David Booth with the Red Wings in January 2018. Jan 22, 2018; Newark, NJ, USA; Detroit Red Wings left wing David Booth (17) celebrates after scoring a goal against the New Jersey Devils during the second period at Prudential Center. Mandatory Credit: Ed Mulholland-USA TODAY Sports

Pro hockey player David Booth spent last season with the Detroit Red Wings after a couple of seasons in the KHL, but the 11-year vet is currently a free agent. Despite a long NHL career that spanned four franchises, Booth is probably more well-known to the general public for a YouTube video he posted in 2012 that showed him baiting and killing an American black bear. While the practice was legal in Alberta where it occurred, it was and still is banned in British Columbia and 18 U.S. states. The controversy caused Booth to remove the video a few days later. Since then, you might remember him as the husband of former beauty queen Ashley (Durham) Booth, who was featured on the second season of the Canadian reality series Hockey Wives. The couple was also named in a suit involving an exploding BBQ at a rental property of theirs in 2017.

All of which is to say that when Booth does pop up on your radar, it often isn’t for great reasons. That is very much the case this time as Booth decided to weigh in on Nike’s new ad campaign involving fellow free agent pro athlete Colin Kaepernick.

The campaign boasts the slogan “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” Many critics have taken to using a semantic argument to say that Kaepernick hasn’t truly sacrificed, at least compared to those who lost their lives or have no money. Booth, however, went a different semantic route on Twitter Wednesday evening, saying that the literal phrase doesn’t make any sense.

Obviously, Nike’s ad campaign is meant to exist within the context of sports, and not as a literal piece of text applied to any situation. No one ever looked at “Just Do It” and thought it was a terrible slogan because it implied giving free reign to everyone to do whatever they want. And as such, plenty of people had a field day dunking on the nature of this complaint.

Despite the fact that quite a few people responded to Booth with reasoning, questions, and articulated responses, he ignored those and tried to get out of the mess above it all.

Obviously, Booth is being pedantic but some of his responses also veer into territory that really had nothing to do with the initial point, which of course reveals the bigger issues at play in Booth’s mind (though someone should remind him that hockey is for everyone).

And he also capped off his evening with a reference to a different kind of slogan that you were probably expecting.

MAGA, which stands for Make America Great Again, is a slogan that’s open to wide interpretation and implies that America is currently a terrible place to live and there is only one solution to returning it to some former place of glory. Strange that someone would want to associate themselves with that kind of logical fallacy…

[971 The Ticket]

About Sean Keeley

Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Editorial Strategy Director for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.