We like our football players big. Big on the field, big in personality, and, preferably, big enough to fill out a pair of underwear very, very nicely. Tommy John appears to agree.
The underwear brand’s fall campaign has recruited three seriously impressive football players, Tristan Wirfs, Ted Karras, and Landon Dickerson, and put them somewhere you don’t usually find offensive linemen: on a fashion runway, dressed in little more than their Tommy John underwear.
And because apparently three enormous football players in their underwear wasn’t already enough of a gift, the campaign was directed by former football player and openly gay director Colton Underwood.
From the Locker Room to the Runway
The campaign, titled “Own Your Comfort,” comes from Underwood’s As Best Friends studio and takes the three offensive linemen out of their usual environment and puts them into a deliberately elegant fashion setting.
Instead of battling it out on the grass, Wirfs, Karras, and Dickerson are working the runway, showing off Tommy John’s underwear while bringing an entirely different kind of athleticism to the catwalk.
It’s an unexpectedly clever pairing. These aren’t traditionally runway-sized models, and that’s precisely the point.
The campaign embraces their massive athletic physiques rather than trying to make them fit a conventional fashion mold. Comfort, confidence, and individuality become the selling points, with three professional athletes demonstrating that underwear doesn’t need to be complicated to look damn good.
READ: Full-On Daddy Mode: Colton Underwood is One Hot Dad
Colton Gets His Full-Circle Moment
For Underwood, the project is more than just another sexy advertising campaign.
On Instagram, the former NFL player explained that the idea came from putting some of football’s biggest men into an elegant environment and letting comfort become the bridge between the two worlds.
He also pointed out the personal significance of directing athletes who reminded him of the locker rooms he spent a decade in.
There’s something particularly satisfying about that full-circle moment.
Underwood went from professional football player to openly gay public figure, and now he’s directing major campaigns featuring some of the same imposing physiques he once saw from the other side of the locker-room door.
Only this time, there’s a camera between them.
And About Those Behind-the-Scenes Photos…
Wirfs, Karras, and Dickerson clearly committed to the concept, and the finished campaign makes a convincing argument that perhaps we should be seeing considerably more football players on fashion runways.
The trio bring plenty of personality alongside all that muscle, while the polished setting gives the campaign a cheeky contrast to their rough-and-tumble profession.
Naturally, we’re now left with one extremely important question.
Colton, darling, where are the behind-the-scenes photos?
Because if the finished campaign already has three massive football players strutting around in their underwear, we can only imagine what happened when the cameras stopped rolling.
We are, of course, asking for purely journalistic reasons.
Mostly.