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Picture it, a team leader hurt. His teammates in tears as their “Brother” struggles with the pain of injury and the knowledge that his season is over, a coach faced with a diminished roster and the void this player’s absence will make in the locker room as he attempts to focus his remaining players toward a championship run. An entire university cheering as one that they will “rise” to meet the challenge.
Man, this is good stuff. The stuff that movies are made of and it’s all true. Just ask the Louisville Cardinals basketball team. This is what they’ve been living since Kevin Ware’s catastrophic leg injury during this year’s NCAA Basketball Tournament.
But in every great story there is a villain, someone who exploits the situation for their own gain. Maybe, a sports agent? Yeah, a sports agent, they’re sleazy. Maybe, an opposing team? Yeah, who doesn’t want to hate on a team hell bent on winning no matter the cost? How-about the University of Louisville? Yeah …Wait … What?
That’s right, the University of Louisville, along with their athletic gear sponsor Adidas were attempting to make a profit off of Kevin Ware’s season ending, if not career ending injury by selling t-shirts. The front of the shirt read “Ri5e to the Occasion” (the five being Ware’s jersey number) and on the back there was the Final Four Logo just above Ware’s number five. But don’t worry about feeling guilty about taking part in this exploitation because a portion of the proceeds were being donated to a scholarship fund. Wow. So Louisville would get its coffers lined, Adidas would get some love, the NCAA got their cut and all Kevin Ware would get is a metal rod in his leg and a pat on the back. How Nice.
Luckily someone in Adidas public relations department found some common sense and put the brakes on this mockery of supposed school pride.
Don’t see the problem? If Adidas would have been the athletic gear sponsor for Marshall University football back in 1970, what would you have thought, following the plane crash that killed the entire team, most of the coaching staff, and prominent boosters, if they had come out with a t-shirt that read “Marshall Football We Will Fly Again!”? Hopefully it would make your stomach turn.
Universities big and small use their star players to sell tickets, jerseys, hats, programs, corporate sponsorships, and anything else to bring additional notoriety and money to the school and the athletic program. Nothing wrong with that. These players get a scholarship and walk away with a diploma and no student loans. A fair swap in my opinion but when an institution and a company attempts to make money off a player’s pain rather than performance … a line has been crossed.
People pay to see the performance and then buy memorabilia to connect with the team, to give themselves a sense of belonging to the team. When an institution profits from an injury they are treating the player like a piece of meat that is to be consumed completely. There’s no shirt or trinket that will ever make us understand the pain and sacrifice that Kevin Ware has experienced. Most of us will never experience such a traumatic injury.
So, why risk the shirts? Because Adidas understood that fans would buy the shirts so they could feel they were part of an epic story, part of the pain. Thankfully the masses knew better. Non-Cardinal fans new in their hearts that the shirts made the injury nothing more than a slogan and stripped away Ware’s humanity to the point the fans would feel nothing for him or his injury. It’s a desensitize mentality that diminishes the sacrifice that everyone who plays makes when they step out to represent their school. Still even more troubling is that Louisville, Adidas, and the NCAA just placed an actual, rather than subjective value on a player. In Ware’s case he’s now worth $24.99 a shirt. So how much are you worth? If you think this kind of profiteering is fine then probably very little.
Louisville’s bench honors injured teammate Kevin Ware this weekend. Adidas pulled its shirt honoring Ware this week.
