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Just doing it Speaking up has given Jim Keady the fight of his life
Posted: Thursday December 23, 1999 09:33 AM
Jim Keady is spending much of his time these days teaching and coaching a girls soccer team at a Catholic high school in Queens. And raging against the machine that put him there. It isn't that Keady, once a graduate assistant coach at one of the best collegiate soccer programs in the nation, necessarily dislikes what he's doing. To be sure, it's tough sometimes to get a bunch of teen-aged girls motivated to play, especially when you're used to working with the high-powered St. John's University team. But, all in all, it's a refreshing change from a world that had become just too political, too cutthroat, too blind for Keady to stomach. "Big money, power and politics," Keady says now. "It's a lesson I got one-on-one." For the better part of two years, Keady has been fighting with St. John's and the company that caused his split with the job he loved. It's this simple, really: Nike, the sporting shoe behemoth, wanted a piece of St. John's. The company wanted the school's athletic teams to wear its ever-present swoosh, for many millions of dollars, of course. St. John's said sure. And Keady, a passionate, principled man, said no. He said no because of what he says are deplorable working conditions for workers at Nike manufacturing plants throughout the world. He said no because of what he says is the continuing forced "prostitution" of student-athletes by companies like Nike. And he kept saying no, first in a research paper while working on his graduate degree in theology, later in the student newspaper, later still in The New York Times and Boston Globe. None of it made St. John's very happy. So, after some heated discussion and finger wagging, St. John's officials gave him an ultimatum. Wear the swoosh and shut up ... or resign. He quit. Jim Keady has, in his words, become an "outcast" in soccer circles now. He can't get a line on any jobs in college. He lost his starting job on his semipro team. Pro teams won't give him a tryout. So, for now, Keady is a high school teacher and coach, with an $11 million suit pending against Nike and St. John's, accusing them of violating his civil rights and trying to ruin his reputation. "I've tried to have this discussion, an honest discussion about this situation, for almost two years now, not in the public eye," says Keady, who says he won't keep the money if he wins his lawsuit. "I think what happened is St. John's got called out on this issue. And now it's just a matter of ego." Keady, just 26 at the time this all started, has a major problem with a Catholic university -- any university, really, but especially a Catholic one -- doing business with a company that allegedly violates human rights. So he pressured the school to reconsider by speaking out publicly. In fact, Keady saw it as not only his Constitutional right to speak up, but as a religious duty. And he continues to rage, to anyone who will listen. "When we talk about social justice, the nature of the Gospel ... those aren't words to me," he says. "I'm not saying that from up on high. But I can't wait until I'm perfect to try to create a perfect world." What Keady sees as a violation of human rights is the underlying issue in this whole drama. But there are other problems with companies like Nike supporting college athletics in the way they do. "I didn’t go to St. John's to be an advertisement for Nike," Keady says. "I went to St. John's to coach and to go to graduate school. Student athletes don't go to colleges to be billboards for companies. "What you have is athletes and coaches being prostituted. And the only people getting rich are the companies, the athletic directors and the head coaches. They're using the athletes." Things are never that cut-and-dried, though. Without the support of companies like Nike, many college athletic departments would be further in the red than they are. And that would mean cutting budgets and, eventually, cutting opportunities for college athletes. It is a point that even Keady acknowledges. "Maybe they wouldn’t be able to survive in the way they operate now," he says. "Maybe Mike Jarvis [St. John's men's basketball coach] doesn't make three-quarters of a million dollars. Maybe he gets paid the same amount as the highest-paid professor on campus." There are all sorts of problems with college athletics and, in taking his stand, Keady will touch on almost all of them. But, really, Jim Keady's story is as simple as this: He spoke out for what he believed in and it cost him his dream job and a whole lot of grief. And his story barely has begun. John Donovan is senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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