Notes From a Delinquent Writer

Notes If you are a member of the few, the (hopefully) proud, followers of this site: I’m sorry. Hopefully, I can reward your loyalty with some … thing. Here are some observations from the summer of 2010, as defined by the Cobb County (GA) School Calendar.

The Lebron Thing

Lebron James did the right thing for his “brand” when he held his press conference announcing his exodus from Cleveland on ESPN. He went to a pre-packaged All-Star team in the Miami Heat and made his “decision” a prime time spectacle. Lebron will win championships in Miami. People will forget the ESPN special. We will remember the highlights and the ad campaigns to come. Accountants and salespeople at Nike and the NBA were ecstatic. The “LBJ Decision ’10” drew a bigger audience than the prime-time NBA and NFL drafts. The show received higher rating s than any NBA play-off game before the finals. That’s good pub and good business. Like it or not, the The King is selling more and more shoes for Nike across the globe.

Not since “Must-See-TV,” has Thursday night programming garnered so much attention. Yes, the mainstream media crapped on it. Why? Because it was staged. The media was virtually ignored and certainly devalued, ESPN decided to chase ratings, credibility be damned. By the way, Jim Gray was the perfect moderator/ table setter for the one hour special. With a guy of Gray’s stature, ESPN and Lebron’s handlers did not even need to buy heavy duty the puppet strings. Just like with the Tiger Woods mea culpa months ago, the mainstream media was unnecessary and practically uninvited. Talking heads and beat writers were virtually ignored. They got their feelings hurt and cried like a kid that just lost his play date. Lebron James (the person) may have taken a little hit incredibility, but the Lebron James brand did not. His sponsors, the NBA and ESPN quietly loved it. Do you think Nike execs would have said, “Lebron, you really shouldn’t have brought so much attention to basketball in the middle of summer?”

The Kid Baseball Thing

Some six year olds can play baseball all summer anywhere, anytime. Parents should not encourage every six year old to play baseball anywhere, anytime.

The Kid Baseball Thing and Just Plain Good Baseball

If your team makes three errors in an inning it will hurt the ballclub. It doesn’t matter if the boys are six going on seven or twenty-six going on twenty-seven.

The Ozzie Guillen Thing

Ozzie Guillen is a lot like Charles Barkley. Some of the stuff those two say is dead-on. Often, they say what needs to be said. Other times, their musings are misguided at best. Should Charles Barkley have really talked about running for governor before he was a registered voter? On Ozzie’s latest rant, yes, Latin baseball players are treated differently than the Asian players. What Guillen chooses to forget is that the Latin players will do anything (including fake their age) to become a part of the baseball fraternity and escape the economics of Central America.

Some of these kids do learn to play baseball with yesterday’s tree limbs as bats and make-shift baseballs. These Latin players are almost always teenagers are more than happy to be paid to train on immaculate fields, receive state of the art coaching, buffet meals and live in air conditioned dormitories for the opportunity to play minor league baseball in the U. S. These players are not ready to play at the Major league level without the training and tutoring provided by MLB clubs.

Then there are the Cuban ballplayers which Ozzie chooses to forget. The Cubans are also Latin ballplayers. They are treated very similarly to the Asians because they are generally not available and desirable to the Major League teams until they are in their twenties and polished ballplayers. (Why spend money on someone too young, too raw, or too scared to defect a communist country). I have advanced well past my twenties (chronologically) and still would have second thoughts about defecting out of any foreign country. So, once the Cubans escape the Castro thing, they are more equipped to have their Miami-based agents (sweeping generalization) get them their money.

Finally, this blog will continue with more frequent, but equally, sanguine posts. Thank you very much for reading and commenting. The updates this fall will most likely be more digestible (shorter) moving forward. In the next days or week, there will be news about my new assignments writing about the religion of the south, SEC football.

Nike's Hole In One

Last week Phil Knight and his team of geniuses at Nike hit a hole in one with their controversial new Tiger Woods commercial. The ad was released just a day before Tiger’s return to competitive golf at The Masters. It features the voice of the (the subterranean) Earl Woods admonishing his son, Tiger. Everyone in the pop culture world, not just the sports world, was discussing the effect of the somber father rebuking his son for getting caught with his “hands” in the metaphorical cookie jar.

Warm fuzzzies be damned, the ad was brilliant. It dominated conversation on the eve and throughout all of Masters Week. Immediately the media focus shifted away from Tiger’s transgressions, as well as his return to competitive golf, and onto the advertisement itself. The subsequent discussions became an unbuyable amount of Nike publicity and chatter on TV, radio, internet, around the water cooler and at Starbucks. In fact the commercial and Tiger’s excellent performance, literal and hopefully not figurative, in Augusta has essentially shut the door on the revelations that stemmed from the “Thanksgiving Night Massacre.” Of course, that door is neither hermitically sealed nor dead-bolted, but it is at least temporarily closed.

In a conversation while watching the final round of the Masters, a friend complained to me, “Nike should not have done that. They should not have taken Earl Woods’ voice from some secret vault and made Tiger look so bad.” (The recorded quotes are actually from a recording of Earl speaking to/about Tiger’s mother, Tilda, in 2004). My friend was not taking an unreasonable position. Nor is the position of “Thank God, Nike put the cheater in his place,” unreasonable. So why did Nike “Just Do It?” Because Nike could. Because Tiger Woods, while inseparable from Nike Golf, is no longer the “boss” of Nike Golf.

Even with his admitted confessions, a vulnerable Tiger is hard to fathom. Nike Golf and Tiger enjoyed a meteoric, symbiotic rise in the sports world. He became the company’s pitchman when he was just 20 years old, way back in 1996, before Nike was really in the golf business. Essentially, Tiger Woods built Nike Golf.

Quickly, as each entity rose to prominence, the brands Nike Golf and Tiger Woods became co-dependent and inseparable. It is impossible to visualize the golfer without the swoosh and the swoosh without the golfer. Just take a look at Tiger on the course. Unlike other players on the PGA Tour, he does not bedazzle his wardrobe like the front quarter panel of a NASCAR vehicle. When you see Phil Mickelson, he has KPMG, Callaway and Barclays all over his “quarter panels.” The only logos on Tiger are simply Nike, be it the famous swoosh or his private label TW trademark. During tournament coverage, he has never been swathed with a Gatorade lightning bolt, or a Buick crest. Furthermore, Tiger’s equipment is also predominately Nike. While other players may play a Titleist ball with Callaway clubs, Woods hits a Nike ball with Nike clubs while wearing a Nike glove, a Nike shirt, a Nike hat, a Nike belt...

The relationship has been mutually and ridiculously profitable. Despite a slumping economy for luxury goods like golf equipment, Nike’s golf sales are over $680 million annually and maintain a huge slice of the golf equipment and apparel pie. For his endorsements and influence, Nike pays Tiger upwards of $20 million a year. If under any circumstance, Tiger left Nike and became a front man for Callaway or Ping, Nike would have to recreate the entire brand. To reposition (hip Madison Avenue terminology), would take a lot more than a few kitschy thirty second spots during the John Deere Classic.

More than the golf icon’s carnal relationships changed in the aftermath of the Thanksgiving Night Massacre. (In review, Tiger’s grill allegedly stopped a Nike Golf club swung by his wife Elin, and moments later, a palm tree and/or fire hydrant stopped the grill of the Woods’ family Escalade). It was at exactly that instant that Phil Knight and his Nike geniuses started to become the boss of the relationship again, and Tiger became the submissive employee. (And, if you read and believe some of Tiger’s mistresses leaked texts, Tiger being submissive is really ironic). Capturing the moment, Nike flexed its muscle (figurative again) and quickly produced the spot that completed the fall from, “Tiger, you da man,” to Tiger demeaned.

And, what will the ad do for sales? Whether consumers want a commercial that positions Tiger 2.0 in an even less appealing light, or consumers believe that Nike is being distasteful and manipulative, the ad is already serving its purpose: get the brand name in conversation and subsequently boost sales. Meanwhile, Nike Golf and Tiger Woods remain indivisible. No matter whose side you take, you are supporting Tiger Woods or Nike Golf. Therefore, you are supporting one in the same.

In golf, it’s all about execution, and Nike’s execution was brilliant. Like it or despise it, a golf fan’s appropriate response to the commercial is to offer up an understated golf-clap and say, “Nice shot.”