John K. Laub
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Students will examine the marketing and branding of consumer products.
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To open the unit, students will be asked to brainstorm and answer the following questions as a Do Now! assessment: What is marketing? Why does a company license its name and product? Why is the branding of merchandise important? When you make a purchase, what is the most important feature? What are some the biggest technological advances of the last twenty years?
I will ask the students to think about the questions and write down their thoughts for about 15 minutes. The questions are purposefully challenging and some students may need guidance. After everyone has written at least a paragraph in response, I will ask for volunteers to read their answers to the entire class and write notes on the board in order to initiate a Socratic seminar discussion.
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Students will explore the myth of the amateur athlete.
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Throughout the majority of the 20
th
century, the Olympic committee and college presidents and officials promoted the fairy tale of the amateur athlete competing for glory without financial compensation. During the last twenty years, historians have taken a closer look at the legend, probing the historical facts and debunking the myth. At the birth of the ancient Greek games, Olympians were not noble amateurs but well-paid professionals and vices similar to our modern games plagued the ancient contests.
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Greek athletes harvested vast rewards for their athletic accomplishments on the field. City-states competed for the preeminent competitors and rewarded them lavishly with "free meals and front row seats at local sporting events for the rest of their lives."
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The athletes also collected pensions and financial prizes as well as slaves and livestock for their sweat and labor. By the sixth century B.C., Athenian champions on the field were endowed with financial bounty comparable to $700,000 today. Like modern free agency, Greek athletes shopped their abilities among the city states and switched allegiances. The Greeks also sponsored less exalted sporting events in which athletes earned cash rewards; these games were known as "money games." Even coaches moved from city to city, seeking superior financial wealth for their expertise. Kroton, a Greek trainer, collected a salary 12 times greater than a skilled worker in Aigina, only to double his compensation when he took a job in Athens.
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As the sun set on the 19
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century, the first modern Olympics took place in Athens, Greece. The Olympians in 1896 were not sponsored by nations and came at their own expense. The myth of the amateur athlete originated in Victorian England from aristocratic elites who opposed competing against the working class. With the assistance of Victorian historians, the fable of the Greek athletes who competed without reward and practiced for only a few hours a day became ingrained in the Olympic image. The myth allowed the upper class to compete at the Olympic games and garner the medals while keeping the working and lower socio-economic classes out of the events. Former International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage furthered the legend by proclaiming that the original Olympics "were abolished when they 'lost their purity and high idealism' and became a business."
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Students will examine the historical roots and paradoxes of college football in the early years of the game.
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In the late 19
th
century, the Industrial Age brought tremendous technological changes, and the closing of the western frontier threatened dreams of further manifest destiny in the continental United States. Americans looked for definitions of manhood, and sport rose to the forefront as a potential answer. Colleges in the Ivy League wanted to prepare elite men for leadership positions in society, and football provided a wonderful avenue to challenge their students. The gridiron exposed a paradox in American sport; athletes competing gallantly and heroically was canonized by sports writers and fans, but beyond the fields, brutal competition, gambling assertions and cheating scandals infiltrated the new game. "Violence and moral edginess were its chief attractions, because they toughened the sons of the rich and prepared them to wield to authority."
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Ever since the Roman gladiators fought in the Coliseum, people have paid money to witness the events and wagered on the outcome of the contests. College football was not the exception either. By the late 1890s, scandals littered the college game and universities began to struggle with the issues of professionalism. Despite the criticism, the enthusiasm of the fans continued to grow for the gridiron game.
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In the early years of the game, coaches were usually former alumni or undergraduates. The founding father of the college game, Walter Camp, worked at the New Haven Clock Company and every day succeeded in finding the practice field during working hours to coach the Yale team. However, as the competition between schools increased, a desire for superior and specialized coaches arose. In 1891, Amos Alonzo Stagg signed a contract to coach at the University of Chicago and earned a professor's salary.
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Two year later, J.H. Sears wrote in Harper's Weekly that the modern game had become too complicated and players needed a professional coach to tutor them in the essential skills. Glenn "Pop" Warner never had any qualms about earning a paycheck for his football acumen and shopped his skills to different schools throughout his career: Iowa State, Georgia, Carlisle, Cornell, Pittsburgh and Stanford.
While coaches mastered their chosen profession, the game on the field became bloodier. By 1905, eighteen deaths and 149 serious injuries had occurred throughout the nation.
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Americans became disgusted as photographs provided close-up glimpses of the carnage. Even President Teddy Roosevelt, who was a fanatic of the game, felt that football had become too violent. Reformers pointed out the extreme violence on the field and believed that football "encouraged loafing, gambling and drinking."
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Concerned that this crisis would destroy the game, Roosevelt convened the principal men in charge of the game from Harvard, Princeton and Yale to the White House. The President stressed the need for reform from within as a way to forestall an outright ban. Shortly afterwards, the National Intercollegiate Football Conference was formed by representatives of twenty-eight schools and new rules were passed to make the game less harmful for its players. Forward passes were legalized, ten yards were required for a first down and mass plays were outlawed.
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The game would come closer to the one played today that thousands of fans watch.
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Students will explore the rise of branding and marking in college football.
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In 1968, Don Canham became athletic director at Michigan, and brought with him substantial marketing knowledge as a successful businessman. Canham was at the forefront of collegiate branding and marketing for profit in the consumer marketplace. When he arrived, the athletic department had hemorrhaged $200,000 the year before, and Canham wanted to correct the deficit. He noticed the thousands of empty seats at Michigan Stadium in 1967 and immediately sought to rectify the situation by advertising in Ohio newspapers for Buckeye fans to buy tickets in 1969. At the time, his idea was revolutionary as college "football games were seen as community events not commercial ventures."
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Before Canham took office, Michigan officials felt that television hindered attendance at games. However, Canham dissented from his predecessors. He wanted a packed stadium and thought that television would benefit the game by bringing a mass audience to support Michigan football. Canham contacted ABC Sports president Roone Arledge and informed him that the athletic department would provide any assistance ABC wanted. He was now able to sell Michigan football to people all across the country as the Wolverines became a staple of ABC Saturday games in the early 1970s. Canham was anointed the king of athletic directors across the country in the seminal article in Sports Illustrated ("No Death for a Salesman") by Frank Deford in the July 28, 1975 issue. "Deford noted some of Canham's successes: alumni gifts to the athletic department had gone from $46,000 annually to $300,000; Michigan was now making $100,000 a year off parking, of all things; and football attendance had jumped from an average of 67,000 per game to 90,000."
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As for branding, Canham envisioned Michigan as a national brand and made the University's yellow block M a nationally recognized logo. He promoted and sold products across the country with the Michigan logo on it and propelled college football into America's mass consumer culture. Amazingly, Michigan Stadium had sold out over 200 consecutive games since 1975, averaging over 100,000 fans. Canham even foresaw the rise of cable television on college football and its huge financial impact on the game in 1979. "Cable television has more potential than anyone has a chance to think about," he predicted.
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When the 1980s commenced, college football predominately remained a local sport and a minority of schools in the NCAA, which acted like a corporate oligarchy, enjoyed a near monopoly on television. In 1984, a Supreme Court decision--NCAA v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma and Georgia Athletic Association--changed how fans watched college football. Justice John Paul Stevens, an authority on antitrust law, declared that the NCAA restricted free trade of broadcast rights for its members. "…by curtailing output and blunting the ability of member institutions to respond to consumer preferences, the NCAA has restricted rather than enhanced the place of intercollegiate athletics in the Nation's life."
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After the court's decree, individual teams and conferences could make their own agreements to televise games. At the same time, cable television became a dominate player in the broadcasting industry, and college football provided additional programming for starving cable stations in order to satisfy the fans' appetite.
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Students will watch The Program--a fictional account of a college football team in the 1990s.
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Hollywood has a profound impact on the culture of the United States and one avenue that the industry has explored is college football. At times films have romanticized players, coaches, and teams while at others it has taken a critical lens inside the locker rooms and off the field and debunked the myths of the game. In order to boost their knowledge, students will inspect the game from a behind-the-scenes perspective instead of just observing the spectacle on campuses every fall on TV and analyze how Hollywood portrays the pastime. While watching The Program, students will complete a worksheet (please see Appendix E) in order to analyze the movie.
Afterwards, I will debrief the students on film and pose some philosophical questions on the appeal of football as reality television. Why do you watch football? What fascinates you most about the game? How much money do you approximately spend buying football paraphernalia for your favorite team and player? In your opinion, is football a game, an entertainment or a business? How do clubs make a profit?
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Students will inspect the ideology of League Think by Pete Rozelle.
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As college football descended across America's sports landscape, pro football took a similar trajectory across the consumer culture of the 1950s. After the Great Depression and WWII, soldiers returned home looking to reap the rewards of a consumer culture. The television, a relatively new technological advancement in the 1950s, altered and intensified Americans' demand for products. Consumers across the country wanted to purchase TVs, and broadcast companies needed a profitable avenue in order to produce entertaining shows. Advertising products on television and sponsoring programming provided a perfect opportunity, and the NFL offered the first reality television for networks with huge audiences.
During the early years of the decade, individual franchises negotiated contracts with the networks to televise its games. In 1950, the Los Angeles Rams were the first franchise to broadcast its games. While the fan base increased on television, the gate receipts dwindled. Fortunately, the Rams' agreement with the sponsors reimbursed the club for lost ticket sales. By the end of the campaign, the sponsors paid $307,000 to the team.
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The following season, Los Angeles only televised away games in the home market, and eventually, the home blackout rule was endorsed by a U.S. District Court in 1953.
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In 1953, the DuMont network paid $75,000 to broadcast the NFL Championship Game between the Browns and Rams to fans nationally.
The decisive television moment came in 1958 when the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met in the NFL Championship Game at Yankee Stadium in New York City. Over 45 million football fans turned on NBC that afternoon and watched what many fans consider the greatest contest in NFL history as the Colts beat the Giants in the first overtime game ever behind the strategic acumen and pinpoint passing of signal caller Johnny Unitas and the eloquence and athleticism of flanker Raymond Berry. The game had nearly every element that would entice fans to turn on their televisions in future years: competitive teams, glamorous players, controversial decisions and last minute suspense. However, how would the NFL take advantage of this new synergy rising between television and sports?
In 1960, the New York Giants earned $170,000 from television while the Green Bay Packers received $75,000.
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Pete Rozelle, who had become commissioner the year before, saw the disparities between the big and small market franchises and attempted to orchestrate a new strategy that would change the NFL forever. League Think, a term coined by journalist David Harris, promoted the ideology that each club's individual success would be guaranteed by sharing revenue equally among all the teams instead of seeking different streams of income for each organization. And construct competitive balance and parity on the field, which would draw more fans to the game. Nevertheless, Rozelle still needed to convince all the owners of his plans to broadcast games as a league package. He wanted to negotiate a league-wide national contract with the CBS network instead of individual teams.
After Rozelle convinced George Halas, the Bears owner, Wellington Mara, the Giants proprietor, and other big-market owners of his League Think plans, the NFL signed an exclusive deal with CBS; however, the NFL still had to overcome some antitrust issues after a federal court ruled the new $9 million contract invalid. A strong-minded visionary, Rozelle would not allow his new television strategy to terminate so easily. He forged important political alliances with members of Congress and a bill (Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961) was passed that "legalized single-network packages by professional sports leagues."
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The new legal landscape solidified an alliance between the NFL and television that endures today. Rozelle's new League Think policies began to take shape and solidified financial success among all the teams. By the end of the 1960s, the league had signed a $46.25 million deal with CBS and NBC.
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Students will examine the impact of NFL Films on the escalation of America's obsession with football in the 1960s consumer culture.
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The creation of NFL Films and NFL Properties became a critical component of the League Think policies pursued by Rozelle in the mid-1960s.
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Formerly a public relations specialist and general manager of the Rams, Rozelle implicitly understood that the league would thrive in the consumer marketplace if the fans became intimately allied with its teams and players. NFL Films became the preeminent agent of marketing the league, documenting the narrative and veracity and promoting the mythology of the league on film. "NFL Films had a more immediate and enduring impact as pro football's troubadour and epic poet," than NFL Properties.
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Fans loved the documentaries that NFL Films produced, and the company earned many accolades for its work. In 1962, Ed Sabol offered the NFL $3,000 to capture its Championship Game on film, employing "eight cameras instead of four, from ground level as well as high in the stadium, and in slow motion as well as normal speed."
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By 1964, Rozelle treasured the products produced by NFL Films, and the fourteen owners agreed to pay $20,000 per team to bring Sabol's company under the league umbrella. In 1966 an influential documentary, They Call It Pro Football, aired for the first time that solidified NFL Films' supremacy. At this juncture in the unit, the students will watch They Call It Pro Football and complete a worksheet (please see Appendix F), in which they analyze the key elements of NFL Films success: Images, Sound, Narration, Editing and Story.
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Students will inspect the growth of NFL Properties and the marketing and branding of the league to its fans.
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While Rozelle immediately grasped the power of Ed Sabol's company, the commissioner did not pursue the revenue generating potential of his other visionary initiative. In the 1960s and 1970s, NFL Properties remained a relatively small endeavor in which the modest profits were donated to charity.
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In 1969, gross revenue reached only $1.5 million, and the owners agreed to give the money to NFL Charities for its public relations value. As the league grew in popularity, so did the revenue of NFL Properties. In 1979, it grossed $100 million, and in 1986, $500 million entered its coffers.
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By 1993, NFL Properties attracted $2.5 billion in revenue, "licensing to nearly 350 manufacturers of over 2,500 items in 1991."
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The promotions division orchestrated close sponsorships with major companies--Coke, Hershey's and Gatorade--to sell corporate products. In 1994, Sara Levinson, who previously worked at MTV, arrived to manage the mammoth vessel, and she began to advance the NFL as a mass market "brand" in the sports entertainment business. During her six-year tenure, NFL Properties reached new heights with a 40% increase in income. A paradigm shift occurred in the corporate think tank at NFL Properties; the games themselves became less important as the NFL brand moved to the forefront. Also, the league wanted to market the games to the casual fans around the country and identified three categories of consumers: hard-core fans, women and children.
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"Play Football targeted kids, ages 6 to 15, with consumer products on the one hand and instructional clinics and flag-football programs in more than 20 NFL cities…Football 101 seminars and an NFL For Her product line targeted women, who made up 40 percent of the NFL's audience."
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NFL Properties also streamlined its marketing with fewer licensing agreements and major partnerships. At the turn of the millennium, the league instituted new marketing and branding ideas to increase the mass-market appeal to consumers: NFL.com, NFL Kickoff, Direct TV's Sunday Ticket, EA Sports Madden Football, and fantasy football. Despite the NFL's calculated strategy to market and control its brand to the consumer, it has not always been able to control its image in the public eye and consumer marketplace. The students will watch ESPN's 30 for 30: Straight Outta L.A. by Director Ice Cube. In this insightful documentary, Ice Cube investigates why the gangs of Los Angeles during the 1980s embraced the Oakland Raiders, wearing their silver and black colors and glamorizing violence in the streets and on the field. It is also a first-rate glimpse into the sport/gang dyad among African American young males during the 1990s and a rich example of popular/consumer culture percolating from the streets upward to the suits and skyboxes.
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Students will study the rise of the AFL and its merger with the NFL.
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In order to introduce the American Football League (AFL), students will watch a documentary: Full Color Football: The History of the American Football League, Part I: The New Frontier. The video looks at 26-year-old Lamar Hunt, and his quest to own a professional football team. After being spurned by the established NFL, Hunt decided to form a competitive league and convinced seven other men to pursue his dream.
In 1960, Hunt, the son of billionaire H.L. Hunt, did not want to go to war with the NFL, but the reality of the market place forced the two leagues to fight for more fans, higher television ratings and better players. The NFL coaches were typically conservative in their play-calling, and the games reflected their caution with a reliance on the running games. In an attempt to attract new customers on television and at the gate, the AFL fashioned a more wide-open contest in which the passers flourished, and fans embraced the aerial assaults of the new league. Immediately, the AFL signed a new television contract with ABC sports, the weakest of the networks, worth $8.5 million over five years to be shared equally among all teams.
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The AFL also filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL in January 1960, and in 1962, lost its case and appeal one year later. Despite the setback in the courts, the AFL continued to garner new fans and television ratings. Finally, in 1964, NBC acquired the rights to broadcast AFL games starting in 1965 for a whopping $36 million dollar five-year agreement or approximately $900,000 per club annually.
As television contracts spiraled upwards, so did the demand for players by both leagues, and their salaries followed. It became more and more costly to run a professional football franchise. Tackling escalating labor costs and possible financial losses, Tex Schramm, GM of the Dallas Cowboys, clandestinely contacted Hunt about a possible merger of the two leagues in the spring of 1966. On June 8, Rozelle announced that the two leagues had agreed on a merger to begin in 1970. Beforehand, the top teams in each league would participate in the AFL-NFL World Championship Game until the union was consummated. After watching his daughter play with a Super Ball by Wham--O, Hunt suggested to Rozelle that the game should be called the Super Bowl. The contest would be renamed in its current title when the Colts and Jets played Super Bowl III in 1968, and the first two games were retroactively renamed Super Bowl I and II.
Despite the success of the merger, one issue remained to be settled in the courts; with two leagues no longer competing for players' services, the new 26-team NFL appeared to violate antitrust laws for the players. Once again, Rozelle journeyed to the backrooms of Congress to acquire an antitrust exclusion. The league promised New Orleans a new franchise in 1967, and Louisiana House Majority Leader Hale Boggs fastened "an antitrust exception to a budget bill" for the NFL.
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Students will investigate Monday Night Football, and the NFL's escalation as an entertainment medium to a wider national audience.
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To open the lesson, students will observe a series of openings, interviews and introductions for Monday Night Football (MNF) over the past 40 years. All can be found on YouTube, and provide students with insight on ABC's fusion of sports and entertainment with video, music, graphics, and rhetoric to increase viewer ship among Americans.
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Introduction: Monday Night Football, 1973
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John Lennon on MNF with Howard Cosell, 1974
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Howard Cosell TV promo for MNF, 1977
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ABC's MNF Pro Bowl Intro, 1978
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John Lennon announced dead by Howard Cosell in 1980
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Introduction: MNF between Bears-Dolphins game, 1985
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Introduction: MNF between Broncos-Patriots game, 2003
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MNF introduction with Hank Williams, Jr.
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While television in the 1960s transported football into more and more American homes on Sunday afternoons, the league still had one hurdle to conquer: a prime-time audience in the mass consumer culture. In the late 1960s, CBS broadcast five contests on Monday evening, but none earned any memorable ratings. Rozelle needed to convince someone at a major network that football would succeed and thrive during prime time. ABC's Roone Arledge concurred with the commissioner's vision, but the decision makers at the network did not. Rozelle shrewdly threatened to sell a television package to the Hughes Sports Network, which was an independent production company owned by Howard Hughes.
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Already ranked last among the three-major networks, ABC could not risk dropping behind an independent program provider; it soon relented, signing a contract to air Monday Night Football. Immediately, ABC garnered dividends from its new investment. The first game ever between the Jets and Browns earned an 18 Nielsen rating and approximately 60 million homes turned into the game. By the end of its first season, MNF revolutionized the way fans observed the games as ABC deployed more cameras, hired a three-man booth, incorporated isolation shots and replayed action in slow-motion.
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Howard Cosell's presence in the broadcast booth provided the final ingredient for success. A former lawyer and a master of hyperbole, Cosell's unique voice and use of narrative language drew viewers--who both loved and loathed him--to the television every Monday evening. Long before SportsCenter, MNF offered the best highlights of the previous day's games during the halftime show with Cosell recounting the action for the fans. "Cosell extemporaneously narrated the football--Michael Oriard writes-- 'marketing' with his own multi-syllabic vocabulary and pointed intonations providing an urgent counterpoint to the sweet and empty cadences of a generation of highlight readers."
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Even coaches from around the league watched Cosell's highlights in order to catch a glimpse of other NFL teams and their players.
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Another hurdle remained that prevented fans from watching their favorite teams on a weekly basis: the blackout rule. Prior to 1973, all home games could not be seen by devotees in the home-team markets in which the contest was televised, including championship games. In 1958, ticketless New York fans missed the "Greatest Game Ever Played" between their beloved Giants and Colts on television. President Richard Nixon, a hard-core football aficionado, opposed the blackout rule and wanted the NFL to repeal it in 1972. However, Rozelle felt that the decades-old tenet protected attendance at the gate and fervently contested any changes in the rule. Nixon and Congress presented the final resolution when the House passed a compromise bill in which the blackout rule was lifted if the game sold out 72 hours in advance of the kickoff.
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The new law increased the number of home games fans watched and ratings spiked upwards, an unintended consequence of the conciliation, leading to an even bigger television contract in 1974.
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Students will examine competition from another new league.
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During the summer of 1982, the USFL, a new professional football league, announced its formation to begin operations in the spring of 1983, believing that a football addicted nation would embrace its new product in the sports vista. Twelve teams kicked off the opening salvo armed with a two-year contract with ABC Sports and ESPN for $13 million annually--a little more than $1 million per club. During the first season, the USFL averaged a 6.0 Nielsen rating on ABC, which slightly surpassed those by the AFL in 1960. Also ESPN's coverage of the USFL earned a 3.3 rating which was 50% higher than the all--sports cable network's other primetime programming in 1982. Despite its modest success during the first year in luring fans to the television and stadiums, the league failed to earn a profit and some franchises lost upwards of $4 million.
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The following season the league expanded to 18 teams and began a salary war with the NFL. The Pittsburgh Maulers signed Heisman Trophy winner RB Mike Rozier out of Nebraska, and the Los Angeles Express signed QB Steve Young to an unprecedented $40-millon dollar deal. Also construction mogul Donald Trump purchased the New Jersey Generals and signed former All Pro signal caller Brian Sipe from the Cleveland Browns. Competition for players between the NFL and USFL escalated salaries, and the spring confederation could not absorb such large-scale contracts without a huge boost in television ratings and revenue.
Unfortunately, the USFL never secured the ratings required for a huge increase in television revenue during the spring, and Trump orchestrated a new plan to play games in the fall against the NFL beginning in 1986. Without much hope remaining for success on the field, the USFL filed a desperate antitrust lawsuit against NFL for $1.69 billion.
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In the 1970s, a myriad of antitrust rulings against sports leagues gave the USFL some hope that its claims would be won in court. The USFL alleged that the NFL "conspired to pressure the networks to keep USFL games off television" and prevent it from operating franchises in major NFL cities.
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As a smoking gun, USFL attorney Harvey Myerson presented a report written by Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor, for the NFL in which he outlined a proposal for putting the USFL out of business. Even Howard Cosell testified for the USFL and accused the NFL of antirust monopolistic behavior. After a 42-day trial and five days of deliberations, the jury concluded that the NFL did operate an illegal monopoly and maintained its dominance through voracious tactics. Despite the verdict, the jury awarded the USFL only a dollar and the spring experiment subsequently lost all its appeals. The USFL never played another game after 1985 and all of its astonishing athletes moved onto the NFL. To conclude the lesson, students will watch ESPN's 30 for 30 Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?
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Students will inspect the technological advances of the past twenty years and its impact on the escalation of the NFL.
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Sports Marketing 101 affirms that name recognition brings credibility to a product and eventually leads to ticket sales and television ratings in the consumer marketplace. In American history, no sports league has better provided young fans with breathtaking storylines and gallant champions than the NFL despite the plethora of challenges off the field: steroids, labor disputes, drugs, womanizing and scandals. Aided by new technologies in the 1990s, the NFL sought and captured a new generation of young fans, which ensured the league's financial future. Young males across the nation embraced video games as a leisure activity, and EA Sports linked video gamers and football fans with its new product in 1989: "Madden NFL" Football. John Madden, a Super Bowl coach with the Raiders and one the greatest announcers in broadcasting history, provided instant credibility to the video game and fans embraced the product. Since its beginning, NFL Madden has sold more than 60 million games, generating over $2 billion in revenue.
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While Madden's name offered credibility in the marketplace, the NFL nearly guaranteed its success with an exclusive licensing deal with the league and NFLPA. Only EA Sports can use players' names and league logos in its video merchandise.
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The game has become so popular that "Madden Challenge" is an annual nation-wide tournament aired on ESPN, awarding a $100,000 prize to the champion. The adolescent and teenage fans who purchase and play NFL Madden become life-long consumers of the NFL and its products. "Every year it's our goal to get to the point where there's no difference from what you'll see on Sunday," stated EA producer Ryan Ferwerda.
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During the 1990s, the Internet exploded into American culture, and companies looked for ways to use the new technology to sell and market its products. The NFL did not vault onto the technological super highway immediately, but once it did, the league garnered a new revenue stream and countless fresh customers. Fantasy football began as a grassroots operation among friends who yearned to manage a club or own a franchise, but would never get the opportunity. The hobby remained low key and many NFL officials thought that the game closely resembled gambling. However, the courts have ruled that fantasy sports are a game of skill, not luck, and entry fees are not the same as wagers; therefore, it is not betting. In 2007, the U.S. Eighth District Court concluded that the use of players' names and statistics in fantasy leagues are in the public domain; and that consequently, it is protected by the First Amendment.
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In 1999, the NFL hired Chris Russo to lead its new media division--technology and the Internet--into the next millennium. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue initiated the NFL Internet Network, and believed that the Internet could provide a new portal for fans' passion. In 2001, the NFL signed an agreement with CBS Sportsline, AOL and CBS for $300 million, and the league leaped into the fantasy football arena.
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The arrangement increased the NFL's fantasy fan base from four million users to nearly 15 million ones five years later. When the contract expired in 2006, the NFL decided to run its in-house site (NFL.com) on the Internet. To increase interest in the booming hobby, the NFL reached an agreement with the NFLPA to have star players promote its fantasy game and direct traffic to NFL.com. Once again, the NFL instituted an additional route to augment revenue streams by connecting fans with their favorite players.
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Students will compare and contrast well-known commercials and the film Any Given Sunday by Oliver Stone.
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In order to synthesize consumerism and professional football, the class will first watch a series of famous NFL commercials and be asked to write down their thoughts and ideas during the airing. Afterwards, we will discuss the students' responses to the commercials.
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Nike Leave Nothing: Fate with LaDainian Tomlinson and Troy Polamalu
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Nike Leave Nothing with Shawn Merriman and Steven Jackson
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NFL Fantasy File: Braylon Edwards, Zen and the Art of Receiving
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NFL.com Fantasy Football Commercials: Tips on how to dominate your draft
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NFL Fantasy Files: The Best Players
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Coca-Cola Classic Ad: Mean Joe Greene 1979
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Nike: Bo (Jackson) Knows and Bo Didley
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Brian Bosworth Right Guard Commercial, 1987
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Sprint Peyton Manning, 2006
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Peyton Manning 1
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MasterCard TV Commercials
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Bud Bowl Commercials: I, II and III
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Following the discussion, the students will watch Any Given Sunday--a fictional account of a professional football franchise--by Oliver Stone. Al Pacino plays the head coach who must balance the loyalty of a veteran Super Bowl signal caller, Dennis Quaid, and the rise of a new young field general, Jamie Fox, of the Miami Sharks. The film provides a very interesting contrast with the aforementioned commercials and allows students to examine the paradox of professional football, consumerism in America and the sports/gang dyad among African American males. Afterwards, the students will write an essay analyzing the paradox between the commercials and Any Given Sunday.
