The Internet is an amazing tool for research, communication, entertainment, etc. The list truly goes on. Undoubtedly one of the net’s best and worst aspects, though, is how long things can uncomfortably exist there, such as the video below, which plays the part of the prophet in terms of how former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle’s life is going right now. Check out this commercial from a past Super Bowl and try not to cringe.
For those who haven’t been paying attention to Jared-related news, it was just yesterday that Fogle pleaded guilty to traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and receipt of child pornography. He was then sentenced to, you guessed it, 15 years in prison. Well, 15 years and 8 months, but it’s likely no cake in history has ever has ever been decorated in that way, so we’ll just have to make do with this slice of half-irony/half-coincidence.
The commercial obviously wasn’t set up to reference future prison sentences, and was instead a celebratory ad meant to congratulate Fogle on sticking with his Subway diet for 15 years, You may recall he first rose to fame in 2000 in Subway commercials that promoted the diet he’d been on for a couple of years that had turned him from obese to relatively svelte. With his “look at my pants that are too big for me now” approach, Fogle became one of the most recognizable people in the ad world, and one of the few celebrities that could be identified by just a first name.
As time went on, Fogle was paired with different celebrities, some of whom also took on the Subway diet to lose weight. Several of them appeared in the commercial above. In it, we got to see The Office’s Brian Baumgartner, baseball star Ryan Howard, basketball great Blake Griffin and more. I’d love to see a new commercial where all these guys got back together and talked about what they currently think of Jared Fogle. Something tells me far fewer positive thoughts would be shared.
Subway officially cut all ties with Fogle after he entered into a plea deal over the large number of charges against him. It’s likely the company will attempt to get this commercial taken off the Internet at some point. But we’ll never forget this.
Here’s where I’d close out by hypothesizing something weirder happening in the future, but I don’t think it’ll get weirder than this, at least as far as Jared Fogle is concerned.
