SPORTS MARKETING
Athlete Endorsements
They may not be role models, but they sure do sell stuff
As of 2018/2019, which athletes are paid the most to endorse products?
The History of Athlete Endorsements
Ancient sports stars (the original athletes)
Rather than lucrative endorsement deals, in ancient times athletes were honored with statutes, songs, poems and drawings. Here are some ancient athletes whose success and fame likely would have made them some of the biggest athlete endorsers of their time:
Theagenes of Thasos was a Greek boxer who won more than 1,300 matches during his 22-year career. At the Olympics in 480 B.C., he was declared the victor in boxing, and at the 476 Olympics he won the pankration competition, an ancient form of mixed martial arts. In doing so, Theagenes became the first athlete to win the wreath in both boxing and pankration. He went on to win 21 more championships at the Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian games. According to legend, Theagenes was undefeated as a boxer for over two decades! He also won a crown as a long distance runner during a competition in Argos, further adding to his legacy.
Leonidas of Rhodes was a runner who won wreaths in three categories at the 164, 160, 156 and 152 Olympic Games. He competed in sprints as well as in hoplitodromos, a race in which contestants ran in a helmet, armor and carried a shield. His 12 individual Olympic victories are the most individual victories by any Olympic athlete ever, placing him one ahead of Michael Phelps’ 11 individual Olympic victories.
Move over Tiger, Gaius Appuleius Diocles is actually the highest paid athlete of all time. Diocles was a chariot racer who won 35,863,120 sesterces in prize earnings. In case you are wondering, by today’s figures, that amount of prize earnings translates to over $15 billion dollars! The figure was recorded in an inscription erected in Rome by his fellow race competitors and admirers in 146 A.D., which hails him as “champion of all charioteers.”
Honus Wagner leads off
Wagner is considered one of the finest all around players in baseball history, and to some, the greatest shortstop in baseball history.
Wagner was the first professional athlete to receive endorsement money for allowing the use of his name on a product. He was also the first professional athlete to make an endorsement deal with a sporting goods manufacturer, Louisville Slugger.
Wagner began his career playing with the Louisville Colonels in Louisville, Kentucky. There, he befriended Bud Hillerich, who in 1894 had begun producing baseball bats with the name Louisville Slugger engraved on them. Many ball players began to use Hillerich’s bats, who also engraved their names on the bats so they could tell which bat was theirs. One of those players was Wagner.
In 1900, Wagner left Louisville to play for Pittsburgh. In 1900, 1903 and 1904 he was the National League Batting Champion. All the while, Wagner and Hillerich stayed in touch. The following year in 1905, Wagner signed a contract with Hillerich which allowed Louisville Slugger to use Wagner’s signature on baseball bats sold in stores. Thus, making Wagner the first professional athlete to receive endorsement money by allowing the use of his name on a product for sale. Today over 60 percent of major leaguers use Louisville Slugger bats.
Wagner is also notorious for his American Tobacco issued baseball card. In September 2007, a rare Wagner trading card sold at auction for $2.8 million, then a record price.
The Wagner card is one of 524 baseball cards that were issued by American Tobacco between 1909 and 1911. American Tobacco was using baseball players to promote its cigarette brands by packaging the cards inside cigarette packs. On the reverse side of the Wagner card is a Piedmont cigarette advertisement.
The Wagner cards became a rarity because once Wagner discovered American Tobacco had issued his card without his permission, Wagner stopped their production. However, his exact reasoning for doing so remains unclear. Some say Wagner wanted an endorsement fee from American Tobacco. Wagner’s granddaughters claim that although he did chew tobacco, the real reason he halted production is because he didn’t want children buying cigarettes in order to get his card. Regardless of the reason, those events helped shape terms of mutual agreement between athletes and brands.
Wagner’s endorsing career didn’t end there, he went on to appear in endorsements for gum, gunpowder, soft drinks, Gillette razor blades and ironically enough, cigars.
The longest running endorsement deal
In 1922, pro golfer Gene Sarazen became the first member of the Wilson Advisory Staff and his contract with Wilson Sporting Goods lasted for 75 years! The deal became the longest running endorsement deal in the history of sports.
A plane ride inspired Sarazen to design a club that would “glide through the sand.” Sarazen debuted his sand wedge club at the 1932 British Open, which he won. This marked the introduction of the sand wedge and the “explosion” shot was born. That year Wilson sold more than 50,000 R-90 clubs, the most popular sand wedge in golf.
Sarazen was the pioneer of lengthy endorsement deals. He paved the way for current long-term athlete endorsers like David Beckham, for example, who signed a lifetime agreement with Adidas.
The first million dollar endorsement
It may come as a surprise to today’s generation that the first million dollar sports endorsement was not offered to a football, basketball, baseball or soccer player; but, however, was earned by a professional bowler.
Although bowling may not currently be a high profile sport , back in the 1950’s and 60’s, bowling was a popular American hobby that allowed people to go out and interact with one another.
At the time, there was no better bowler than Don Carter, who was voted Bowler of the Year six times (1953, 1954, 1957, 1958, 1960 and 1962). In 1964, bowling manufacturer Ebonite capitalized on Carter’s fame and bowling’s popularity by signing him to the first million dollar sports endorsement deal. Carter’s Ebonite deal launched the widely popular Don Carter Gyro-Balanced ball.
Since then, the amount of dollars spent on sports endorsements have continued to grow substantially. Just ask Rose, McIlory or Beckham, current owners of the largest athlete endorsement deals.
The first major female endorsement
Babe Didrikson Zaharias was the epitome of an athlete. She was an All-American basketball player, two-time Olympic gold medalist in track and field and co-founder of the LPGA where she won 14 consecutive tournaments, a record which still stands today. She emerged as the first female athlete of the 20th century to fully leverage her notoriety and marketability.
Babe won gold medals in the 100 meter hurdles and javelin, as well as silver in the high jump at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. After the Olympics, she became so visible that when she bought a Dodge, the company placed an ad in the February 1, 1933 edition of The Chicago Daily News, showing her praising the car’s benefits.
Unfortunately, Didrikson competed at the amateur level which disallowed her from endorsing. The Amateur Athletic Union suspended her, without a hearing, from amateur competitions.
Didrikson was reinstated as an amateur, but she turned pro shortly afterward making her free to endorse. Chrysler quickly signed her to promote Dodge Coupes at the Detroit Auto Show. Didrikson also teamed up with brands like with Wheaties and sporting goods company P. Goldsmith Sons in 1935.
Her endorsements set the stage for some of today’s highest paid female athletes like Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams and Danica Patrick. In 2000, Sports Illustrated named her second on its list of 100 Greatest Female Athletes of All-Time.
Influential sneaker sponsorships
Athletes have helped market and establish some of the biggest names in footwear. Here are some of the most influential sneaker endorsements:
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Converse Rubber Shoe Company and Chuck Taylor agreed to the first sneaker contract on June 14, 1923. Taylor’s signature still remains on that iconic sneaker design 90 years later! Since then, countless athletes, musicians and movie stars have worn “All-Stars.” It is estimated that 60 percent of all Americans will own at least one pair of “Chucks” in their lifetime. The sneaker continues to be reinvented by each generation.
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Michael Jordan was a self-proclaimed “Adidas fanatic since high school.” He wanted to sign with Adidas out of college but they did not offer him an endorsement deal. So, after some convincing from Nike CEO ,Phil Knight, MJ opted to sign with Nike instead. In 1985 the Jordan I was released in red and black to match the Chicago Bulls uniform. The color scheme was banned by NBA Commissioner, David Stern, for failing to meet league uniform rules (the shoes did not have enough white on them). However, Jordan continued to wear the shoes during games and was consequently fined each time for doing so. Nike paid the fines for MJ, nicknamed the shoes “Banned” and even crafted an endorsement strategy around the shoe banning. The Jordan I went on to sell over $130 million that season and MJ went on to become the greatest basketball player ever.
In 1996 MJ created Jordan Brand, a division of Nike. In 2012, Jordan Brand controlled 58 percent of the U.S. basketball shoe market and is widely considered the elite brand for basketball footwear and apparel. Jordan’s endorsements have carried Nike to the top of the sneaker market and have inspired countless athletes, brands and sneaker designs.
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Adidas’ Stan Smith is widely considered the most iconic tennis shoe ever. However, in 1964, Adidas first named this shoe after French tennis star, Robert Haillet. In those days, sneaker designs were passed on to a new endorser rather than be discontinued, or a new one be created. When Haillet retired, Adidas chose number one ranked American tennis player, Stan Smith, as the next endorser of the shoe. This move opened the American marketplace to Adidas. In 1971, the shoe was officially renamed after Smith and has kept its name ever since.
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In the late 1960’s, The Van Doren Rubber Company was created in Anaheim, California just as skateboarding began to explode in Southern California. Skaters began skating in “Vans” shoes because the “non-slip” bottom allowed for better board grip. In 1975 Vans teamed with Southern California skateboarding legends Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta to design the Vans Era. Thanks to that shoe design, by the end of the 1970’s, Vans had established more than 70 stores in California and was selling their shoes worldwide! The Vans Era created the skating shoe industry by inspiring countless other brands to design skating shoes. The Era is still one of the most popular shoes in today’s skating culture.
Some of the most popular brands in footwear can attribute part of their success to the athletes who endorsed their products.
Endorsements History
Mean Joe Greene Sells Coca-Cola
Legacy
'Hey kid, catch!' Mean Joe Greene, Coca-Cola and the greatest Super Bowl ad of all time
In the late 1970s, Coca-Cola needed a new advertising campaign. Then a copywriter at McCann-Erickson, Penny Hawkey saw an opportunity. She’d previously developed ads for the soft drink Tab, but this was different. Coke was an American institution; a standard jingle wouldn’t cut it. And besides, Hawkey told me, “I’m not particularly fond of jingles and I was doing enough of that on other kinds of things. I’m more of a storyteller.” The goal, she added, is to “invite feelings, not just leave people with a visual impression.”
And that is what Hawkey and art director Roger Mosconi set out to do. Featuring Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Mean Joe Greene interacting with an awestruck young fan, what Hawkey and Mosconi created is the most well-known, popular and influential spot of all time. In February 2011, readers of Advertising Age voted it the best Super Bowl commercial ever.
In late December of 2014, Hawkey explained how the ad came to be. She said that writing for Coke gave her a chance to tell a short story, complete with a complex character overcoming adversity. “How do you do that in 30 seconds?” Hawkey said. “That’s sort of where we started.” Eventually she and Mosconi discussed the idea of showcasing a football player and a kid. Hawkey said names like Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, Lynn Swann and Franco Harris were brought up.
At the time, Hawkey wasn’t a big football fan. It’s not that she despised the sport. She just didn’t have time for it. “I was being a mom every night and on weekends,” she said. “Frankly, before the Joe Greene commercial I wasn’t particularly interested in the Super Bowl.” In fact, Hawkey said, she didn’t know who Joe Greene was. When he was mentioned, she was incredulous. She remembers wondering aloud if someone named Mean Joe Greene actually existed.
“Is he really mean?” she recalled asking colleagues. “Oh, yeah,” they told her.
“Can we get him?” she quickly asked. The answer was yes. “And the rest,” she said, “was history.”
It turns out that Greene already was a national pitchman. He’d starred in TV commercials for Swanson, Ideal Toys and United Airlines. “The idea was that the plane was so comfortable that a mean, tough guy like me almost liked it,” Greene told Sports Illustrated in 1979. Still, he’d never endorsed a product that was, as Hawkey put it, as “emotionally woven into American society” as Coca-Cola. For the commercial to work, Greene needed a worthy foil. Nine-year-old Tommy Okun was up to the task.
The minute-long spot was shot in May 1979 at a small stadium in Westchester County, New York. The plot is simple: during a game, Greene gets hurt and limps down the stadium tunnel. Little Tommy follows him, offers to help, gets rebuffed, timidly tells Greene, “I think you’re the best ever,” then offers his hero a Coke. After considering it a moment, Mean Joe finally accepts, downing the entire bottle in one sip.
(During filming, Greene reportedly drank 18 16-ounce Cokes. “He didn’t think it was right for him to spit out the product,” Hawkey said. “He thought that was rude. If you know Joe, he’s about the nicest guy in the world.”)
A Coca-Cola jingle plays, the boy says “see ya around” and then begins to walk away. But before he’s out of sight, Greene calls out, “Hey kid, catch!” then throws his jersey to the boy, who says thanks and walks off. The ad ends with another jingle as the words “Have a Coke and a smile” flash on the screen.
In addition to that spot, Hawkey said McCann-Erickson produced a handful of other ads. (One filmed with Steve Guttenberg got shelved.) Mean Joe’s commercial didn’t initially test well with audiences, but Coca-Cola executives loved it. The ad debuted on October 1, 1979, but it didn’t become a phenomenon until January 20, 1980 — Super Bowl Sunday. That evening, Coca-Cola got lucky. The Steelers beat the Rams 31-19 and one of the winning team’s best players happened to appear in the company’s nationally televised commercial.
After the Super Bowl, Hawkey said fans of the ad sent Coca-Cola bundles of letters. NBC soon commissioned a TV movie based on the commercial, which won a Clio Award, the advertising world’s version of an Oscar. Starring young Henry Thomas — who played Elliott in E.T. — The Steeler and the Pittsburgh Kid aired on November 15, 1981. The spot was so popular that Coca-Cola quickly remade it for international audiences. Amazingly, there were versions featuring soccer stars Zico and Diego Maradona. (Remember: this was before the world knew about Maradona unofficially endorsing the other kind of coke.)
Since then, shows like The Simpsons and Sesame Street have referenced what became known as the “Hey Kid, Catch!” ad. Coca-Cola even brought back the concept in 2009 for a Coke Zero commercial with Troy Polamalu. Greene also appeared in a 2012 Downy ad that parodied the classic spot.
Hawkey said she still considers Mean Joe a friend. Naturally, after the commercial’s success she became a Steelers fan. Long since retired from the advertising industry, she spends her days running an organic produce farm in Ossining, New York. Thirty-five years later, she’s still amazed at the spot’s success and longevity. Why? “It was preposterous,” she said.
After all, in real life, there was no way that a kid would’ve been able to sneak into a stadium tunnel, approach a star player and then get him to give up his jersey. But Hawkey added, “Everybody was able to jump out of reality and enjoy being carried away by this little fairytale.”
An Entire Generation that Wanted to be Michael Jordan
Legacy
Famed 'Be Like Mike' Gatorade ad debuted 25 years ago
Aug. 8, 1991.
Twenty-five years ago, one of the most famous commercials of all time debuted: Gatorade's "Be Like Mike." Fans of a certain age are probably already hearing the jingle in their heads. While the commercial is famous, the story of how the spot came to be isn't told as much. But it's just as good as the commercial itself.
Executives at Gatorade, then owned by Chicago-based Quaker Oats, were head-over-heels for good reason -- they'd just stolen their hometown star from Coca-Cola, fresh off his first championship. Quaker paid a hefty price to land Michael Jordan -- a 10-year, $13.5 million deal and the promise that he would be the beverage's only endorser.
Days before the first commercial was to debut, advertising exec Bernie Pitzel, who had come in late in the process, got a preview of the spot that was already approved.
Pitzel was honest. He thought it was awful. It merely featured highlights of Jordan dunking, something that Nike had shown countless times in its spots with Jordan over the previous six years.
Pitzel wanted a chance to do something iconic. OK, the Gatorade execs said. So the ad went from idea to final version in three days.
Pitzel's original idea was to show kids looking up to Jordan while playing the song "I Wan'na Be Like You" from the 1967 film "The Jungle Book" that Disney had recently rereleased. But Pitzel said Disney wanted Gatorade to pay $350,000 for a five-week run. At the time, the cost was too much.
So Pitzel went back to the drawing board, sat down at his favorite Italian restaurant, and came up with the "Be Like Mike" lyrics on a napkin in four hours. Pitzel put the lyrics to four local music houses and quickly settled on jingle specialists Ira Antelis and Steve Shafer.
The result was the commercial song that the world came to love, which was then paired with Jordan and kids, and the spot was quickly shot. The rest is history.
"If we had used music from 'The Jungle Book,' the advertisement would have been forgotten," Antelis told me for my book on Gatorade, "First In Thirst."
"Instead, we generated a piece of music that we could own that the world could identify with Gatorade."
While the commercial was lauded throughout the world, it actually didn't translate to dollars and cents. People loved it, but the efficacy of the product wasn't featured, which meant that the original spot might have been better for sales, but not for fans of Jordan.
"When we brought it back to real highlights and Michael sweating, it worked better," said Gatorade marketer Peggy Dyer.
Widely acclaimed sports commercials that actually don't do what they were intended to do -- sell product -- are actually quite common. Mean Joe Greene's 1979 Coca-Cola spot with the young kid is often called the greatest sports commercial of all time. Coke commissioned athletes in various countries to play a role similar to Greene's but halted the project when the company determined that the spots didn't actually help sell soda.
The Next Generation Wanted to be Tiger Woods
Legacy
On the Right Course
It is late afternoon on McDougall Street in northeast Detroit--a neighborhood that is no stranger to the siren’s lure of drugs and the sharp crack of gunfire. A group of determined mothers has cut down the tall weeds on two vacant lots between their neatly kept small homes. They want their young children to learn golf.
And like a magnet drawn to small metal filings, Selina Johnson, resplendent in the khaki and white uniform of the Hollywood Golf Institute, arrives in a white van driven by her good friend Alicia Jones.
Kevin Mobley, a 25-year-old golf pro who started at age 6 in the institute founded by Johnson, a former police officer, follows in his own car. Waiting for them on McDougall Street are the other instructors--Ronald Gross, 24, a scratch golfer, and Ernie
Mathews, 56, who once caddied on the PGA tour.
On the way, as the van passed through streets marked by a boarded-up factory, small stores and a recreational center with broken glass on its basketball court, Johnson and Jones talked about the institute’s philosophy. “Hollywood Golf provides the nurturing that a lot of urban youth don’t see,” Jones said.
“Golf in America is like apple pie and hot dogs,” Johnson said. “I think it should be part of every young person’s resume. When you are a very skilled player, it really opens the doors of opportunity. The objective is to have a quality golfer and master the fundamentals and the beginning skills of the game. Putting, personal discipline, personal management, self-esteem are involved here. . . . This program also inspires the kids to dream,” she said.
Within minutes, 25 children ranging from toddlers to preteens were lined up in rows, holding irons on the newly cut grass.
“Everybody take the golf grip now,” Gross said. “We’re going to start on our 1-2-3 drill.”
He shouted numbers like a Marine drill sergeant.
One! The youngsters moved their clubs to the top of the backswing.
Two! They assumed the impact position as if striking an imaginary ball.
Three! They swung up to a full finish.
As Gross conducted the drill, several mothers watched from a nearby front porch.
“We are tired of broken streets, broken lights and broken children,” said Viola M. Vaughn, a health planning consultant. “When I asked Miss Johnson if she would come and teach our kids, we were thrilled. We first asked the recreation department to give our kids golf, but they didn’t understand.
“This is considered a very high crime area, high-risk area,” Vaughn said. “Eighty-seven percent of our kids are classified at-risk. We don’t want any more high-risk kids. We are going to do it ourselves.”
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By now, the children had formed a line and were taking turns hitting golf balls with the guidance of Gross and Mobley. Two-year-old Malik Chavers, the smallest in the group, stood bare-chested, wearing cutoff jeans.
He looked at the ball and swung a golf club almost as long as he was tall. He hit the ball! Everyone clapped and cheered.
When the lessons ended, Malik was the last to surrender his club. While youngsters stood around and talked, the 2-year-old kept hitting a ball along the ground. As he swung, his eyes showed fierce concentration far beyond his years. Malik’s mother, Anita Jones, said her son watches golf on television. “He says like the commercial, ‘I’m Tiger Woods.’ ”
All across America, children are sitting in front of TV sets repeating the words of the Nike commercial. Golf industry professionals call it the Tiger Woods syndrome and say a floodgate has been opened.
At a recent youth day in Detroit, 4,000 children lined up to putt on a miniature course run by Hollywood Golf. After a clinic Woods held in Phoenix, 100 kids showed up at a local driving range eager to learn the game. Los Angeles is seeking sponsors to reopen the nine-hole Coolidge course in Griffith Park as a youth clinic.
“We are actually overwhelmed by kids. We have 2,000 kids,” said Dedric Holmes, director of operations at San Diego’s Pro Kids Golf Academy.
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Several weeks before the 79th PGA Championship, which begins today at the Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., Woods held a clinic 25 miles to the south on Randalls Island, facing Manhattan.
As aides wearing more tags than at a national political convention scurried around, Woods corrected swings, strengthened grips and disbursed advice to the thousands of children and their parents, who first heard his father, Earl Woods, deliver an inspirational message.
“I am a walking example you can be something as long as you maintain your dreams. Work hard. Hit those books. Do what is necessary to succeed,” the elder Woods said with evangelistic fervor.
“My dad always taught me that respect is earned over time. It has taken 21 years for my dad and I to become this close,” Tiger told the throng. “I don’t care what color you are, whether you are brown, green, purple, lime green, polka dot, it doesn’t matter. We’re all human. Therefore, we should respect one another.
“I want every one of you to go home and try to become a role model, whether you are a father, a mother, sister, brother, friend, it doesn’t matter. Become a role model for someone,” he urged.
After answering questions (“I started playing golf when I was 11 months old” and “I don’t have a girlfriend right now”), he started hitting balls with a wedge and then an eight iron. After swinging several other clubs, he picked up his driver.
It was the moment the crowd had waited hours for. With deceptive ease, he swung the club, his hips turning through the shot with lightning speed. The ball soared in a straight line well over 300 yards.
“There is no question Tiger Woods has served as a catalyst,” said Carl Donner, administrator of the Youth and Education Grants Program of the United States Golf Assn. “We have increased funding to all our youth programs.” In 1966, the USGA gave $420,000 to support youth golf. So far this year, it has given $1.17 million.
“I am getting requests for applications every day,” Donner said. “I call it the Tiger Woods syndrome more than anything else.”
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What’s more, the PGA tour will announce in the fall a broad program to bring greater access to golf. “The objective will be to help create facilities along with local civic and public entities in urban areas,” said Ruffin Beckwith, executive director and chief executive officer of the World Golf Foundation, a new nonprofit organization created by the PGA tour.
“It is one thing to introduce kids with a video and a clinic. We’ve got to put a club in their hands. We’ve got to give them a place where they can play and practice and help get them to the next step,” Beckwith said.
Since its inception in 1984, the National Minority Golf Foundation has given more than $500,000 in scholarship funds to promising players so they can attend college. This year, it will disburse $130,000. Bill Dickey, the Phoenix-based foundation’s president, said more than 100 minority golf programs exist in the United States.
“We have to keep plugging away and finding ways to develop programs to give these kids a chance to play,” he said. “The bottom line is the dollar bill.”
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No one knows that more than Johnson, who founded the nonprofit Hollywood Golf Institute in 1983 because her daughter Jamila (now captain of the women’s golf team at Jackson State University in Mississippi) wanted to learn to play.
Johnson, 47, picked the name Hollywood Golf because other cops on the force called her Officer Hollywood because she loved to perform (she has even written a golf song, “I Come to Play,” which is her school’s anthem).
Though immensely satisfying, running the institute remains an uphill fight. In the beginning, Johnson collected old clubs from pawn shops in the Detroit area and cut them down so they could fit children. Gradually, a cadre of supporters such as Carl E. Rose, owner of the store Carl’s Golfland, have helped with clubs, balls and free range time for her students.
But, like others who operate minority golf programs, Johnson lacks funds to send her best players to tournaments run by the American Junior Golf Assn., which are heavily scouted by coaches of the most successful college golf teams.
The list of AJGA alumni reads like the who’s who of the PGA tour and includes such players as Woods, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love III; on the women’s tour, alumni include Michelle McGann, Brandie Burton and Vicki Goetze. It can cost as much as $30,000 a year in expenses to play the AJGA’s tournaments. The organization, which is heavily supported by the golf industry, sends biographies and updated scores each week of the high school players in its tournaments to college coaches.
With very few exceptions, coaches at colleges with predominately minority enrollments don’t have the budgets, practice facilities and tournament schedule to compete for AJGA alumni.
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Johnson does a lot of nurturing. Often, she is a surrogate parent. Hugs are as common as good scores in her school, which attracts about 100 young golfers and operates on a $50,000-a-year budget, funded in part by the city and private contributions. Often she pays for additional expenses herself.
She teaches much more than golf. “We talk about poise, public speaking, dressing for success,” she said.
All children in the program must wear the school’s uniform--khaki pants, white shirts and hats with the institute’s logo. Six retired schoolteachers help the young golfers with their studies, and for a small fee will tutor at home.
When they travel by bus to tournaments, Johnson insists her students pack a shirt and tie and a blazer. Often, the young golfers are not used to leaving the security of their neighborhoods, and Johnson spends a lot of time calming jittery nerves.
Evenings on the road, she gathers the players together and analyzes their scorecards. “To play sociable golf is one thing, but to play competitive golf, that is a hat of a different color,” she said. “To get these kids ready to be competitive is a job in itself.”
On a trip to a tournament in Chicago, a 12-year-old was distraught with his score after the first round. Johnson asked what club he had selected on the first tee. It was the driver, and it turned out he was spraying his shots.
“Why don’t you use your irons for this particular hole?” she advised. “He went out there and won the tournament. But the first day, he was a basket case because he was scared.”
Johnson has also found victories come in other ways. At a second tournament, another 12-year-old came off the course, crying. “I asked him, ‘Why are you crying?’ He said, ‘Miss Johnson, I had to disqualify myself.’ There was no one there to check on him. He checked on himself.
“We are talking about honesty here,” Johnson said. “I think that was such a commendable thing he did. I will never forget it.”
One of Hollywood Golf’s biggest supporters is Leroy C. Richie, a member of the executive committee of the USGA who is the vice president and general counsel for automotive legal affairs at Chrysler Corp.
“Selina, she’s absolutely committed. She is just phenomenal,” Richie said. “We need recognition that golf teaches life skills, and the goal may be to make a good golfer, but the real goal is to make a good citizen. If you come out with an 18-year-old who is a 90 golfer, but who understands the principles involved in calling a penalty on himself on the golf course, you’ve got a winner,” Richie said. “That kid may never be a golf star, but he will be a star in life.”
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Two days before he teed off at Winged Foot today, Tiger Woods held a news conference in the massive media tent near the first fairway. He discussed his strategy for playing in the PGA championship, keeping the ball below the hole on the very fast greens, refraining from hitting his driver on tight tree-lined fairways, the absolute necessity of patience and mental toughness in order to win.
It is a cliche to say the distance between McDougall Street in Detroit and the Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck can be measured in light-years. But for little Malik Chavers--who wants to be Tiger Woods--watching in front of his family’s television set, it’s not a cliche. It’s a dream.
The amazing story Behind Tiger Woods' iconic Nike juggling commercial
It wasn't that long ago that Tiger Woods was the world's most marketable athlete, annually ranking at or near the top of the list of the world's highest-paid athletes.
But for all of Woods' endorsement deals and commercials, there is one commercial that stands above them all — The famous juggling-golf-ball commercial for Nike, which first aired in 1999.
The commercial is simply Woods juggling a golf ball with a wedge for 28 seconds, fast, slow, between his legs, behind his back, and he finishes by hitting the ball out of mid-air down the range.
But the iconic commercial almost never happened, and even after the idea was born, it might have still failed if not for Tiger's fierce competitive fire.
On the day the commercial was shot, Woods was actually at a driving range filming a different commercial for Nike, Chris Zimmerman of Nike told NBC's "Dateline" in 2000. In that commercial, a bunch of hack golfers suddenly become awesome on the driving range just by being in the presence of Woods. Once he leaves, they suddenly revert back to their lack of golf ability.
Zimmerman goes on to explain that it was during a lunch break while filming that commercial that Woods was killing time by juggling a golf ball.
It was actually Doug Liman, the director of the commercial, who noticed Woods juggling the golf ball. Liman, who is better known as the director of big Hollywood films such as "Swingers," "The Bourne Identity," and "Edge of Tomorrow," saw what Woods was doing and had an idea.
While giving a talk to a conference in 2008, Liman explained how he came up with the idea, as recounted by Greg Sandoval of CNet.
Liman noticed Woods bouncing a ball on the edge of a club during breaks from shooting. Liman grabbed a shoulder-held camera and, away from the crew, asked Woods to bounce the balls while being filmed.
There was no trick videography or computer animation used to make the commercial. In fact, Woods actually failed on his first three attempts, according to Zimmerman. Here are the outtakes for the first three attempts, aired on "Dateline."
That was when Liman started to get frustrated and actually accused Woods of choking.
"I told him, 'I can't believe that of all people you are choking under pressure,'" Liman told the audience in 2008.
Now here is where we see both the talent and the competitiveness of Woods shine through.
Woods glared and then bounced the ball while transferring the club through his legs behind his back and finished by smacking the ball in mid air. The shot, which became a classic, was natural, unrehearsed, and driven by imagination rather than millions of studio dollars, Liman said.
What is even more amazing is the timing. Woods needed to complete his juggling trick in exactly 28 seconds in order for it to fit into a commercial. Woods winds up and smacks the ball out of mid-air at exactly 28 seconds, and he did that on just his fourth take.
That is something that only Tiger Woods could do.
Of course, a good Woods story must include an awkward high-five, and this one does not fail.
Why Nike and Adidas are hanging up their golf clubs
The sport of golf has received a huge boost in exposure by featuring in the 2016 Rio Games - making its return to the Olympics after 112 years.
In addition there are drives to further the development of the game in Asia, while in Europe, including the UK, action is being taken to introduce the sport to a new playing demographic, including women and children.
But in the US, the number of golf players has declined from 30 million in 2005 to roughly 24 million last year, and that has provided a problem for major equipment manufacturers, as the nation accounts for half of all players and courses in the world.
So it may come as no surprise that within the past few months sports equipment giants Nike and Adidas have announced that they are looking to exit their golf club businesses. Although interestingly both are going to remain in the golf footwear and clothing markets.
Declining participation numbers in the game's biggest market means that other sports such as athletics and basketball offer more attractive opportunities for sales growth.
As general sports goods providers covering a plethora of sports, Nike and Adidas were also latecomers to what is a specialised field - one already occupied by established brands such as Ping and Titleist.
Cycling competition
"Golf is a relatively mature market but with an increasing number of competing suppliers," says Simon Chadwick, professor of sports enterprise at the University of Salford.
"At best, we have to say that the US golf market is static, while at the same time we have seen traditional golf markets across North America and Europe being hit by the rise of cycling," says Prof Chadwick.
Indeed, he says that some social commentators have identified cycling as "the new golf" for middle-aged men.
Prof Chadwick adds: "There is some growth in the golf market elsewhere in the world, notably in East Asia, but this market is increasingly being served by domestic suppliers.
"It's a tough operating environment right now for an American golf business."
Tiger 'vision'
Nike has been in the golfing market for 17 years, and has a high-profile stable of golfers, including Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Michelle Wie.
It launched golf balls in 1999, with Woods starting to use their new solid-core Nike Tour Accuracy ball the following year.
"Nike obviously had a vision that Tiger Woods would open up the market for golf to new customer groupings, but this has largely failed. Golf remains a stereotypical middle-class, white, male sport that hasn't really broken out of its traditional constituency," says Prof Chadwick.
"Compounding this, while golfers are likely to change their footwear on a regular basis, they are less likely to buy clubs on a similar basis. At the same time, competition has been growing, which in total all ensures that golf is a tough business to operate in - the returns on investment are not easily made."
Knowledge transfer?
Nike's market share in clubs, balls and bags has grown slowly and steadily over the years since then, but it has never secured a position of dominance.
The US firm says it will refocus its efforts on golf shoes and clothing (indeed it says it wants to be the "undisputed leader" in these fields), and away from clubs, balls and bags.
"The turnover of business is greater when it comes to shoes, but there are also likely to be spin-off benefits for one of Nike's core businesses, i.e. footwear," says Prof Chadwick.
"That is, what they learn in golf could well positively impact upon athletics, football and so forth, and vice versa. You could call it knowledge transfer across business units."
'Cash cows'
Like Nike, Adidas hopes to sell the bulk of its golf business to concentrate on its own-brand golf shoes and clothing.
The company launched a review of its golf business last August, and wants to sell its brands TaylorMade and Adams, which make golf clubs and other equipment, and also the Ashworth golf shoes and clothing brand.
Players that are equipped by the firm include men's current world number one Jason Day, who uses TaylorMade clubs and wears Adidas golf shoes and clothing. Meanwhile, newly crowned Olympic champion Justin Rose also wears Adidas golf clothing.
Adidas has been in the sport since 1997, when it bought TaylorMade as part of a $1.4bn (£1bn) acquisition of French skiing label Salomon.
"The likes of Adidas will look towards cash cows like running and football rather than be stuck with problem children like their array of golf products," says Prof Chadwick.
"Adidas's cash cows are easier to manage and yield a greater return than slow-moving golf products that have failed to make a major market breakthrough."
'Independents core'
However, despite the seemingly gloomy outlook, Nick Oakley, an expert at KPMG's sport industry group, believes these industry changes also offer opportunities.
He says there is now a chance for the golf industry to move away from a golfing "supermarket" approach, and back to a more crafted and traditional "green grass" environment.
Such an environment, he says, would be driven by qualified and trained PGA professionals, able to provide a specialist and customised service, and also supported by brands whose core business is golf.
"The golf retail industry, like many others, has had its challenges over the past years," he says.
"These have been predominantly shaped by the fact that the 'independent' has needed to try and compete with megastores or online. Many of the latter are now seeing challenges created by scale and a contracting market - GolfSmith and Direct Golf are examples of this.
"But the independents are core to the golf industry and are one of the industry's major assets to driving future [playing] participation."
However, he says that such a retail opportunity has to be tempered with a need to create accessibility to golf facilities and to equipment expertise for those who want to take up the game.
"Successful professionals are taking their skills and industry credentials to their local market, and not waiting for customers to walk through the pro shop door," he adds.
Turning Their Attention Towards Women
Legacy
Why Brands Are Finally Choosing More Female Athletes for Big Endorsement Deals
Women are no longer sitting on the sidelines
Adweek
Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Rafael Nadal, Tiger Woods… it’s no secret that the world of sports endorsement deals has been a male-dominated one from day one.
But, it seems, the tables are turning in favor of female athletes. According to Peter Laatz, EVP of sports marketing firm Repucom, this is due to advertisers’ growing interest in female athletes given that women control 70-80 percent of consumer purchases. Not to mention the meteoric growth in the women’s activewear market – $18 billion in annual sales to be exact – in recent years.
To give you an idea… UFC boss bish Ronda Rousey has teamed p with Carl’s JR., Reebok and MetroPCS for a total of $3.5 million in endorsements in the last year, while U.S. women’s soccer player Alex Morgan – the first ever woman on the cover of EA Sports’ FIFA 16 – rakes in a cool $3 million from her contracts with Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and others. Serena Williams has always been well-endorsed, but now more so than ever with campaigns for Gatorade, Chase and Beats by Dre to name a few.
"The ability to speak to women with a relevant personality versus, say, a burly male athlete with his shoulder pads on, that brings a degree of reliability for women," says Laatz. "These women athletes have different stories that are unfolding, and they're doing things at a more grassroots level."
Who runs the world?
How brands are helping the rise of female sports stars
We’re moving into a new era for female sport and it’s palpable. It’s something that no-one in marketing can ignore. The trends in women’s sport tell us a lot about the current marketing landscape and the opportunity for future campaigns. It’s a lesson we all need to learn.
Female sports stars are not just performing in their respective sports anymore. Their athleticism and their strength is being appreciated, their victories (and their losses) are being spoken about, they’re receiving airtime, they’re being recognised at awards ceremonies… and their marketability is noticeably increasing.
While there will always be naysayers and some that sniff at women’s sport, times are definitely changing. Numerous brand campaigns have been released this year with female stars at the forefront or joining their male counterparts for the first time.
With a sizzling summer calendar of both women’s and men’s sport ahead of us, it’s the perfect time for brands to be aligning with the stars on show. The momentum has been building into this year and that’s being represented in many campaigns.
The 2019 FIFA Women’s Football World Cup starts on June 7 in France and the Netball World Cup is just around the corner, starting on July 12, while Wimbledon takes to centre court on July 1. These three tournaments are just the tip of the iceberg - the summer months are packed with women’s sport.
There’s much to be discussed, whether it’s Serena Williams’ influence on the global stage (her narration of the ‘Dream Crazier’ Nike campaign has been a huge talking point this year) or even the emergence of women’s football stars. There’s also the desire for brands to connect domestically, with established rugby franchises such as Wasps investing in netball and also Saracens Rugby investing in Hertfordshire Mavericks.
Of course, women’s sport isn’t a new thing, and the millions playing their sports week in, week out will be singing a chorus of ‘finally’ at media and commercial recognition.
As journalist Natalie Morris quite rightly wrote for Telegraph Women’s Sport: “That night (when England won Commonwealth Netball Gold) was a catalyst in the growth of the game certainly, but don’t tell me netball is ‘having a moment’. It is a phrase that has been repeated over the past year by journalists and commentators who have seemingly only just realised that netball exists.”
Alex Sexton, former communications manager for England Netball and current communications director for Netball Superleague franchise Saracens Mavericks, also made a great point when he told Zazzle Media: “The progress that has been made in the rising profile and bigger sponsorship deals for female athletes has been substantial over the last decade.
“This momentum has been unparalleled in the history of sport and due to societal pressure, looks set to continue. However, the question is asked – without this societal pressure, would this change have been as quick and as insistent?”
While we don’t know the answer, it’s important to work hard now we’re in this position. Brands now have a responsibility to ensure these strong and talented female athletes are represented appropriately.
The increasing coverage and commercial success of women’s sport certainly isn’t a ‘moment’, it’s here to stay and brands should take note.
‘I think women’s football is the key’
When I interviewed Clare Balding in 2013, she predicted that women’s football would be the answer to popularising women’s sport when she explained to me: “I think women's football is the key. It's the cheapest and most accessible sport to play, it has a broad appeal and it has a great history in this country…
“It is gaining ground now and although still semi-professional, will benefit from increased investment and coverage. If England do well internationally, the rest will follow.”
The BBC Sport, Channel 4 and BT Sport broadcaster added: “Netball and hockey have huge potential, rowing and cycling have grown hugely, equestrian sport has always been strong for women, athletics and swimming are fully integrated sports so showcase men and women equally but it's football where I believe the greatest impact can be made.”
It seems Clare Balding’s predictions are starting to come to fruition for the first time, starting with the 2018/19 season, where all 11 women’s football Super League sides (and Manchester United in the second tier) are now all full-time and professional.
Female footballers are now being included in the sort of adverts historically dominated by men. The Head and Shoulders #JustWatchMe campaign released earlier this year includes both the male and female England footballers coaching young players. Even just five years ago this wouldn’t have been something anyone could have dreamed of. It’s no longer acceptable to associate sporting images with men alone and marketers must bear this in mind.
While she’s recently told of the levels of abuse she receives online on a daily basis, former Arsenal and England player Alex Scott is also paving the way for female pundits. A woman being given a full time punditry contract for the men's game is groundbreaking for the sport. In May, her male colleagues praised her and highlighted how she’s handled the negativity while breaking new ground for the female pundits of the future.
It’s having females visible in these roles that will elevate the chances of other women in the future to hold these positions and increase the chances of commercial opportunities.
Netball takes centre stage
It’s not just football being represented on a larger scale, though. As a result of years of hard work, coupled with their Commonwealth Games gold medal success on the Gold Coast, England’s netball athletes have enjoyed increasing media and commercial coverage.
Clare Balding told me back in 2013: “I firmly believe that the reason there were no women on the short list for Sports Personality of the Year in 2011 was not because they hadn't done anything but because they hadn't had any coverage - either on TV or in newspapers.”
For the first time ever England’s netballers also won not one, but two awards at the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year in 2019 and are receiving far more media coverage. For the first time ever, netball was splashed all over the back pages of national newspapers, it featured on various television slots and gained magazine features in publications such as Vogue and Grazia.
The CEO of England Netball, Joanna Adams explained to me how the players’ commercial opportunities have increased with Commonwealth Games success and coverage: “There are more opportunities for us to go and speak to brands. Their doors are more open and they’re more welcoming for us to go and speak to.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, post Commonwealth Games gold medal it is easier because we don’t have to explain who we are anymore, people know who we are. “So that’s been amazing for us. I think it’s been reflected in TV audiences as well.”
This high-profile media attention, something which the sport hasn’t always had the luxury of receiving (despite participation across the country having always been high in the UK) has attracted more and more commercial interest since the Gold Coast 2018.
Former international netball player and ITV journalist Sacha Shipway told me: “Women's sport is definitely becoming more marketable - you can see this in the way advertisers are engaging with female athletes in ways they haven't done previously.
“It's becoming more and more obvious that there's a huge appetite to see strong, successful athletes that are female and it's about time advertising companies saw the potential and tapped into this. Prime examples are England Netball striking groundbreaking deals with Vitality, Nike and Oasis. I think companies are looking at the numbers of followers players/athletes have and seeing that they are amazing role models who also have an audience.”
What’s even more exciting about these campaigns and the future of female sponsorship, is the way the players have been represented. Their strength and athleticism has been celebrated. It’s also great for the brands who are seen to be at the forefront of a positive success story.
Joanna Adams explained the success of the Oasis fashion campaign:
“When a fashion brand wants to engage with you, your imagery has to be aligned with what they want to do. So, we can’t have them in a gym, pounding weights which is what the girls do do. And that’s what we love about it, again it’s made those girls normalised but it’s shown the beautiful athletic bodies that they have and that’s really important to us.”
Brand opportunities for the long term
The summer of women’s sport ahead is being showcased on the BBC with the launch of the ‘Change The Game’ campaign. This is fronted by female presenters and athletes such as Clare Balding, Sue Barker, Alex Scott, Sara Bayman and Gabby Logan among many others.
On this fantastic summer of sport we have ahead, Joanna Adams commented: “It’s a showcase window for our sports but it doesn’t mean it’s just a one-off opportunity. They can continue with us during the domestic leagues, the internationals, they can continue with all the great participation stuff. Brands are finally realising they don’t just have to align themselves with male sport and again I think the sports have worked really hard to make sure there is an offer that is appealing to brands.
“The offer is highly appealing now and they’re realising it. The thing for us is that we’ve had Gilbert and we’ve had lots of those brands that have loved netball and women’s sport for a long time and we mustn’t forget them. But to encourage new brands like Oasis, it opens up a whole new audience for us and that’s absolutely crucial.”
Very few athletes, male or female, receive commercial deals or coverage without professional success, but even with success many female athletes still have to battle for sponsorship, deals and coverage. So, it’s fantastic to see England Netball rightly begin to build some commercial momentum.
Joanna explained that this is the point women’s sport has always wanted to reach - for it to be ‘normal’ for male and female sport to receive an equal share of coverage based on success:
“We want this to stop being a battle, we want it just to have all the same advantages the big male sports have got. But also with the understanding that there are still a lot of niche male sports that don’t get coverage.
“It’s not that every single time a woman does something in sport it should be covered because men aren’t, but for sports that are doing well and there is a legitimate story behind it, it’s just normal now and covered the same as male sport.”
Rugby investing in netball
An exciting movement in domestic netball in recent years has been rugby franchises investing in the Vitality Netball Superleague. Three years ago, the Wasps brand started the trend by helping to create a new netball franchise. This has been followed up for the 2018/19 season with Saracens Rugby joining forces with the long-established Hertfordshire Mavericks to create Saracens Mavericks.
The communications director of Saracens Mavericks Netball, Alex Sexton explained the impact this move is going to have: “As a brand, they have an incredibly strong background in rugby union and have seen both their men’s and women’s teams’ pick-up trophies in 2019. Their expertise in the field of sport as a whole, including the additional commercial support that they will provide, should take the netball side of their operations to the next level.”
Sexton pointed out that Saracens have been brave enough to capture a moment and become revolutionaries of the sport: “It is my belief that this partnership work across sports will continue to grow. It is not hard to envisage a club brand which encompasses all and creates supporters of a club and not just the sport.
“Using the power of brand and club would increase the exposure and prestige of athletes pulling on the shirt. It should also have a positive impact on sponsorship and marketing opportunities.
“That is what is being built in Hertfordshire. When you take to the pitch or the court, gender is irrelevant. You are representing the club, you are playing for Saracens. By breaking down the barriers of gender on the field of play, you are encouraging them to be removed altogether.”
What does this mean for marketing?
While there is still a discrepancy when it comes to sponsorship deals and brand campaigns between women and men, the signs are positive for female sports stars. Things are moving in the right direction, but there’s always more that can be achieved. With media recognition when it’s deserved, the commercial appeal of female athletes can build, and as Joanna Adams said, has the opportunity to be ‘normal’.
Sexton pointed out there is great work being done, but there’s room for improvement: “Joint kit-unveilings and marketing material continue to promote the message of equality. The hope is that this doesn’t become little more than a box-ticking exercise.
“It would be a far greater shift if the next time a major sponsor was reflecting on which superstar to front their campaign, they went for a female athlete and didn’t succumb to making another Instagram-loving, viral dance-creating, follower-seeking idol as their poster boy.”
For deals such as the one between England Netball and brands like Oasis, this opens up whole new audiences for the brand, athlete and sport. As Joanna Adams so rightly highlighted: “I think the thing that brands really understand now is this will kick off a whole host of other sport involving women. So it’s not just this moment in time and then it stops, we’ve all got very strong domestic leagues, it means they can have a real year-round connection to women’s sport rather than waiting for these peak opportunities.”
By embracing the power of women's sport, brands have the opportunity to break new ground. The marketing of sportspeople is absolutely moving into a fresh new era and marketers should get on board with creating campaigns starting now and moving into the future.
Key takeaways:
1. The increasing coverage and commercial success of women’s sport certainly isn’t a ‘moment’, these stars are here to stay and their status is building so brands should take note.
2. Women’s football could be the key in terms of carrying the torch and lighting the way for representation women’s sport - Clare Balding predicted this back in 2013 and it’s coming to fruition. With the female England athletes receiving parity of representation in campaigns and former players such as Alex Scott leading the way with punditry contracts for the men’s game, visibility is increasing.
3. While this summer is a ‘showcase window’ for women’s sport in this country and the world over, brand representation doesn’t have to start and finish this year. There’s a real opportunity for year-round connections.
4. Partnership work across sports will continue to grow. Breaking down these barriers on the field of play is encouraging them to be broken down altogether. This is a trend for brands and franchises to keep a close eye on.
5. This is a two-way opportunity - as much as brands like Oasis coming on board with England Netball is increasing the profile of the sport, it also opens up a new audience to the brand.
How Title IX Sneakily Revolutionized Women's Sports
Supporters of the groundbreaking legislation did all they could to conceal its potential impact.
When Title IX was signed into law 40 years ago this weekend, most people had no idea what an impact it would have on women's sports in America. And that's exactly what the architects of the bill wanted. That is the remarkable story told in a new documentary, Sporting Chance, which will air Saturday on ESPN2: In order to make Title IX the law of the land, its supporters had to keep the public ignorant of its potential for lasting social change.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a 36-word clause largely overlooked by the very lawmakers who passed the bill, requires equal access for women in all facets of education, most notably athletics. The section reads:
"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
Simply put, the law means that public schools and universities must offer equal academic and athletic opportunities to men and women. To the generation coming of age today, this sounds about as radical as "equal rights for gay and lesbian people" and "providing men and women with easy access to contraceptives." But to a host of former lawmakers interviewed in the documentary, it was a seemingly impossible goal that took determination and a healthy dose of cunning by former Oregon congresswoman Edith Green.
As told through compelling first-person narratives in Sporting Chance, Green and Indiana senator Birch Bayh first floated the idea of Title IX in congressional hearings on equal rights for women in 1970. The measure was eventually added to the 1972 education reform bill, but it was generally thought to affect hiring and employment practices at federally funded schools.
That was how Green wanted it. As the bill made its way through Congress and landed on Richard Nixon's desk, the 10-term congresswoman muzzled most public support for the bill out of fear that its true scope would be publicized.
Bernice Sandler, who helped draft Title IX with Green and Bayh, recalled in the film how Green was aghast when Sandler and others said they planned to lobby for the bill.
She said: "I don't want you to lobby. Because if you lobby, people will ask questions about this bill, and they will find out what it would really do." ... And she was absolutely right. It was quite a big break that no one was watching.
The full impact of Title IX did not become clear until 1975, when the government published final rules that gave colleges and universities three years to comply with the gender equality provision of the act. But its impact is clear today. Fewer than 300,000 girls played high school sports in 1974—today, the ranks have swelled to more than 3.1 million.
It's ironic that Title IX passed with most people unaware of its impact, because many of the people who benefit from it today are just as ignorant of its importance.
"We have to educate a generation that's continuing to benefit from it," said three-time Olympic track and field gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee, one of the speakers at the Sporting Chance premiere in New York on Monday. "A lot of people don't even know what Title IX is. And we can't let that happen. It's important that this generation be a voice to not let Title IX die."
Joyner-Kersee's opinion was echoed by past and present female greats at the premiere. Among those who agreed was the youngest star in attendance, 20-year old gymnast and 2008 Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson, who echoed Joyner-Kersee's concerns that Title IX's staggering success has made its very existence rote to a new generation of female athletes.
"A lot of people have heard of it, but I think it's something we really take for granted these days because [women playing sports] is so normal," Johnson said.
Johnson said she only became aware of the law's history and significance when she became an Olympic athlete.
"I don't think it's something that's really taught as you're growing up," she said.
Title IX ignorance among younger athletes is not entirely surprising because of the law's overwhelming success. Today, equal participation in sports is such a universal and unremarkable part of American life that anyone under 30 can hardly conceive of a school system that gave girls a single athletic option: cheerleading.
For the first 10 years of her life, Joyner-Kersee was among the cheerleaders, forced to limit her preternatural athletic talents to tumbles and human pyramids. Only after Title IX became law did she have an opportunity to join her high school track team, and sports fans know how that turned out.
Joyner-Kersee said the burden will soon fall on younger stars like Johnson to defend the law from being repealed or amended, a job that starts with knowing more about Title IX than its name.
"The athletes of today who will eventually be the voices must deal with the law of Title IX," she said. "When they start talking to you not about fast you ran, but about Title IX, I don't want them going: 'What's Title IX?'"
Title IX is still in its infancy at 40 and must be protected as well as celebrated, tennis great Billie Jean King said at the premiere. But the older generations of female athletic pioneers could take heart in stories like that of Alixandra Binney. A junior volleyball player at Wellesley College, Binney said athletics have made her a more confident and tenacious person and offered heartfelt praise for those who came before her.
"I would never have been here without those women—I would never have been a collegiate athlete," she said.
What a Time (For Girls) to Be Alive
Parents are hoping that this summer is changing girls’ beliefs about who can be a leader or a hero in America.
Towner Magill’s older daughter, Weller, doesn’t usually watch sports with him—not when it’s baseball or basketball or the NFL, anyway. In part, that’s because she’s 6. “She doesn’t usually have the attention span to watch a whole game,” her dad, 37, says with a laugh.
Several months ago, however, Weller walked in on Towner watching the U.S. Women’s National Team play soccer. Weller, who was the only girl to finish the season on her coed soccer team in Charleston, South Carolina, this year (and was initially a little discouraged by the fact that she had only boy teammates), sat with her dad for a few minutes before she noticed something unusual: ponytails on the field. “She was like, These are girls?! She couldn’t believe it,” Magill recalls. “It was like, I haven’t seen this before.”
Last month, when the Magills were on vacation with their extended family and the 2019 Women’s World Cup was just starting, Weller joined her dad and more than a dozen other relatives and watched the Americans beat France. This time, she was interested—and Weller’s little sister, who’s only 3, ran around pretending to play soccer during time outs, “wanting to be like her big sister.” Magill made a mental note right around then to tune in to and buy tickets to more women’s sporting events. “To see this stuff on TV,” he says, “has given Weller a little bit of a different perspective.”
It’s been just under a week since the USWNT prevailed over the Netherlands in the final of the Women’s World Cup in France. But already, the team—and the enthusiastic, supportive public reaction to both its victory in the World Cup and its fight for pay parity with the men’s national team—has had an impact on young women and girls in the U.S. Many American parents are optimistic that this moment will instill in their daughters the belief that women can, should, and do occupy positions of leadership, heroism, and power. And given that the summer of 2019 has also produced a presidential-candidate field in which multiple women are serious contenders for the Democratic nomination in 2020, these parents’ hopes for their daughters’ future worldviews are high.
Like Magill, Rebecca Anderson-Furlong, 42, of Connecticut has seen a change in her daughter since the start of this year’s World Cup. Delaney, 8, plays soccer and loves the 2018 direct-to-video film Alex & Me, in which a teenage fan’s poster of the USWNT co-captain Alex Morgan comes to life and teaches her a lesson about perseverance. Delaney’s soccer season was wrapping up as the World Cup began this year, and “after the Thailand game [in which the United States scored 13 times], she wanted to be ‘just like Alex Morgan, scoring five goals,’” Anderson-Furlong wrote to me in an email. Delaney ultimately came up short of that in her next game, but still scored two goals.
Anderson-Furlong and Delaney attended the parade held in the USWNT’s honor in New York on Wednesday, and Anderson-Furlong added that her husband, a fan of the English men’s club Tottenham Hotspur, has plans to put the USWNT co-captain Megan Rapinoe’s name on the back of his USWNT jersey. Having borne witness to such widespread enthusiasm for the women’s national team, Delaney is convinced “that this women’s national team could beat Tottenham,” she wrote. Anderson-Furlong credits the USWNT and other female athletes such as Serena Williams, Lindsey Vonn, and Mikaela Shiffrin with Delaney’s belief that “girls can do anything.”
This whole phenomenon—girls and young women feeling empowered and inspired by women’s success and acclaim in a realm usually dominated by men—does not surprise Kelly Dittmar, an assistant political-science professor at Rutgers University at Camden and a scholar at the university’s Center for American Women and Politics. “We often talk in politics about symbolic representation, the idea that you ‘can’t be what you can’t see,’” Dittmar said in an interview. “But if you can see the potential for [women being celebrated as American sports heroes], you aren’t just seeing the potential that women can be successful soccer stars, but even more broadly, that these very physically strong and also emotionally strong women are being given the credit they deserve.”
What that says to a girl or young woman who’s watching, Dittmar added, is “that her role doesn’t have to be a more traditionally feminine, stereotypical role—that in fact, this is a model of the type of woman [she] could become.” She can be valued by the public, in other words, by being assertive, outspoken, and physically strong.
Dittmar believes that seeing women publicly considered viable candidates for the presidency can have the same effect on young girls, and noted that some research has suggested a similar phenomenon at work. She pointed to a study by the University of Notre Dame researchers Christina Wolbrecht and David E. Campbell, which found that in several European countries, when the percentage of female politicians within government increased, women’s and girls’ political engagement increased as well. “Female politicians in democratic nations do function as true role models, inspiring women and girls to be politically active themselves,” they found in 2007.
Women candidates for the presidency, Dittmar added, seem more likely to produce this effect than other women in government. “These women are now on TV a lot more, getting more coverage,” than most women in Congress, she said.
“What I see [the number of women running for president] is the potential to ‘normalize’ women’s place in presidential politics. If you’re a young person, you saw a woman win the popular vote in 2016. You saw six women running [in 2020]. Still in a pool that’s mostly men,” she added. “But that’s significant representation on the [primary debate] stage. For you, a woman running will not be abnormal.” Some scholars have made similar observations about the effects of the candidacy and presidency of Barack Obama on African Americans.
While Dittmar sees parallels between 2019 and 2015—another historical moment when the USWNT had just brought home a World Cup trophy and was greeted with a hero’s welcome, and the prospects for a female president in the near future looked promising—she sees some meaningful differences, too.
In 2015 and 2016, the USWNT’s victory and Hillary Clinton’s historic nomination for the presidency certainly took on a celebratory tone. But in 2017, the national #MeToo reckoning with sexual misconduct against women began; in 2018, a record number of women were elected to the House of Representatives, which many attribute to the election and presidency of Donald Trump, against whom the allegations of sexual misconduct are numerous. In other words, the past few years have lent the present moment “a heightened awareness and saliency of the inequity and the misogyny that women face,” according to Dittmar. She said the difference in the rhetorical climate may account for the increased emphasis on the USWNT’s fight for equal pay in this Women’s World Cup compared to the last. To many women and girls across the country, seeing women athletes demand pay equity and women politicians make serious bids for the presidency “can start to feel like fighting back, or reclaiming power.”
Parents of girls in the United States in a certain age group are uniquely aware that their daughters have witnessed not just two consecutive American Women’s World Cup wins, but also two consecutive presidential elections in which women were considered serious contenders. They hope their daughters will never imagine that the world should be any other way. When Anderson-Furlong took Delaney with her to cast her vote in 2016, “she asked me why it was such a big deal,” Anderson-Furlong remembered. “I had to explain the importance. She truly believes there was no reason why a female could not be president.”
It’s not just the visibility of women in celebrated positions of stardom and power that matters, she added, but the fact that these particular women are using their influence to demand equal treatment. “Girls are growing up seeing strong female role models who are standing up for equality and speaking out,” Anderson-Furlong wrote. She couldn’t help but think that the girls in her daughter’s generation would not only shatter the glass ceiling, but might never believe it existed in the first place.