While toasting a friend's birthday on Saturday night, I found myself staring, mouth agape at a muted TV in the distance. "OMG that's totally the Stuff White People Like guy on TV!" First instinct would lend to thinking that the site's creator Christian Lander was taking it to the tube to promote the site's New York Times best selling book which just hit stores on July 1st. But oh no no -- I saw Xbox 360 controllers, animated footballers tossin' pigskins and absolutely no mention of Christian's name, site or book.

Upon further exploration, I learned that the spot is ad for EA's NCAA Football 09 video game released last week where (when actually watched with sound) Christian recounts a memorable play and professes his love for college football and the game. On the game's site, Christian (no last name mentioned) is featured as one of two (so far, at least) "Gamers" recounting game stories, and is also featured prominently on the home page.


[Watch the ad in better quality at EA Sports]

Without any obvious connection to his day job, Lander's appearance in the ad really must be simply for the love of the game. Or, you know, more reasons to get us internutters talking. After all, as mentioned in the ad, Christian probably is right about beating other gamers "on a regular basis" with all the new free time he's certain to have. So Christian, what's your gamertag? I wanna take you up on that offer (and yes, you'll beat me).

Don't miss the other Gamer commercial which features an even more memorable, web-friendly face. Is EA up to something with these sly internet references in their commercials for NCAA Football 09? I guess we'll have to wait and see what other Gamers pop up on our Tivos.