‘Cardinals receiver’ Rod Tidwell gets ‘A Football Life’ treatment

Before Larry Fitzgerald rewrote the Arizona Cardinals’ receiving record books, the most well-known wideout in franchise history wasn’t even a real person.

Rod Tidwell, the Cardinal portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, became a bit of a cultural icon.

In fact, the movie drew attention to a franchise that really wasn’t on the national radar at the time. The Cardinals hadn’t moved out of Sun Devil Stadium and hadn’t played in a Super Bowl at that point, so for them to bleed into the pop culture lexicon was new territory.

As part of the 20-year anniversary of the release of Jerry Maguire (for which Gooding won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), the NFL Network decided to have a little fun. They produced a trailer for an episode of their popular series A Football Life, in which the fictional Tidwell is the subject.

The trailer brought back characters from the movie, like Tidwell’s militant brother Tee Pee (played by Aries Spears) and agent Bob Sugar (played by Jay Mohr) to comment on him as if he were real.

It’s pretty fantastic.

Oh, and if you have the chance, go back on watch Jerry Maguire again. It may heal the sting of a disappointing season for fans of the Cardinals. And, it was the second-to-last good movie Cameron Crowe ever directed.

Attention Jerry Maguire Fans: Here is what happened to Rod Tidwell. #GMFB https://t.co/yr23fiwfeW

— GMFB (@gmfb) December 30, 2016

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