More Than Just An Athlete: Tiger Woods (Part 8)

Interestingly, the escalating dominance that sports figures have in the cultural and especially economic areas of our society has resulted in decreased power when it comes to their political impact.[i] Jackie Robinson’s actions led to a greater acceptance of the Civil Rights Movement and Muhammad Ali’s charged words certainly had effects on the anti-war movement against Vietnam. But modern day examples such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods make hardly any social waves. Some even charge that their apolitical ways are in some ways inspired by their loyalty to their corporate sponsors.[ii]

The increasing importance of sports figures in US society is somewhat of a modern day phenomenon. Originally, sports served more individualistic purposes, as it aspired to create a healthy mind and a strong body. Gradually, it came to serve great social objectives as sports instilled values of teamwork and self-sacrifice for the achievement of greater ends. Sports also served as a vehicle to create young boy soldiers, instilling rigorous physical exercise and combining it with like-minded values. Sports, and the competition that came with it, was a playful demonstration of battlefield conflict. But that relationship has seemingly switched directions.[iii] No longer do we look towards war heroes like Audy Murphy to find “true American values” of courage and hard work. Today, we find those values in athletes.

As Yu notes, “Athletic teamplay and character traits such as self-sacrifice, acceptance of one’s role, and courage in the face of adversity are no longer coded behaviors that predict success on the battlefield but the clichéd tropes of television sports programs that have conquered American life.” In a pessimistic, but somewhat realistic way, sport has become a business. With multi-billion dollar television rights being signed to the ever-inflating prices of tickets to cover the cost of ever-increasing player salaries and endorsements, sports for sports sake seems a bit lost. Indeed, this is where criticisms of Woods’ silence on social issues comes into play: Woods is silent because he is protecting his endorsements. But who can blame him? After Woods signed his 37 million-dollar contract with Nike, the company launched an advertising campaign featuring their new star. The TV and print ads centered on golf’s exclusivity and its less than stellar racial past. Tiger, glaring into the camera, said, “There are still courses in the United States that I am not allowed to play because of the color of my skin. Are you ready for me world?” The ads were popular but they also incited much controversy and criticism. As a result, Tiger retreated back to the driving range and away from the public spotlight.

The public spotlight can be a hot and burning place. Never before has the media been so attune to the lives of athletes. Partly a voracious need for a juicy story, the media seems to almost search out stories of scandal and moral degradation. The murder trials of OJ Simpson and other football players and the greediness of basketball players were all signs of the apparent declining moral character of our nation’s athletes. But such behavior is hardly new. Ty Cobb, an infamous racist and rude man, only attracted headlines describing his baseball skills and not his moral character. Babe Ruth was known for his towering home runs, not his deviant sexual escapades. Journalists turned a blind eye to such behavior because sportsmanship only mattered when it was on the field of play. Today, that has dramatically changed. Yu takes this dichotomy further: “What the spotlight’s glare on athletics revealed was not just the moral defect of sports stars but also the fact that Americans wanted them to be heroes in the way that were not required fifty years before.” This distinction helps to illuminate the public’s ardent desire to see Tiger Woods as a mover and shaker for social causes. We have come to expect more out our sports heroes: much more. We want them to be more than the best at shooting a basketball or swinging a golf club. We want them to be exemplary citizens of our society and to speak up when the world is wrong. In a way, we have taken an athlete, Tiger Woods, and are trying to make him into a modern day Gandhi.

Is this even fair? Tiger Woods is a golfer and that is the choice he has made for himself. Surely we can extend to him the benefits of autonomy and self-determination? But on the flip-side, can you really blame all the attention Woods is receiving, especially considering the almost ludicrous sums of money that are being poured into the sports and entertainment industries? Whether Tiger likes it or not he occupies a large space in the public realm. He is a public figure, but is he a public object? Can we make him be what we want him to be? Is that right?

Luckily for us, in the case of Tiger Woods we are likely to have our cake and eat it too. In all likelihood, by the end of his career, Woods will go down in history as golf’s greatest ever; or at least until another Tiger, perhaps next time a Lion, comes along and wows our sports driven minds. Tiger will continue to win tournaments and break records and many will rejoice in sitting back a simply watch while he paints masterpieces on the golf course. For those who want more out of Tiger, they are likely to be pleased too; though they may need to wait a bit longer than those simply wanting to see Woods hoist trophies. Despite all the criticism that Tiger receives he is doing the game a world of good. He may be the only “African-American” on the PGA Tour today, but it would only be fair to take Woods at his word when he says that such things take time and that he plans to focus more on such issues once he leaves the golf course.

[i] Leonard Steinborn and Barbara Diggs-Brown, By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race (New York: Dutton, 1999) 168.
[ii] William H. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007) 221.
[iii] Yu, 338.

More Than Just An Athlete: Tiger Woods (Part 7)

The attempt to see “all” of Tiger was a valiant attempt at open-minded multiculturalism. But the clumsiness of his classification and its failure to truly capture all of who Tiger is “resulted from both the flawed conception of cultural and racial origins…and an inability to leave behind an obsession with the idea that race is a biological category represented by individuals.” Thus even though Woods is a self-described “Cablinasian,” (CAucasian + BLack + INdian + ASIAN) he is reduced from his whole identity to his darkest ancestry—black.[1] “Cablinasian” gained very little traction in the press because it served to describe Woods and only Woods. As our racial history has shown, we like things simple and categorical, and thus Woods is most conveniently described as an African-American. Even today, though categorizations based on race have been effectively attacked, the new theories of culture are still rooted in the historical groundings of biological and race based classifications of yesteryear. So while Woods was heralded as ushering in a new age of multiculturalism, the ensuing analysis of his mixed racial heritage was not fully divorced from nineteenth-century conceptions of race.[2] Nevertheless, the overarching theme is that Woods reveals the central stupidity of racial politics in America: the discrepancy between the rigid way we talk about race and the fluid realities of who we increasingly are.

When Woods went on the Oprah Winfrey Show and described himself as “Cablinasian,” many did not know what to make of it. People had never heard such a description used before and maybe for simplicity’s sake they labeled him black. Or perhaps there were elements of racial ignorance and lingering “one drop rule” logic that sent Tiger’s multiculturalism on the path to blackness. But there also existed “a seemingly positive desire to paint Tiger in a darker shade, a pulling for Tiger to be a heroic black man who would save America from its racist past.”[3] In a 1995 Sports Illustrated article, Rick Reilly first hit on Tiger being labeled a “Great Black Hope” which he drew out of Tiger’s childhood appearances on television shows such as The Mike Douglas Show and That’s Incredible.[4] By the time Tiger turned pro, other were pondering “Who can he [Tiger] be? Pick a name. Arthur Ashe. Jackie Robinson. Colin Powell.”[5]

The way in which Tiger Woods was received by mass media and other black leaders reveals our post-Civil Rights Era train of thought with regard to smoothing out racial differences. Woods exposes our insatiable need for a “Great Black Hope” and our delirious confidence that one man, through sheer individual talent and will, can redeem us from our sullied racial past. Sports Illustrated’s Jaime Diaz expressed this hope, writing, “African-American heritage would make a victory in the tournament [The Masters], in which no black was invited to play until 1975 and where every caddie was black until ’83, a transcendent accomplishment.”[6] The hope here is clear: that the action of one man would change the way people look at race. Have we? Perhaps. Is it because of Woods? That is more difficult to discern.

But it is easy to see the insatiable hope that many had to make Tiger into an African-American liberator. Indeed, the application of being a “Great Black Hope” put Woods in a long line of black sports heroes who have ascended into God-like status as they transcended racial barriers to fulfill the expectations of many and redeem US society from its ugly past. Starting with Jack Johnson of the early 19th century, to Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson of the mid-20th century, and on to OJ Simpson and Arthur Ashe and now Tiger Woods, journalists and writers have romanticized that one individual could right the pasts wrongs.[7] These tales have thus shaped the way we view individual blacks and the greater movement towards a society where race is supposed to matter less and less. Of course, the entry and ascendancy of Woods to the top of a formerly segregated game should not be devalued. Indeed, it is a special and great accomplishment. But the idea that a single martyr could help a nation overcome a negative past in some ways induces us to forget, or simply take solace in looking past, all of the institutional and structural causes and effects of racism that continue to exist in our society.

[1] Kamiya, “Cablinasian Like Me”
[2] Clarence Page, “A credit to his races” Transcript from NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, aired May 1, 1997.
[3] Yu, 332.
[4] Rick Reilly, “Goodness Gracious, He’s a Great Ball of Fire,” Sports Illustrated, (March 27, 1995).
[5] Leigh Montville, “On the Job Training,” Sports Illustrated, (September 9, 1996).
[6] Jaime Diaz, “One for the Ages,” Sports Illustrated, (April 7, 1997).
[7] David Owen, “The Chosen One,” New Yorker August 21 and 28, 2000, 117

More Than Just An Athlete: Tiger Woods (Part 6)

When Woods announced his intention to drop his amateur status and turn professional he became a media sensation. TV and print media dedicated page after page to Woods’ life, his potential impact on the sport and whether he could live up to the hype of a 37 million dollar contract from Nike. His race was also the topic of much conversation and analysis. As a child with a black father and an Asian mother, Woods appeared to be a multicultural angel sent from heaven to open minds and bring multiculturalism and racial understanding to a sport previously reserved for America’s white upper-class. As Henry Yu notes, “A multicolored Tiger in hues of black and yellow would forever change the complexion of golf, attracting American inner-city children to the game in the same way Michael Jordan had done for basketball.”[1]

Yet the calculus employed by many journalists to describe Woods’ ethnic breakdown was highly revealing and harkened back to earlier conceptions of how the US has unnervingly tried to classify people on the basis of race. In math-like fashion, the Los Angeles Times computed Woods’ “rich ethnic background,” by combining “a quarter Native American, a quarter Chinese and half African-American,” father with a “half Thai, a quarter Chinese, and a quarter white mother.” Such racial calculus rings alarmingly similar to previous court ruling such as Plessey v. Ferguson whereby such rulings looked to classify citizens by compartmentalizing their racial breakdowns. Thinking in the 19th and early 20th centuries led people that through blood and heritage one could break another’s identity into precise fractions. This line of thinking led to the “one drop rule,” which stated that a single drop of black blood classified a person as black and that no amount of white blood could overpower the black blood.[2] Thus, even though Woods is technically more Asian than black, modern society has decided that he is African-American. This somewhat misleading classification had roots in many areas, ranging from pure racial ignorance to black leaders that wanted to define Woods as black in order to profit from what would soon turn into a large amount of social clout and capital.

Thus the confusion over Woods’ true racial complexion reveals that old notions of race still have streams running through our society. Bewilderment also evolved from labor migration from the 19th century and how the concept of culture began to eclipse classical concepts of racial classification.[3] In many ways we still hold onto the classificatory method of racial categorization. But this has been somewhat overcome by the rise of sociology which has placed greater importance on culture in describing differences in human behavior. Blatant and somewhat stereotypical examples of sociological classification would be descriptions such as, “He is humble and subservient because he is Asian,” or “She is loud and obnoxious because of her American roots.” But Woods, with his jumbled and hard-to-define race and culture, throws racial and cultural classification into a helter-skelter whirlwind that works to show how such classifications, despite their universal usage, have come to signify less and less about a person. For instance, the notion that Tiger spends a quarter of the week acting “black” another quarter “white” and the other half “Asian” is simply preposterous. What Woods enforces is that racial and cultural classifications are fictional and meaningless. But just because this may be so does not mean that such classifications will simply vanish.[4]

[1] Henry Yu, “Tiger Woods at the Center of History: Looking Back at the Twentieth Century through the Lenses of Race, Sports, and Mass Consumption,” in John Bloom and Michael Willard eds., Sports Matters: Race, Recreation and Culture, (New York: New York University Press: 2002) 325.
[2] Virginia Dominguez, White By Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986) 26
[3] Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000) 94.
[4] Yu, 329.

More Than Just An Athlete: Tiger Woods (Part 5)

Just because Woods is not the most vocal voice when it comes to social issues is hardly an indication that he does not want to affect change. In fact, Tiger has addressed publicly the issues of race in golf, the participation of minority youth in the growing game and how he sees himself fitting in to each of these issues. Tiger does not deny his almost godly position in our society. But he also does not see much success in sacrificing his golfing career to make sudden and radical changes to golf’s racial landscape. Responding to the question of why there are not more blacks on Tour, Tiger noted that:

One, it takes time, and two, it’s all about building a bigger base. Like
I’ve said, it’s a pyramid effect. So the bigger the base, the better
chance you have of having somebody make it and that takes time because golf
wasn’t always that popular. I remember when I was in high school, golf was
a wussy sport. You weren’t cool if you played it. That stereotype is
changing, it’s evolving and more kids are trying out for golf teams. It
takes time.[1]

To be sure, though he may not speak out as much as some would like, Woods is doing quite a lot to increase the size of golf’s base and to change the golfer’s stereotype. In 1996, with the help of his father, Tiger founded the Tiger Woods Foundation. The main focus of the foundation is to provide disadvantaged youth the chance to become better people through golf clinics, grant programs, and college scholarships. Woods also created the Tiger Woods Learning Center which opened in 2006 in Anaheim, California. The Center is a 35,000 square foot educational center with its goal being “to get students thinking about the role education plays in their futures.”[2] The Center provides thousands of underprivileged students annual access to courses in math, science, technology and language arts. Tiger has also partnered with and donated millions of dollars to Te First Tee , which is the PGA Tour’s initiative to give inner-city and disadvantaged youth the chance to get involved in the game. “It’s about helping the next generation have a better future. I will be a leader for everybody,” Woods said when speaking of his philanthropic ventures.[3]

Woods’ charitable contributions are greater than any other player on Tour and they have had measurable effects. It is estimated that in the past ten years, the number of golfers in America has risen approximately thirty-percent to thirty-five million golfers. In that same time, the number of African-American golfers has more than doubled to an estimated 820,000. Moreover, in 1996 there were only 100 junior golf programs in the US. Now there are over 700. While it might be an exaggeration to say that Woods is responsible for each new golfer and each new program, it would be safe to say that Tiger’s leadership has played a substantial role in golf’s proliferation. In response to a reporter’s question on how Tiger saw his social work developing, he likened himself to the great Arthur Ashe:

Some people remember Arthur Ashe because he was a tennis player. But there
are some people all around the world who don’t know that he won Wimbledon but
remember what kind of social impact he made, what kind of leader he was.
That’s the role I want to play. ‘Yeah,’ people might say, ‘he was a good golfer
at one point. You know, he won some tournaments here and there. But
what he did socially had a real impact.’[4]

As this quote makes clear, Tiger wants his legacy not to be built around his golfing achievements, but by his greater societal contributions. Tiger has said that this is a long process and that for now he is still focused on golf and becoming the game’s greatest player. But considering how involved he currently is in “building a bigger base” and giving youth opportunities all in the midst of focusing on golf with the idea of expanding his social influence once he has left the game, one can only expect that Ali and Ashe-like efforts and effects are only in the not-so-distant future.


Tiger Woods’ influence on the game of golf has been profound, and it is only likely to become more so. He has wowed the golfing world with his skill and determination to become perhaps the game’s greatest player. Furthermore, despite calls from critics to be more outspoken, Tiger has done much to extend the game to those whom it may never have reached through selfless charitable ventures. Certainly, most would have to agree that Woods’ impact on the game has been resoundingly positive. Yet, despite all that Woods has done for the game he remains a remarkable example beyond being a great golfer and a generous philanthropist. In many ways, the story of Tiger Woods goes past the game, the tournaments he has won and the records he has broken. A more nuanced analysis can help explain and illuminate some of America’s social transformations in the twentieth-century.

[1] Woods, quoted in Corrigan, “Dawn of the Tiger”
[2] Information found at TWLC.org (Tiger Woods Learning Center website)
[3] Woods, quoted in Smith, “Tiger on Course for Billionaire Status”
[4] Woods, quoted in Wayne Coffey, “Decade of Tiger: 10 Years Ago, Tiger Woods Changed the Face of Golf at Augusta National,” Daily News (New York), (April 1, 2007)

More Than Just An Athlete: Tiger Woods (Part 4)

As we have seen, golf’s history as an open and accepting sport towards blacks and other minorities is sullied. But Tiger has seemingly overcome any lasting obstacles and enjoys a life on Tour that has not been heavily mired by controversy. But this is not how it was when Tiger was growing up or just starting out on Tour. Though some people criticize Tiger today for being an “uncle Tom” and for being out of touch with his race, the truth is that Tiger dealt with issues of race throughout his life and it continues to be an important issue for him. In Charles Barkley’s book Who’s Afraid of A Large Black Man?, Woods talks about his early exposure to the issues of race. He describes how on his first day of kindergarten he was tied to a tree and spray-painted with the N-word on him by a group of sixth-graders.[1] He also discusses his feelings about being raised in two different cultures and how that has shaped his views on multiculturalism and the need to take a more open-minded approach to such issues. He notes how he was treated disrespectfully by other players at junior tournaments and how he endured boos and heckles at a few of his first PGA events. His father Earl remembers the difficulty he had in finding a course that would let him and his son play on which often resulted in many backyard practice sessions. All things considered, it would be easy for Woods to harbor strong feelings of animosity and perhaps for him to speak out stridently and complain. But like Sifford and Elder who came before him, Tiger has persevered and let his game speak for himself.

Much of Tiger’s approach towards race can be traced back to his father Earl. Since birth, Earl prepared Tiger to mentally withstand any and all adversity and distractions that he would eventually face in life. This took the form of stories on the Civil Rights movement and Earl’s practice of throwing bottle caps at Tiger while he was working on his swing.[2] As he grew up, Woods took every racist comment, every invidious denial in stride as he maintained focused on his life goal—to become the greatest golfer in the world and thereby opening up the game and the gates of country clubs to all ethnicities. Note the formation and sequence of this goal. Becoming the greatest golfer comes first, and then comes the social work. This is not because he does not care, or chooses to place sports above social causes. It is because the social work takes time and Tiger feels that his social impact can only be abetted by the fact that he will be the world’s greatest golfer.[3] Contrary to his critics’ attacks, Tiger remains quite attune to his race. The following excerpt from Barkley’s book, Who’s Afraid of A Large Black Man?, in which Tiger’s description of his 1997 Masters victory goes from celebratory to seriously somber, poignantly illuminates some of Tiger’s thoughts on race:

So, there’s this closing ceremony. You go on the putting green, where it
takes place, and I look up and they’re all there in their white outfits.
The cooks, the staff, attendants, everybody. They’re all black. Each
one of them came out onto the balcony and watched it. I look back and I
start getting choked up just thinking about it. They touched me in a real
powerful way. I started thinking about everything these people had faced
in life, all the ugliness and all the prejudice and all the obstacles they had
to deal with. I’ve seen what they struggle with and I feel so bad. I was
thinking that they could have a lot of bitterness and feel ‘Why him? Why not
me?’ But they didn’t. They don’t. It was very impactful, man…They touched me
more than they will ever know. Ever.[4]

It is quite evident that Tiger is indeed in touch with his race, the struggles that others have gone through, and the struggles that still exist in the racial fabric of our society.

While many criticize Woods for not projecting a stronger voice, others see his silence as an indication that he truly is transcending race. Tiger plays golf, and plays it quite well. He wants to be known as the world’s greatest golfer and wants his game to speak for himself. The fact that he does not speak out more is most likely due to a “horse-blinder” mentality that directs his focus predominately towards golf. And because he does not grandstand and make a fuss out of racial issues is probably a big reason why he has been accepted by a predominately traditional, conservative, wealthy and white golfing demographic.[5] As Greg Garber once wrote in an article for ESPN, “In the end, Woods has served as an example of racial harmony simply by being himself.”[6] Tiger is charming, respectful, intelligent and calm. If Tiger went into the press room after a round and sounded off like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton he certainly would have been received and perceived in a very different light. But more than anything else, his spectacular play has spoken for itself which has silenced many of those harboring racist sentiment. Tiger knows he is part of a culture that is slow to change and he has tailored his social agenda accordingly.

[1] Doug Smith, “Tiger on course for Billionaire Status, But Lags in Coaxing Blacks Onto Pro Tours,” 23 September 2007, (21 March 2008)
[2] Ibid
[3] Corrigan, “Dawn of the Tiger”
[4] Charles Barkley, Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man? (New York: Penguin Press, 2005) 232.
[5] Gary Kamiya, “Cablinasian Like Me: Tiger Woods’ Rejection of Orthodox Racial Classifications,” 30 April 1997, (21 March 2008)
[6] Greg Garber, quoted in Scoop Jackson, “Now Its Time for Tiger to Fulfill Father’s Prophecy,” ESPN.com, 10 January 2008, (29 March 2008)

More Than Just An Athlete: Tiger Woods (part 3)

When Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997 by an unprecedented twelve strokes, the golfing world hailed him as golf’s new messiah. It was his first major tournament and not only had Tiger decimated the field, he posted 18-under par, the lowest score ever in Masters history. It had been almost two decades since the days of Palmer and Nicklaus and golf was seemingly welcoming its savior. Lee Elder, who watched Woods put on the Green Jacket with tears in his eyes, claimed that “After this, no one will turn their heads when a black man walks to the first tee.”[1]

With his towering drives and energetic fist pumps, Tiger was revitalizing a sport that had fallen into the stereotypes of boredom and old-fashioned curmudgeons. Indeed, in the eleven years since Woods captured his first tournament, his impact on the game has been unparalleled. No one has dominated the sport to the degree that Tiger has. He is the youngest player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on Tour. Woods has held the number one position in the world rankings for the most consecutive weeks and for the greatest total number of weeks. He has been awarded PGA Player of the Year a record nine times, the Byron Nelson Award for lowest adjusted scoring average a record eight times, and has tied Jack Nicklaus's record of leading the money list in eight different seasons. He has been named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year four times, a record he shares with Lance Armstrong. He is also the only person to be named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year more than once.[2] Other achievements and broken records would take the rest of this paper to list. To be sure, Woods is towering over the game in unprecedented fashion.

His supremacy has changed how other players play and the way many view the game of golf. Dominant golfers have always been powerful but Tiger has certainly raised the bar. Others on Tour note that, often, they are simply playing for second place. Woods has forced others to change their approach to the game with renewed dedication and vigor. Before Woods, golf was a sport that could be played with a beer-gut and a hotdog induced waistline. But when Tiger won the Players Championship in 1999, where he beat Davis Love III by four shots, Love said “He has proven to me that I have to get stronger.”[3] Now, following in Tiger’s footsteps, Tour pros are dedicating themselves to rigorous exercise routines and the athleticism on Tour has certainly risen. In the same way that Ben Hogan invented practice in golf, Tiger has essentially introduced exercise regimens to golf. The power game that Woods has brought to the sport has induced an effect called “Tiger Proofing” whereby golf courses are being lengthened to reign in both Woods and other long hitters. For instance, when Woods won the Masters in 1997 the course measured 6,925 yards. Today, the course measures 7,445 yards after yearly altering and lengthening. Tiger’s mere presence on the course has raised the bar in golf. He has made others better. That is a sign of not only true excellence but of revolutionizing power. Ernie Els, the world’s number three golfer, remarked that “The standard of play on Tour the last three years has definitely increased [because of Tiger]. The whole standard of the Tour has really risen.”[4]

Tiger’s dominance and impact on Tour is remarkable and certainly praiseworthy. Indeed, there is a legitimate case to be made that Tiger will go down as golf’s greatest player ever. Nevertheless, many hail Tiger for a different reason. Such people view Tiger more as a cause for social change than as a record breaker. Because of Woods’ minority status they see him as taking up the work of black golf leaders such as Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder. Indeed, there is something significant in the fact that Woods, as a minority, has been accepted by the golfing community and it is interesting to explore why.

[1] Lee Elder, quoted in James Corrigan, “Dawn of the Tiger,” The Independent (London), (April 2, 2007), 51.
[2] All stats and records found on Tiger Woods profile at PGATour.com
[3] Love, quoted in Jerry Potter, “In All Facets of the Game, Tiger Leads the Way,” USA Today, (January 8, 2004)
[4] Els, quoted in Potter, “In All Facets of the Game”

What's In a Name?

I’ve always been slightly skeptical about the pedestal that the NCAA places the student-athlete model on. They go out of their way to protect players from corporate sponsors and have incredibly strict rules regarding recruiting. Yet at the same time the NCAA rakes in billions from their own sponsorships and TV deals and the college recruiting game often finds itself in the darker shades of the grey area. The desire to keep college athletics from being a business seems genuine but also a bit naïve.

CBS Sports is thus wading in murky waters over their decision to allow fans to draft actual players from any Division 1 team in college fantasy football. In the past, the NCAA has steadfastly protected its athletes’ names and genuine likenesses. NCAA spokesman Chuck Wynne expressed concern “about the use of athletes’ names and how it impacts their eligibility.” But CBS stands by its decision as it will add increased realism and will improve fans’ overall experiences when they can draft an actual player instead of “Michigan RB 1.” It will be interesting to see how this plays out. A court ruling this past June found that MLB does not possess exclusive rights to players’ names and stats. This precedent obviously strengthens CBS’s stance.

To me, CBS’s move is hardly surprising. As companies look to deliver increasingly realistic and interactive products one could see this idea coming. Personally I have little issues with it. After all, the major sports magazines are running wild with pre-season analysis of college teams which certainly contain athletes’ names. It seems to me that Division 1 lost the model of the true student-athlete when games began being shown on TV and sponsors and marketers came pouring in. Perhaps the only true student-athletes are to be found at the Division 3 level where no athletic scholarships are awarded and athletes miss games to take exams.