By Guy Schoonmaker
If you were one of the millions of people who watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, you may have noticed a Northeastern student while watching the game.
He wasn’t on the field, but Northeastern senior Adam Zeisel is in a Nike advertisement that is being aired nationwide for the next couple of months. A former captain of the NU track team, Zeisel was told about an audition for a 20-25 year old runner by the captain of the women’s track team, Zara Northover.
Zeisel went to the audition in downtown Boston where his picture was taken and he was asked a few questions. The field was cut down from 100 to 10, and he was asked to come back so they could watch him run. His cell phone being broken, Zeisel thought he was cut from the group of finalists. When he was finally notified that he was selected to be in the commercial, he immediately went to film and the commercial was on the air within a couple of weeks.
After being notified that he had been selected to be in the commercial, Zeisel was asked to go to Milton for a day of filming.
“I was left completely in the dark,” Zeisel said, “all I knew is that is it was a Nike commercial and they wanted me to run.”
Cut from the track team two weeks prior to the audition, Zeisel had no idea it would turn out to be a blessing in disguise. NCAA regulations would have prohibited Zeisel from being in the Nike ad. “I guess everything happens for a reason,” Zeisel said.
During his junior year, Zeisel set a personal record each time he raced for the Northeastern track team. Going from captain to cut was a shock, but things turned out pretty well for the 22-year-old business major.
He was cut when coach Sherman Hart decided to only take the top two 1200-meter runners. Zeisel placed fourth.
“It was nothing major, that [cut] was just about speed,” Hart said.
Besides being on television every day across the nation, Zeisel is also getting a little money out of the deal. Every time the commercial is played on television, Zeisel gets paid. He also benefits from the ad being on the internet and being displayed at Niketown stores across the nation. When all is said and done, Zeisel stands to make over $15,000 from the commercial.
“I am going to give some to my mother and some to my brother,” he said. “Money is not something I worry about, if I need it, I’ll get it.”
He is helping out his brother, who coincidentally is an actor, so he can find some of the same success in the entertainment business.
Running in the woods with two other people, Zeisel is only seen for a few seconds in the ad.
“After we finished filming, they told me I might not be in it,” Zeisel said. There is a 30 second version of the ad in which Zeisel does not appear, but he is satisfied with being in the longer one. “All of this for one day of work, that’s not bad.”
