Love (Of Money) Stinks!

Although the J. Geils Band made the phrase “love stinks” famous with their 1980 album release about a relationship gone wrong, they could easily have been talking about the effect of money in sports. Profits and profiteers seem to dominate the landscape of college and professional sports these days, and when they do, a whole lot of ugly shows up!

Roll the tape back to November 2, 2013 for an NCAA Division I football match-up between rivals Florida State Seminoles and Miami Hurricanes. The game was eventually won by the Seminoles prompting a post-game embrace between the Sem’s head coach, Jimbo Fisher, and his 9-year-old son, Ethan. Shame on young Ethan, though, as ABC cameras caught the little guy wearing an Under Armour (gasp!) Florida State jersey instead of one made by Nike, the official sponsor. Forget the fact that this young lad suffers from a rare blood disorder (called Fanconi anemia) and that the tender moment captured the hearts of fans everywhere. No siree! Nike has the rights to what can and cannot be worn on the field of play here and no cute kid is going to upset the financial apple cart for them. The “wardrobe malfunction” (to borrow a timeworn term from SuperBowl XXVIII’s halftime travesty in 2004) was worthy of an e-mail missile from Mark Dupes, the Assistant Director of Football Sports Marketing at NIKE INC. In the e-mail Florida State administrator, Monk Bonasorte, was asked to speak to Coach Fisher about removing the Under Armour sweatshirt from his son’s closet.

It is incidents like this one that soil the garment of organized sports (pun fully intended!). The last time I checked most people were watching college sports because of the game, and not the jersey worn by the players in the game. The marketing rigmarole is out of control and is ruining the enjoyment of the game.

Money, or should I more accurately say, the love of it, has morphed into the evil of sports. The Bible says in 1 Timothy 6:10 that “the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil…” Perhaps more attention – and money – could be spent on chaplaincy programs and character development of players instead of the commercial enterprises of the rich and famous. Many of the college players turning pro do not know how to deal with the pressure of fame and fortune and it ruins them. The Fisher family has their priorities in the right place, however. They have an organization, Kidz 1st Fund, which raise both awareness and funds to help find a cure for Fanconi anemia. Money used the right way for the right purposes can be a very good thing. Someone just needs to tell Nike that.