Throughout their careers athletes are coached and critiqued, asked to duplicate the “correct” approach. But the pregame ritual is one of the few outposts in the world of sports that offers athletes complete freedom to express themselves. For some it’s a quiet, contemplative moment. For others, it’s prescribed pandemonium.

Adam Wadsworth and I developed this insight for Powerade, along with the tagline “Whatever you do to get up for the game, stay up.” From there, we scoured the globe for the most striking and interesting real world examples. As critic Barbara Lippert noted in Adweek "Knowing these acts are true makes each bizarro exercise resonate more powerfully."

One of the rituals we discovered and filmed—involving a Korean basketball team, a shaman, and a severed pig’s head—was deemed too interesting for American television (it reportedly aired in Asia).

To the best of my knowledge, this was the first ad campaign to feature pregame rituals. All the successive emulation has left us duly flattered.