Out, damn swoosh: Logos now unavoidable
Posted: Thursday June 18, 1998 03:58 PM
It was only a few years ago that athletic logos were positioned on the underside of equipment and on the part of your jersey you tucked into your pants. In fact, it used to be that when your tag was showing, a teammate would run over and quietly clue you in like your fly was down or someting. Well, not anymore, I'm afraid.
Nowadays, athletic logos are everywhere. And they have migrated from the shirt tail up to the chest, sleeves, collars, necks and foreheads in the neverending quest for product placement. Look at Penn State. The stupid bird-dropping Nike logo is so prevalent on the once classic uniform that we should now call this team the Nittany Nikes,
for crying out loud.
In terms of advertising, athletes and race cars are constantly getting more and more alike. In fact, the 500 in the Indianapolis 500 now stands for the number of sponsors' patches each driver is required to fit onto their shirt collar. They do this, of course, so that when a camera even glances at them, it will pick up the people paying the bills.
So now, if you watch your sports highlights carefully, you'll notice an ongoing battle between the camera and the advertisers. As logos constantly creep into camera range, it's getting harder and harder to run an honest-to-goodness blip from Joe Athlete without it becoming an ad for Charlie's Chicken Shack. So shots get tightened to cut out the bill of hats and the ads on turtleneck collars. I'm all for this. Except pretty soon we'll be left with interviews that look like the athlete is speaking through a mail slot.
After that, what's left? Reebok eyelid tattoos? I hope Dennis Rodman isn't listening.
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