NFL Films segment on the Phish and Russell Wilson connection is great

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Alternative post title: "Of course we're going to post the Phish and Russell Wilson NFL Films segment."

For the unfamiliar, Phish is a rock band from Burlington, Vermont and Russell Wilson is an NFL quarterback who plays for the Seattle Seahawks. The story of how the two came together for a NFL Films segment is a bit longer. The clip above does a really nice job of explaining the whole newish tradition in detail, but here's the gist of it.

Phish has been playing a song called "Wilson" for decades which begins with a call and response between Trey Anastasio's guitar and the crowd at the band's shows. The crowd responds with a chant of "Wiiiilllllll-son" and it almost seems like a perfect intro for a guy named Wilson at a sporting event.

I'm not sure why the Phillies utility man Wilson Valdez was never given the honor.

The band played the song last summer outside of Seattle and Trey joked that "we" needed to make the intro happen for the Seahawks QB at games in the future. But Seattle being a pretty hip place, people actually made the quasi joke come to fruition. And now it's kind of a thing and even ESPN's Mike Tirico talked about it on Monday Night Football.

And then a Phish geek who works at NFL Films had them do an entire show on it (probably just so he could meet and interview the band; smart).

As a refresher, many members of the band are big sports fans. Trey is a well-known Flyers fan. CSN did a segment on Anastasio's love of the Spectrum and the orange and black a couple years back which you can watch here. He's also been known to rock plenty of Flyers gear at concerts, including this Mike Richards' Winter Classic jersey at a show at the Wells Fargo Center.

Trey also has a pair of old Spectrum seats in his barn.

Archives: Phish on The700Level

[NFL Films 1, 2, | Jambase]

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