For athletes and their sponsors, an optimal relationship features the talent relating to the brand. For companies in fields such as footwear, apparel and energy drinks, finding a partner is pretty easy. For a field such as tortilla chips, it takes a little more research.
For Frito-Lay and Jadeveon Clowney, such an athlete-brand relationship is rare.
On Wednesday, Tostitos and Clowney, the Texans' defensive end/linebacker and former No. 1 overall pick, announced a partnership promoting "Lucky Bags," team-themed packages of Tostitos. It's a deal that has been a long time in the making -- more than two decades to be exact. Jadeveon's mother, Josenna, was a long-time Frito-Lay employee.
"My mom worked there for 20 years," Clowney says. "People don't know that. It was crazy. She'd bring home chips and dip all this time, so I can really say I was a part of it growing up. It was great."
Josenna Clowney used to make the roughly 25-minute drive from the family's home in Rock Hill, South Carolina, to the Frito-Lay plant in Charlotte. With Jadeveon's father in prison from 1995-2006, Josenna spent much of her time working at the plant, many times on double shifts, while her boyfriend and parents helped raise Jadeveon.
"I think she used to cook and do all the baking of chips," Clowney says. "She was in the back. She knew how to do all the seasoning. She worked her way up for a long time."
By the end of Josenna's tenure at Frito-Lay -- she quit shortly after Jadeveon was drafted -- she was in charge of machines as a processing technician, specifically overlooking Doritos.
"Frito-Lay has been good to me over the years," Josenna told NFL.com leading up to the 2014 NFL Draft. "I love my job. It's going to be hard to walk away from that, because that's all I've been used to for the last 19, 20 years. Frito-Lay has been good for [Jadeveon]. It enabled me to take care of him. He has not had a bad childhood."
Today, Jadevon can follow up on that, validating Josenna's 2014 thoughts.
"That's all she's always talking about," he says. "She misses her job. She's happy she's not working anymore, but she misses all those people from her job."
Well, Frito-Lay gave Josenna a chance for some déjà vu, making her part of their campaign with Jadeveon. In a Tostitos ad that went live Monday, Jadeveon is motivating bags of chips while Josenna motivates Jadeveon.
Like mother, like son.
-- Follow Jeff Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband. Like Jeff Eisenband on Facebook.
