The Famous, Anonymous Athletes Of March Madness's Most Inescapable Ad

Every March, we see the same old faces: Calipari, Krzyzewski, Bo Ryan, Tom Izzo, often scowling, frequently frowning, sometimes, rarely, exulting. The faces of the young people actually playing basketball, however, even those being power-washed by coach-spittle, tend to register less, or at least less frequently. They cycle through, up, and out. And yet, every March, we see similar faces on our TV screens: the chipper visages, still youthful if no longer NCAA-eligible, grinning "Do we have spirit? Yes we do!" in those seasonal Enterprise Rent-A-Car commercials.

Enterprise, self-proclaimed possessors of said spirit, has been an NCAA corporate partner for a decade. As such they have the right to attach their ads to any of the some 80-odd NCAA Championships. March Madness, now at 21 days, start to finish, is the everlasting gobstopper of collegiate competitions, and where Enterprise truly gets its money's worth. If you've watched as much as half a tournament game this March—or last—you've seen the commercial. If you're a fan, you've seen it dozens of times.

Four years ago, for this special basketball occasion, the rental car company created their "We Played" campaign, which features Enterprise employees with NCAA participation on their respective resumés. The choice of Rusted Root's "Send Me On My Way" as soundtrack very much excepted, the concept bordered on commercial brilliance. Here were 30 seconds of pure synchronicity with the NCAA's well-established "will turn pro in something other than sports" mantra, and a way to broadcast the company's own former athletes—more easily empathetic than those high-risers on the hardwood, if only by tape measure—into the homes of those already predisposed to feel warmly about college sports. The ad was so successful that, two years later, Enterprise ordered a sequel, once again filmed in a Los Angeles warehouse outfitted to look like a sunny, shiny car lot.

Fittingly, this time around it's called "Spirit," and it's everywhere. If you're not on the way to the kitchen during the under-eight timeout you can spot two recent grads shouting "On Wisconsin!" by way of introduction. Men of sturdy stature hold up Missouri, UNLV, and Arizona jerseys. Two notably taller males palm basketballs: one exhorts on behalf of the Cobbers of Concordia College, the other for the Silverswords of Chaminade. Further cheers are raised for Huskers and Gauchos. One former college athlete holds a lacrosse stick so steadily it suggests a more youthful, more sporting American Gothic, sans farmhouse and farmer's wife. A man and a woman in business attire roll their hips on either side of, and in concert with, the Oregon Duck. Another Enterprise employee kneels beside a bulldog.

"That bulldog hated me," says former Mississippi State punter Andy Russ. "Oh my goodness. They couldn't get that thing to sit next to me. It had a trainer sitting right next to it, to keep it calm, because it did not like me one bit." There was no shared school spirit between the two—while that was the official Duck, Russ worked with a Los Angeles-based stunt bulldog, clad in a maroon MSU t-shirt.

Russ is a branch manager with Enterprise in Birmingham, Alabama. He joined the company 14 years ago this coming June after being cut from the XFL's Birmingham Bolts. His speaking part, in whole, reads thusly: From Bulldogs.

"At first they said, 'From Rebels,'" Russ says. "And I was like, 'I don't think I can say that. That's Ole Miss.'" Nineteen months after filming he still doesn't know for sure if the misdirection was an honest mistake—former UNLV Rebel defensive lineman Chris Eagen was also on set—or a southern California producer poking a little Egg Bowl fun at a punter's expense.

Perhaps Russ can take some solace from Jon Crawford, who has also been with Enterprise for 14 years. Crawford joined up after graduating from UCLA and a short stint as a show diver—like off a high, tiny platform into very little water—that took him to such exotic locales as both the Tennessee and Delaware State Fairs, and Raging Waters in the excellent San Dimas, California. "There's a little bit of professional money in it, I guess," Crawford says, "if a hundred bucks a day is professional money."

Not only were every one of Crawford's lines excised from the ad in the final cut, he was tasked with dancing—using a very liberal definition of the word—with the aforementioned mascot of UCLA's Pac-12 rival. It's Crawford's only appearance in the commercial, unless you count a blurry background noticeable only to friends, family, and those writing articles about car commercials. And yet, Crawford allows, it could have been worse. "I did a couple takes where I was doing push-ups, and the Duck was sitting on my back."

Thomas Welch, who works in Enterprise's Orange County Commercial Trucks division, is another Pac-12 representative. Welch played club volleyball at the University of Arizona; that's his jersey he's holding when he delivers his two words of dialogue: To Wildcats.

Despite the relatively short geographical distance from his daily life, Welch describes the whole experience as surreal. "You think about all the movie stars," he says, "and, I mean, yes, I know it was only a couple seconds, but it was definitely pretty cool."

Shi (pronounced Shy) Smith appears onscreen three separate times in that fast-paced half-minute. She first delivers a cheer for her alma mater, Jackson State, albeit one that's somewhat bludgeoned by the editing process. The full version goes something like "J-S J-S J-S J-S U-U-U, I thought you knew."

"Some people who've reached out to me, they're like, 'Why did you bark?'" she says. "I wasn't barking. I was saying U-U-U for JSU." When Smith reappears scant seconds later she's holding two trophies—she was twice team captain, and All-SWAC in volleyball—to deliver the spot's signature "Do we have spirit?" call.

While other heads may have turned for the bright lights within L.A.'s big city, Smith was captivated by the allure of craft services. "I'm a food lover," she says. "I was not expecting, when we got there, they would have this smorgasbord of food that they did. They had food trucks. That right there was just amazing to me. I was like, 'This is how people eat?' I cannot imagine if we were really big stars what it would be like. I just wanted to stay and eat.

"They had a killer omelet. I don't eat pork, so I got some turkey sausage on it with some cheese, bell pepper, onion. But it was the way that they crisped the bottom of the omelet. They flipped it over, so it was just like to die for. It was so good."

Smith's son, now four and presumably well-fed, recognizes his mother whenever she comes on screen. "It's the funniest thing," she says. "When he sees me he says, 'Mommy, I want to get in the TV with you.'"

The commercial's ubiquity also plays a role in the family life of Erich Smith, a/k/a the guy holding the lacrosse stick. "My father called me the other day," the ad's other Smith says, "he lives in San Francisco, and he said, 'You know, son. I don't even miss you anymore. I see you every ten seconds.'"

One of the commercial's younger talking heads, Smith is also one of its more memorable in that he appears twice and, by syllable—let's not debate whether a chanted "U" is a word—beats the other Smith, his only real competition as far as air time, by a score of 33 to 19.

"They say, 'Here's what we want you to say. Go at it.' And the camera's in front of you. I repeat the lines they told me to say. And then they're like, 'All right, try it with this emotion. Try it like this. Try it like that.' You have no idea what's going on."

Lacrosse Smith was on set a full five days, four days longer than the All-SWAC Smith. "That was when I started maybe realizing I had gotten a bigger role," he says. "I was supposed to be there for only two, and they extended my stay."

But if, as the commercial proposes, Enterprise hires more college graduates, year after year, than any other company, not all of those new hires are staying. Smith, who began as a management trainee after his graduation from Manhattan College in 2011, is one of those who left. "Spirit" was filmed in August 2013 and first aired on January 27, 2014; in the interim, Smith left Enterprise to start his own coaching business, One on 1 Lacrosse. He also serves as the assistant lacrosse coach at New York's Byram Hills High School, and plays for "three or four" different lacrosse teams, depending on the season.

Just over three years ago he took the New York City Firefighters Test and finished in the top ten percent. "I've just been waiting to get called. If I get called by the FDNY I'll be doing that as a full-time job, with One on 1 Lacrosse and varsity coaching on the side."

When Smith flew from New York to California for the shoot, he brought, as requested, not only his stick, but his lacrosse helmet, gloves, and Manhattan jersey. But there is a limit, at least on the film sets of Los Angeles, to the amount of verisimilitude desired. "They didn't want my lacrosse stick," he says. "It was too dirty."