As the NBA recently toyed with the idea of adding a small advertising patch to its jerseys, I couldn’t help but wonder which corporate partner would best have suited the Hawks this season.
AmeriSave Mortgage: Like the Hawks, low interest, guaranteed.
Natural Lite: The No. 6 seed of American beers.
KOA Campgrounds: Stay outside, just like Josh Smith.
See, with a little imagination, this can work.
The plan to include ads on uniforms seemed to be moving forward with unstoppable momentum until the NBA paused long enough to ponder a few questions.
Like, what if a player had a Rolex deal and the team was telling him to wear Omega on his uniform? How would the teams split the take? And what about fan reaction (the least of the concerns, to be sure)?
The uniform is the last marketable space left untouched by the advertiser’s heavy hand. The stadiums long ago surrendered — the ultimate capitulation coming when they erected a giant cow high over the left-field seats at Turner Field. How long can such a prime location as Tom Brady’s right arm go unsullied?
Not all sports have held out for the sanctity of the uniform. Auto racing, most notably, long ago gave up its fire suits to anyone with an advertising budget. Drivers walk around looking like the billboard out front of a Tanger Outlet mall.
Various un-American activities, such as Japanese baseball and soccer, have been willing to sell space on their athletes’ bodies and betrayed not an ounce of shame. It is just another colorful aspect to the mural of those games.
Whenever the issue of including ads on Major League Baseball, NBA or NFL uniforms is raised, fans are quick to react poorly. They have grown up to regard the sweaty clothing worn by their idols as sacred representations of the franchise, and to cheapen that in any way would be like sewing a Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks patch on the Pope’s cassock.
The thought of besmirching the Oakland Raider or the soon-to-be-debuted New Orleans Pelican with a tacky ad is just too much to bear.
How long can the poo-bahs of American sport resist paddling down that revenue stream? I would suspect not forever. Then once the unspoken ban is broken, expect jerseys to break out in a pox of commercialism.
And when the Braves start sporting the AFLAC duck on their sleeves, we shall carry on.
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