At a combined age of 51, Cliff Freeman & Partners' New York creative team Ari Weiss and Aaron Adler have tackled their first boards with the energy and tenacity you'd expect from a pair of love-starved pit bulls. Though the surprisingly easy-going duo has seen just one of its campaigns - God for Fox Sports' NBA - make it to air, 25-year-old copywriter Weiss and 26-year-old art director Adler are far from green.

They've been testing the limits of their respective mettle since their postgraduate days in 2000 back at Creative Circus in Atlanta, GA.

"We were the guys who got made fun of at school for working our asses off," recalls Adler. "We've always been into [work]," concurs Weiss. "We'd be the ones in school at night and on weekends, or we'd be at Aaron's place drinking and working on ads until four in the morning."

Indeed. While Adler/Weiss describe their joint career path as "a direct trajectory", it would be more accurate to say they have simply exercised extreme discipline - both in and out of school. Weiss has been running down the dream since his early college days when he took internships at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, SF, Arnold Worldwide, Boston, and Ground Zero, LA.

"Once I worked at Goodby and saw that 'this is what your job could be', I was all over it," Weiss says. Adler's path has been similarly singular, though the Phoenix native came into advertising via graphic design - which he found boring. By the time the two met at Circus, each had long known that advertising was where they wanted to be. "Baker Smith's Nike Skateboarder campaign got me into advertising," says Adler, excitedly recalling the 2000 campaign with the famous tagline: "What if we treated all athletes like skateboarders?"

Given Adler's muse, it seems kismet that Smith would direct the first boards the team would see to fruition. "For the record, we only want to work with Baker," says Adler mischievously, as Weiss chuckles appreciatively.

Although the God trilogy for Fox Sport's NBA has been met with considerable acclaim, the pair still seem surprised that "Hail", "Lightning" and "Wind" made it past their creative director. Asked how they won the chance to present the board, Weiss and Adler deliver a breathless, rapid-fire exchange:

"We had nine pages..."

"No man, it was 15 typed!"

"Yeah, we had 15 pages of ideas for the Fox NBA thing and we had checkmarked for Eric [Silver, CD] which ones we..."

"Not like it mattered to him which ones we..."

"Liked, but 'God' was like..."

"We were sooo surprised when they picked it because it's exactly what they would have told us not to do in school."

If finishing one another's sentences isn't enough indication of how much time these collaborators spend together, consider Weiss' admission that they have yet to take a vacation day since their arrival at CF from the DiMassimo agency late last spring. "We don't get burnt out," says Weiss. Adler jumps in to explain: "Because we're either busy, or we have downtime like we do right now."

So what do a couple of young creatives do while they're waiting for the next opportunity to present itself? "We drink. We play ping pong and do a lot of spec work," Weiss says. "And," adds Adler, "we try to get past the porn firewall at work."