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Tiger, silence is golden
Updated: Friday November 17, 2000 7:29 PM
Tiger Woods should run out and buy Michael Jordan's little-known but much respected manual How You, Too, Can Be a Superstar in the Endorsement Field. It's a quick read. Chapter 1, in its entirety, says: Give controversy a wide berth. Avoid it like the plague. Tough question? Keep smilin'. Chapter 2: Never whine, especially after a loss. Chapter 3: I know you're greedy. Just don't let them know it. Jordan was and is the endorsement master, a man whose popularity knows no bounds. White folks, black folks, men, women, old folks, kids, Americans, foreigners ... they all love him and always have. Great smile. Great style. Great stats. A world-class pitchman for a wide array of products. He was also one of the all-time worst interviews, boring as grits. With kindness, he would kill your notebook with vacuous nothings, deftly avoiding anything resembling an interesting quote. His adoring public never knew where he stood on potentially divisive issues, and he was criticized in some quarters for not using his popularity as a platform to further political causes. But Jordan knew what he was doing. When asked to endorse an African-American candidate for Senate against incumbent Jesse Helms in his home state of North Carolina, Jordan declined, noting that Republicans bought sneakers, too. And bought hamburgers. Drank Gatorade. Ate Wheaties. Made long-distance calls. With the possible exception of Arnold Palmer, who shares many of Jordan's traits, MJ is the best, most-likeable, most-enduring corporate pitchman of all time.
Then along came Woods, who seemed on track to knock Jordan off his perch. Smile? Check. Style? Check. Stats? Check. Crossover popularity? Check. Endorsement contracts with Buick, American Express, Wheaties and, the pièce de résistance, a $100 million monster deal with Nike? Check. Tiger seemed to have a pretty nice life staked out for himself for a young man of 24. But in the last couple of weeks he started opening his mouth, and what came out sounded an awful lot like a long, drawn-out whine. A greedy, controversial whine, at that. He wasn't too happy with the way the PGA Tour used his name and likeness to promote, of all things, the PGA Tour, Woods told Golf World. Can you imagine? Why, do you think Michael Jordan would have sat quietly by and let the NBA use his name and likeness to promote itself? Jordan's Bulls face Magic and the Lakers, Sunday at 1 p.m. The very notion is laughable. If the public really knew what was going on, Woods implied, ignoring for the moment that he took home more than $9 million in official earnings this year, they'd understand he is the victim of PGA Tour exploitation. It didn't end there. Woods had deliberately ignored a Screen Actors Guild strike by filming a Buick commercial in Canada. SAG fined him $50,000, a pittance compared to the long-term damage Woods had wreaked to his image by senselessly angering every card-carrying union member in America, a few of whom drive Buicks and many of whom are golfers. But, hey, the Buick folks were antsy, and a man's got to eat, right? On a roll now, Woods, perhaps frustrated that he hadn't won his 10th tournament of the season, whined last Sunday that the 17th hole at Valderrama was "poorly designed" after he'd hit balls into the water there in three out of four rounds. Maybe it is. But all the other golfers played it, too, and Mike Weir, the eventual winner, took a triple-bogey eight at the 17th in Round 2 without blaming the course architect. The hole is dangerous and fascinating, and like many TV viewers I couldn't leave the set until the leaders got past the 17th, which meant I had to sit there through all those Nike, American Express, Wheaties and Buick commercials that earned Woods an estimated $54 million this year. A simple smile and "You can't win 'em all" would have done just fine. So when it rains, it pours, right? Just when it seemed Woods couldn't possibly attract any more controversy, madden any more golfers, disillusion any more fans, he traveled this week to Thailand. It's his mother's native land, and he's looked upon as a hero. But he was greeted by protestors. They were calling for better working conditions for the 70,000 Thais who toil in the Nike factories in that country. Tiger ought to visit one sometime. He might just find something to complain about. E.M. Swift is a Sports Illustrated senior writer and a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer. .
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