If you have watched any TV lately, you’ve probably seen the new Priceline.com commercial.
The ad features pitchman Kaley Cuoco going on about great hotel deals and a sun-soaked poolside couple that just can’t believe their ears.
Their stay at the family-friendly Quick-Inn-Sleazy — I think that was the name of the place — could be up to 60 percent off? Mom announces, “We might just leave here with another vacation baby,” which grosses out her two young children, Paris and … Fort Lauderdale.
“At least it wasn’t Toledo,” Cuoco then tells the latter kid.
Ouch … I guess.
It was a harmless joke, and I suspect most of us smiled and moved on.
I normally would, too.
The only thing more eye-rolling than a Connecticut company and a Hollywood ad agency punching down on the Midwest would be taking real offense at their cloistered cluelessness.
I’ll make an exception this time, though, because I often wonder if Toledoans have heard so many of these tired digs — the ones mocking the idea of our area as a destination — that those of us who live here begin to believe them.
I thought of this again the other day as it relates to the University of Toledo and its tanking enrollment.
During a panel discussion at a strategic planning event for UT athletics, Board of Trustees chair Will Lucas said his hometown city and school have a problem.
“We have self-esteem issues,” he said. “Every meeting I go to … everybody says it, ‘We don't do a good job of telling our story.’ And that's a function of not feeling great about yourself. That's just what it is. People who are confident, they’ll tell you, ‘I look good today. I've got no problem telling you that.’”
Well …
Damn, Toledo looks good today.
It never hurts to step back and remind ourselves.
Toledo has its blemishes, same as any city, but there is so much more that is beautiful.
I could go on about all the reasons I love living here — my three favorite among so many: the people, the Metroparks, not sitting in four hours of traffic to get to work — but they are all right there in front of us. It is just a matter of seeing them.
While I did not grow up in northwest Ohio — I moved to town 13 years ago — I appreciate what Lucas means, as if the Glass City has a self-imposed glass ceiling on its tallest ambitions, the focus as much on what Toledo does not have as all that it does.
It can be as cynical as it is aspirational.
In the sports realm, I hear it every time I write about, say, Inverness Club’s chase of another major championship or the UT football program’s pursuit of national prominence.
Judging by half the responses, you would think I’m proposing that UT open a branch on Mars, not that one of the great golf courses in the world — and an engaged corporate community — can transcend its mid-sized market, or that the Rockets can kick down a door with loosening hinges.
Toledo football won the Mid-American Conference in 2021, cracked the national rankings last season, and just had a player (Quinyon Mitchell) selected in the first round of the NFL draft. In what way is it unrealistic to envision UT cracking the expanded new playoff as the top Group of Five team?
“What I see in Toledo is potential that sometimes when I say it to some people, it shocks the senses a little bit,” athletic director Bryan Blair said.
I think back, too, on the 2021 Solheim Cup, when a record 130,000-plus fans filled Inverness for the showcase event. The tournament was an eye-opener, and not just for all the visitors who raved about Toledo.
“One of the most interesting things going through the whole bid process was the naysayers in the community,” tournament chairman Richard Hylant recalled at the time. “There were people even on our own committee — one of them I kicked off right before the presentation because their attitude was so bad — who thought we were going to embarrass ourselves. They didn't think we could compete against New York, and San Antonio, and Columbus, and the communities we were competing against.
“Sometimes, Toledoans are our own worst enemy and not believing in our community and what we really do have to offer. That just has to go away. This community has a lot. We have the No. 1 park system in the nation. We have a (art) museum that's one of the tops in the nation. We have a zoo that's consistently ranked in the top five of the nation. We have the Great Lakes and Cedar Point. We have easy access from the Detroit airport and the highway system. The biggest intersection in the country is right here. There's not a lot to hang your head about.”
That’s exactly the thinking Toledo needs.
Its aspirations for more should begin with an appreciation and celebration of all that the community has in the first place.
It’s not for nothing that the largest online real estate website predicts Toledo will be the hottest market in the nation this year.
And I don’t mean hot as in uninhabitable, like, say Fort Lauderdale, which is experiencing 112-degree heat indexes … in May. I mean hot as in the place to be, with Realtor.com projecting home sales prices in Toledo — one of the most affordable markets in the country — will rise 8.3 percent this year.
It’s time to either come up with a new slogan — At least we’re not Fort Lauderdale! — or lean more than ever into the old one.
You will do better in Toledo.
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