• charging stations: 2;
  
• F-15EX flies for first time as USAF prepares for deliveries; 
• BP screwed;

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The Sports Page

Updates

5:43 p.m. CT: I've literally watched every sports talk show on television today, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and every show has led off with "the ad." Near the end of the day the Cowobys organization finally weighed in, saying it was an "oversight." LOL. That guarantees this story will continue into tomorrow. It will not end until Dak Prescott himself has weighed in and analysts have exhausted parsing his remarks.

Original Post

The most brilliant "ad" ever? 

The Dallas Cowboys commercial released today to encourage Dallas fans to buy season tickets.

This commercial -- 32 seconds long -- has been playing all morning on every sports talk television show. 

The "talking heads" are laughing at the ad, but again, there is no serious analysis, asking "why?"

The "controversy": the 32-second ad encouraging Dallas fans to buy season tickets does not include any footage of Dak Prescott, but Troy Aikman does make the cut.

The immediate question whenever an ad is released: who is the audience?

The audience for this ad:

• Dallas fans
• Dak Prescott
• the organization

Dallas fans:

• this suggests to me the internal polling showed there is no love lost between Dallas fans and Dak Prescott; 
• internal polling might suggest that as great as Dak Prescott is, he is no Troy Aikman; not featuring him in the ad will not hurt season ticket sales; 
• if there's one thing Texans pride themselves in, it's loyalty -- not just sports fans, but Texans across the board -- patriotism, loyalty -- holding out for more pay, shorter contract does not exemplify loyalty; Dak said he would stay with Dallas only as long as the pay reflected his "self-appraised" value;
  

Dak Prescott:

• need we say more?
  

the organization:

• this is the biggie;
• this ad has been playing nationwide all morning long; more exposure than the Dallas Cowboys could have gotten any other way; huge amount of exposure
• Jerry Jones: the Dallas Cowboys -- "America's team" -- this kind of exposure is priceless
• any other NFL team getting this kind of exposure just two days after the Super Bowl? Nope.
  
• Jerry Jones is the organization; is the team; the 32-second ad is about the Cowboys, not about Dak
• if the ad is about the Cowboys, no one is going to get higher billing than Jerry Jones

Bottom line:

• brilliant ad;