Why did The Good Place become obsessed with the Jacksonville Jaguars?

SB Nation

The formerly downtrodden Jaguars have won two playoff games and are headed to the AFC Championship game this weekend, yet nobody on the NBC comedy has ties to the Florida city and team that the character Jason Mendoza actively roots for. Writer/producer Joe Mande explains why Jacksonville was selected: “When we started writing it, we were like, what’s the opposite of a silent, meditative Buddhist monk? I pitched a kind of Steve Aoki, which became that he’s definitely from Florida. So what’s the funniest part of Florida? And I had just done a show in Jacksonville with John Mulaney, and everything about Jacksonville was cracking us up. It just so happened that the circumstances were that I had just been to Jacksonville, and it had a very profound impact on me. So we started talking about Jacksonville and just made it completely cartoonish.”