If you want the truth about what’s happening in the darker corners of the sports world, Phil Mushnick of the New York Post should be a daily stop. Today he skewers Nike’s entire Tiger Woods-fueled lunacy that led to their demise. From the article:
“Nike was barking up the wrong money tree. Golfers aren’t as impressionable or as vulnerable as high school kids who would equate a $225 pair of Third World, made-on-the-cheap Air Jordans to neighborhood status symbols.
Golfers generally don’t pursue what Nike is so practiced and expert at selling; golfers don’t seek street cred.”
Mush then goes on to do what so many other journalists have fallen all over themselves to avoid – to out the questionable conduct of all parties involved in the funding of Tiger Woods’s amateur career:
“The late Frank Hannigan, as the former director of the USGA, was the only one with the guts and knowledge to identify Woods’ “amateur” career as a sham, that his father was paid to fund his son’s golf, then to deliver him to IMG, which delivered him to Nike even before he technically turned pro.
Hannigan concluded that the USGA didn’t, in Woods’ case, enforce its rules on amateurism — it gave Woods a free pass — because it feared accusations of racism.”
Read the Mushnick article. It’s a necessary reminder to always ask yourself, “What are the trying o sell me?” Sadly, it’s also a grim reminder that money is power, and money and power are a law unto themselves.
