Rusty Law

Morality Claws

Ninety million people Googled John 3:16 the night Tim Tebow wore it in his eye-black at the national championships last year.  As one of the most well-known verses in the Bible (“For God so loved the world that He gave His only son….”), it is doubtful Tebow was preaching to the choir, and thus pulled off one of the most highly effective TV evangelism stunts.  Sports marketing is seeking the same kind of penetration and the same height of morality.  

College football players are prohibited from advertising products, but golfers and other professional athletes are not.  They can be, however, subject to a morality clause in endorsement arrangements.  The rising popularity of camera phones and blogs has caused the rising popularity of morality clauses, and intensified scrutiny of the private lives of American athletes.   

A morality clause gives an advertiser a way out and can include immediate withdrawal of sponsorship or even terminate a player’s agreement in team sports, depending on the contract.  Endorsers are seeking shelter against negative publicity brought on by off-field behavior.  Ultimately the behavior itself may not be as bad as the publicity, but advertisers want to avoid both.  

Tiger Woods is one of the Masters of sports marketing, formerly weighing in at about $100 million a year in endorsements.  But sports marketing relies on image, and Woods’ fall from grace leaves the world wondering what will happen to Buick, Nike, Gillette, etc. without him.  

Out of the Woods?

Tiger!  Tiger!  Burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fragile matrimony?  

William Blake was an Eighteenth Century poet concerned with the social injustice dealt to children in Britain.  His two collections, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience,” illustrate the contrast between the world of adults and that of children in the predawn of child labor laws.  

Tiger Woods began his career young, but he is old enough now to sing his song of experience, yet wise enough to know not to sing it very loud.  Being quiet sometimes helps.  If a police officer says, “Give me your driver’s license,” you better give him or her your license.  Tiger Woods, however, leaves unanswered the question, “On what wings dare he aspire?”  He does not have to say anything and sometimes that is smart.  Sometimes you do not have to answer all the questions.  

Sports & Law

Eleanor Roosevelt said:  “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people” … and everybody else talks about sports.  (Sure beats the weather!)  Sports can be a controversial subject, but not in the way sex, politics, and religion are. 

When the Civil War ended, baseball emerged victorious with a growing popularity over cricket.  More recently Henry Chadwick introduced the box score in coverage of baseball, statistics given nine figures across and nine figures down, like a Sudoku puzzle, but not as set in outcome. 

Sports and law have many similarities.  Both are governed by rules and judges, and both rely on a certain amount of statistical analysis to predict outcome. Both also rely on personalities.  Two batters aren’t going to hit the same pitch the same way, just the way the same argument presented to two different judges can render opposite verdicts.  That’s what keeps sports interesting, and the law. 

Baseball is nearly as American as the Judicial Branch.  Both allow for differences, but differences within a reliable framework.  And both make for great conversation.