Drive in Dallas on I-35 past the American Airlines Arena, home to both the NHL’s Dallas Stars and the NBA’s Mavericks, and you’ll see a billboard with the above statement. Right under the statement is the words “Come into the cold” next to the Dallas Stars logo. Whoa! That’s quite a needle to the Mavs and the NBA ref point shaving scandal. Expect to see Cuban smoking about that one but, according to the Dallas Morning News, Mark Cuban is laughing over it saying “Good for them. It’s a fun ad.”

    We like it when one sport pokes fun at another sport. We like it that Door Number 3, an ad agency out of Austin, is creating billboards conveying the notion that NHL athletes are the toughest in an attempt to sell more tickets. We like it that they’re also jamming football with “One game a week? Does the N in NFL stand for Nancy?” And they came after baseball with “Maybe baseball should stop using the word sacrifice.”

    We like it. We say why stop there when you can take swipes at other sports. Here’s one for golf: “Golf is for wimps. Can’t even carry their own sticks.” That one shows macho hockey players handling their stick. How about ping-pong? Ping-pong is not too small a sport for hockey to compare itself too, is it? “Little tiny balls. Enough said.”

    Let’s carry this ad campaign even farther. Let’s go after the world’s most popular sport, soccer. We can say hockey is easily more violent than soccer: “Soccer: One head butt and it’s an international scandal.” Let’s pound it in. More soccer: “Preferred sport of terrorists.” That’s hitting them. How about even more soccer? “Watching little guys in shorts – Is that how you want to spend your summer?”

    This could spark an all-out ad war between the sports. Now that would be fun. Football could come jabbing back at hockey with “They play indoors yet are on the Outdoor Network. What does that tell you?”

    If that doesn’t sting them they can follow it with “They speak French. How tough can they be?”

    Then baseball jumps in with “We may take steroids but we still have our teeth” and then tops that with “You can see more scoring at a nursing home.”

    Then football jumps back in “You don’t see movies about a homicidal killers wearing   football helmets.” Then they show an ad where in the Halloween movies Jason is wearing a hockey goalie’s mask.

    Then hockey jumps back in with “No they don’t, but you do see a movie star who used to play football” with a picture of OJ Simpson in the background.    

    Whoa, whoa, hold it. Scale it back you ad guys. Whew, just in time. Hockey was getting ready to roll out a billboard with pig-shaped footballs, baseballs with smiling calf-skins, a bunch of pit bulls and a big hockey puck above the words: No animals killed for our sport.