The athlete of the past decade started the new decade off in ignominious style.
Under cover of New Year’s Eve, AT&T announced on Thursday that it was ending its sponsorship with Tiger Woods. This news illustrates a few points: First, 2010 is going to continue to be full of Woods’ news. Secondly, the pundits of the American sports scene often don’t know what they’re talking about. And, finally, a phone company doesn’t want to be associated with a guy who doesn’t know how to use his phone.
When the Tiger Woods scandal broke – beginning Thanksgiving night and lasting for most of the past month – we were told by most of the columnists and sports-talk folks of the world that this would all blow over. That sponsors would stick with Woods.
He was Tiger Woods for God’s sake!
But these are the same people – men, by and large – who deified Woods for years. Who bought into the whole “Tiger as the messiah” storyline. Who acted like he was curing cancer instead of hitting a golf ball. Who helped create a world in which Tiger felt like he could live a double life with no accountability or repercussions. He was Tiger Woods for God’s sake!
But the real world is a different place than the reverential world of athlete adulation. Nike might be sticking with Woods because they’ve invested millions in a line of athletic apparel and golf gear with Tiger’s name on it. Phil Knight can say whatever he wants about Tiger’s indiscretions being “a minor blip,” but the truth is he has to say that. He has too much invested to not be required to spin it that way.
Not AT&T and other corporations, like Accenture, which already severed its deal with Woods, Tag Heuer and Proctor and Gamble. They didn’t partner with Woods because he’s a great golfer, but because his image used to be shorthand for class and excellence. Not any more.
“These are companies affiliated with him for things not having to do with his core ability, which is playing golf. They rely on the larger brand equity, the attributes beyond Tiger’s pehnomenal athletic talent,” Paul Swangard told the New York Times. Swangard is the managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon School of Business (does Knight know that someone associated with Oregon is speaking such heresy?).
Besides, AT&T really had to drop Woods. It’s kind of embarrassing for a phone company to be sponsoring a man who is so naive about his phone use that he doesn’t realize that his hook-ups would keep all his texts. A man who thinks one “girlfriend” can take her name off her phone and that will somehow hide her existence from his wife.
AT&T should have at least given Woods a tutorial on how to use his phone in his double life. Instead, dumping him is their best option.
Ms. Killion,
Saw a great blog by Mick LaSalle a few weeks back about Tiger, called
“The speech Tiger should give” or something like that. One of the lines
went something like: “If Tiger says no to 999 of the 1000 women who hit on him every year, that still means he is a cheat to his wife. The biggest temptation most of us will ever have to deal with is eating too much desert.
How are you doing with that ? ” lol. Celebrities live much different lives
than the rest of us. Would I act any differently if I were in Tiger’s shoes ?
Would you ?