UFL Welcomes Fans To Be Shirtless Paint-Sufficed Stalkers

The UFL season got underway last week, which you obviously already know based solely on our wall-to-wall coverage here on the SB Nation main page. Of course, not everyone is as enthralled by the UFL as we pixel stained wretches. So the league had to pump out a couple of print ads to build the inevitable excitement that will one day soon sweep the nation.

And I understand what they’re going for this ad concept. Fans - even presumably UFL fans - are willing to go to outlandish lengths to be closer to the sport over which they obsess. The NFL has done this tons of times with fans hiding out in laundry hampers just so they grab their favorite player’s jersey. And I guess this is marginally more clever than those. Plus, it’s got a cute visual reference to Chinese artist Liu Bolin, who paints himself into mundane backgrounds so that he is only barely detectable.

But why oh why must they be so deeply unsettling? I suppose, if pressed, I would say part of it is the fact that the disguised fan in each ad is shirtless. And that two of them are also wearing very tight shorts. Oh, and the maniacal smiles. Those, too. But I am curious if the painted fan here came with gameplay designs already scrawled on him and hoped it matched, or that the coach simply couldn’t tell the difference between writing on a dry erase board and a human being. I feel like Andy Reid would make that mistake all the time.

You see the bulge? Yeah, I see the bulge too. That is some really unfortunate lighting, my friends. I secretly wish I were one of the people in the picture whose job it is not to see the bulge.

I suppose this is the most benign of the trio. The fan is still shirtless, but decidedly more relaxed and very kind given his age and the fact that he went with will a full pair of pants. He’d probably just assume watch you sleep than try to grope you in a dark alley. Which is nice for him. The issue with this guy, however, is that he might be in the most easily disrupted of hiding spots. Unless you have Andy Reid as coach, in which case he’ll simply try harder to lift the cooler lid.