Clippable Motivational Slogan!
Being a good endorser means not allowing your personal beliefs to interfere with your business relationships. After all, Republicans buy shoes, too. Usually docksiders.
— Michael Jordan
“I love this fertilizer!” The best products to endorse.
Part of being a good product endorser is knowing when to say no. It might seem like a good idea to grab a quick $100,000 for that Crazy Frog ringtone commercial, but you need to think of how that will impact your brand image in the long term. If you’re seen as a shameless whore who will hawk any old product, you’ll become less attractive to high-end advertisers, costing you opportunities down the road (on a totally unrelated note: have you tried new Pond’s Nourishing Facial Scrub? I can really feel the deep clean!).
You don’t necessarily have to be picky about what products you shill, you just need to choose products that make it appear as though you have discerning tastes. Ever seen Derek Jeter’s cologne? Looks fancy, right? Wrong. It’s made entirely of used brake fluid and Country Time Pink Lemonade mix. Hint of saffron, my ass.
Remember, you want to choose products that mesh synergistically with your newly established brand personality. If at all possible, you may even want to think of a line of products that bear your name. For example, Pacman Jones once trademarked a fragrance that smelled like freshly detonated C4 plastique explosive. It was a huge hit in some of the more blighted portions of the Southeast. Apart from shoes and athletic apparel, here are some other products that you can safely endorse without any danger of cheapening your image.
SPORTS DRINKS. Gatorade has long been a favorite product of athletes both on the field and on camera. Peyton Manning, Mia Hamm, and Michael Jordan are just a handful of the famous names that have stepped up to pitch Gatorade’s patented formula of radium-infused seawater. And you can do it, too! After all, Gatorade is constantly thinking up new ways to repackage Gatorade to make it look kinda different: Gatorade Frost, Gatorade Fierce, Gatorade Ice, Gatorade Bloodbath, and such and such.
FAST FOOD. Fast food endorsers love to have athletes hawk their food for obvious reasons. If a world-class athlete like you can eat McDonald’s, then their food has to have some semblance of nutritional value, right? This, as you know, is not true. But here’s why it’s still okay to pitch products like the Double Bacon and Cheddar Ranch Pork Chopwich. Most Americans are acutely aware of the health hazards of fast food. Yet many continue to eat it anyway, due to a simple lack of willpower. These people are weak, pathetic Americans that we don’t need. They drive up our health insurance premiums, drag down our economy, and are anything but aesthetically pleasing. By pitching in and making it that much harder for them to give up all that delicious, hearty food, you’re helping our nation purge itself of these fat, disgusting wildebeests. And that’s doing a great service to all the skinny, good-looking Americans. Kudos!
FASHION. Follow my fashion advice from chapter 10 and you’re a shoo-in to become a part of any new Gap campaign. Because Gap never bothers to change any of the shit they sell (those 1969 jeans are hot!), they’re in constant need of new athletes and celebrities to model them, so that people won’t notice. Black pants? On a woman? That’s fucking crazy!
WATCHES. There’s no easier money in the world than popping over to a photo shoot, throwing on an Omega Speedmaster set to 10:10, and then staring into the camera with a steely look of determination. It’s the basis of all watch advertising the world over.
WHEATIES. Is there a more iconic endorsement pairing in the world than athletes and Wheaties? Olympic gold medalists and championship teams have decorated the famed Wheaties box for decades. Never mind that only eighty-year-olds eat Wheaties. Or that Wheaties turn soggy three seconds after the milk hits the bowl. I’m serious. Don’t even think about putting the milk back in the fridge. Don’t even screw the top back on, or you’ll have a bigass bowl of doo-doo brown sludge to wade through. Nevertheless, as long as Wheaties continues their time-honored tradition of marketing to the wrong demographic, you should take advantage.
VIDEO GAMES. Your union has licensing agreements with many prominent video-game manufacturers. As such, you’ll receive a cut of the profits off the deal. And you’ll be asked to appear in the occasional EA Sports ad or two, where you get to look all sweaty and grunt at the camera, “It’s in the game!” Bad. Ass. Best of all, you’ll have your very own video-game avatar. Designers at EA will record your movements by dressing you in a black motion-sensor suit and then having you simulate 7,500 possible game scenarios against a tennis ball on a broomstick. It’s fun for the first five minutes. After seventy hours? Not so much.
Video-game companies will assign ratings to your video-game doppelgänger in categories like Speed, Hands, Strength, Intelligence, and Hair. Unfortunately, they make these ratings based on reality, and not on how good you think you are. This makes for many pissed-off athletes every year. No one wants a high rating in Fucktardedness. But it happened to Philip Rivers. So steel yourself now.
BEER / LIQUOR. As an active player, you are not allowed to endorse alcoholic beverages. Your league can and does sign all the beer endorsements it pleases, but you cannot. Why? Because having a single player endorse alcohol sends a bad message to children. Whereas, if faceless league executives do the same, kids have little to no interest. Without your explicit endorsement, kids barely notice the signage around the arena. Or the blimps. Or the branded concession cups. Or the shooter girls walking around the parking lot. Remember: stadiums aren’t role models. Athletes are.
LOCAL ADVERTISERS. Regional businesses love hiring local athletes to get gullible enthusiastic townsfolk coming through the door. The production value and design of these ads aren’t great. Most of them are shot on a Fisher-Price PXL2000. Expect the finished ad to have lots and lots of starbursts. But who needs production when you’ve got a handsome athlete like Randy Johnson pitching for you?
Yes, local ads are the best way for you to make a quick buck without hurting your national image. But don’t take it from me.
HEAR IT FROM TWO ATHLETES!
Right now you can lease a new Mercury Mariner for no money down!
by Carson Palmer and TJ Houshmandzadeh
Carson: Hi, I am Carson Palmer.
TJ: And I am TJ Houshmandzadeh.
Carson: And right now, Mark Randolph Lincoln / Mercury would like us to pass . . . (throws ball to Houshmandzadeh) the savings on to you!
TJ: It is their annual clearance event, and right now you can catch . . . (catches ball) a new Mercury Mariner with no money down!
Carson: I am sorry, TJ. Did you say no money down?
TJ: That is right, Carson. No money down! And 0 percent APR for qualified buyers!
Carson: Wow, that sounds like a real winner . . . of a deal!
TJ: Ha ha. It is, Carson. Provided you buy on approved credit. Excludes taxes, tags, and $289 processing fee. See dealer for details. But hurry in to Mark Randolph Lincoln / Mercury today! This offer ends December 1!
Carson: December 1? Uh-oh. I had better . . . scramble in! Ha ha!
TJ: Ha ha. That is a very good one, Carson. (cameras stop rolling)
Carson: God, I wish I didn’t have to do all these local ads.
TJ: No shit. This isn’t worth a glass-bottom boat, man.
Carson: Who the fuck buys a Mercury?
TJ: I really hope this Randolph guy’s check doesn’t bounce.
* * *
DID YOU KNOW?
That Randolph guy’s check totally bounced.
* * *
Chapter 12
It’s Like Dying in Advance!
Retirement
This is just the beginning — of a slow, painful death: realizing you’re done.
It is often said that athletes die twice. Not so. You, the professional athlete, only die once. Usually around age thirty-five. Your actual death later on doesn’t count, since the world will have long forgotten about you by then. In bet
ween, there lies the enormous expanse of time that is your retirement. If your life were a book, retirement would be the five-hundred-page epilogue that nobody reads. It is a long, agonizing period, where your past looms ever larger as it grows more distant. It is the time of life when your dreams are fulfilled but your expectations are not. You always dreamed of having all this free time to yourself. But you’ll be shocked at just how dreary life can be sitting at home at 3:00 p.m. on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. I’m telling you, man, there ain’t shit to do.
That is why I say to you: never retire. Ever. Media people love to urge athletes to retire “at their peak” and lament the ones who hold on to their careers well past their prime: Willie Mays, Johnny Unitas, Michael Jordan, etc. Fuck the media. You’re a professional athlete. Only a tiny fraction of people on this Earth ever get to call themselves that, and the rest would kill to be included in such company. You’re an icon. A rock star. A fucking demigod. Who gives that up voluntarily? Idiots, that’s who.
Smart athletes are the ones who stay in the game until they have to be pried away with the jaws of life. I’m not being sarcastic. If there is one genuine piece of advice in this book, it is this: voluntarily walking away from your childhood dream is insane. Don’t listen to the media. Don’t listen to your wife. Don’t listen to your neurologist. Play the game until no one wants you. Even if you aren’t as good, you’re still pretty goddamn good. And you’re still living more of a life than some fuckstick walking around a golf course.
Hanging on to your career is also an excellent way of coping with the deterioration of your skills. Retire early, and you’ll never know if you still had some gas left in the tank. But if you hang around for years, bouncing from team to team, you’ll know that you suck. And you’ll have learned how to come to grips with that fact. Unless your name is Evander Holyfield.
Once you begin your decline, you’ll start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Cocky new draftees will show up on the scene. At first, you’ll say to yourself, “Pfft. These rookies don’t know shit. They’re all young, dumb, and full of cum.” Then you’ll watch them leap eighty inches up in the air and dunk with their feet. You’ll hate them, and you’ll hate the fact that they take it all for granted. But, secretly, you’ll envy them, wishing you could be them. Congratulations. You now know how it feels to be a sports fan. Why, you’re just like me now! Welcome to the Dark Side.
Eventually, your team will approach your agent and ask that you take a pay cut. You’ll balk. “Fuck that!” you’ll say, or words to that effect. Then, you’ll have your agent put out feelers to other teams around the league to see if any of them would be interested in your services. When they all say no, you’ll go crawling back to management and accept their pay cut. Only now, they’ll demand you take an even steeper pay cut. Fuckers, I know.
Once you take your pay cut, you’ll soon find yourself eased out of the starting lineup. At first, this will come as a shock to you. But don’t fret. After about thirty years, that shock kinda wears off. After that, you’ll start to see the writing on the wall. Reporters will stop flocking to your locker. Your national endorsements will dry up. Younger players who once pretended to listen to your advice will, at long last, feel free to ignore you completely. And all the groupies that hit on you will be on the plus side of forty, and have that wrinkled upper lip that only comes from decades of fellating four packs of Parliaments a day.
Once the season is over, your team will cut you loose. In the ensuing couple of years or so, you’ll sign with a handful of other teams, playing for the league minimum if you aren’t cut in training camp. You may even do a stint or two in the minors. During this time, you’ll grow increasingly disenchanted with your sport: how they build up young men only to discard them like used tissues once their skills have diminished.
Now you’re ready to “retire.” See how easy it is now to give it all up? And how dumb it is to retire from your sport when you’re still good at it? No one walks away from a job they enjoy. You must first grow to despise that which you once held so dear. That way, retiring is a snap. That’s how the rest of America does it, and that’s how you should do it.
Ah, but what to do now that the end has begun?
“I still got it, baby! Holy shit, my back just went out!” The art of the comeback.
Many athletes, when they retire, do so for the expressed desire of spending more time with their families. As a family man, I have to tell you: there is only so much time in each day that you can spend together as a family before all of you grow sick to death of one another. Unless you’re the kind of person who enjoys being asked, “What’s that?” by your children over and over again. I keep telling my kid it’s a goddamn school bus, but it just won’t sink in.
Anyway, once you discover just how boring life at home is, you’re going to start entertaining thoughts of coming back to play. This is perfectly natural, and good for the sporting industry as a whole. Fans love comebacks. Or, at least, they love the idea of them. It’s something to get overly excited about before your slow, underwhelming play becomes a day-to-day reality. Now, it may be worth coming back just for that initial burst of misplaced excitement. But I suggest you carefully consider these five case studies before doing so.
MICHAEL JORDAN. Jordan retired twice. His first comeback, made after playing minor league baseball, was a rousing success, resulting in three more titles. The second comeback, made after he realized that a retired Michael Jordan didn’t earn quite the dicksucking that an active Michael Jordan did, was far less successful. The lesson: if you’re going to be dumb enough to retire early, do it waaaaay too early. Sure, you’ll waste precious years of your athletic prime. But think of the drama!
GEORGE FOREMAN. Upon his return to the ring in 1994, Foreman knocked out Michael Moorer to become, at age forty-five, the oldest (and many would say jolliest) heavyweight champion in history. He then used his newfound fame to transform the traditionally gay panini press into the very heterosexual George Foreman Grill, earning hundreds of millions of dollars from connoisseurs of smushed, bone-dry food. The lesson: if you’re going to come back at an advanced age, make sure your sport is in such pathetic shape that you can essentially win by default. In objective terms, Foreman’s victory was rather unimpressive. But winning the heavyweight title still sounds like a real kickass achievement. One that can move some motherfuckin’ grills.
REGGIE WHITE. The late Hall of Fame defensive end made a brief comeback with the Carolina Panthers in 2000. His play was pedestrian, notching only five and a half sacks. But he collected a cool $1 million for his troubles. White cited God’s will when he came back to play. God, as it turns out, is a rather shrewd capitalist. The lesson: can you earn a million bucks by being retired and finally getting to know your wife as a person? Fuck and no. That is so not what God wants.
BJÜRN BORG. The tennis great made a brief comeback in 1991, only to lose his first match to a journeyman player while using an old wooden racquet. He then immediately went back into seclusion. The lesson: if you’re going to come back in tennis, don’t be a cheap asshole. Spring for a carbon-fiber racquet. For God’s sake, a Prince doesn’t cost that much. You won’t even need a shock absorber.
MUHAMMAD ALI. Ali returned to the boxing ring four years after being banned from the sport for refusing to serve in Vietnam. Ali regained the heavyweight crown and then retired in 1979. But a comeback fight in 1980 against Larry Holmes left Ali badly beaten. Unlike Foreman, Ali decided to come back at a time when the heavyweight division was perhaps at its strongest. If he had simply waited another fourteen years to come back, he probably would have cleaned up. Alas, the punishment Ali took then left him unable to speak. But I have to say, the guy can play the shit out of a tambourine.
All of these examples should offer fair warning to you. If you’re going to come back after your skills have clearly diminished, you’d better be prepared for disappointment. Then again, you’ll get to see all your old friends, fly in private planes, make lots
of money, and be treated like the Sultan of Brunei. So really, who gives a shit if you bat .198? Being good at the game is nice, but just being around it still kicks a whole lotta ass.
* * *
DID YOU KNOW?
The oldest professional athlete to stage a comeback was Hall of Fame hockey player Gordie Howe, who made a brief minor league appearance with the IHL Detroit Vipers in 1997, at the age of seventy. Fans in the stands were amazed to see Howe on the ice, rather than encased in it.
* * *
“Christ, I’m bored.” What to do with the rest of your life.
Once you retire for good, it’s time to settle in and figure out how to pass the time. Your life is now perfect, comfortable, and completely devoid of conflict. But you’ll soon discover that you now have nothing left to strive for. You’ll come to realize that the pleasure was in the journey and not the destination. What’s left to accomplish? Even if you did set new goals for yourself, you now lack the physical skills to attain them. Just what the fuck are you supposed to do?
Fear not, for I have a very simple solution: drink. Drink every day, without regard to your health and / or social mores. You’d be surprised at how well a scotch on the rocks at 11:00 a.m. breaks up the day. Alcohol was invented thousands of years ago by ancient tribes of people, people hell-bent on figuring out a way to numb the pain of a life devoid of television and Chap Stick. You too can use it to block out the existential dread of life’s denouement. Mickey Mantle did it. Joe Namath did it. Brett Favre will almost certainly do it. Now it’s your turn. I suggest getting hooked on wine. Many former athletes become oenophiles as a way of dressing up their alcoholism. Saying you have a passion for booze makes you sound like you have a disease. Saying you have a passion for wine makes you sound like a dude who races yachts.
If alcoholism isn’t for you, consider these other retirement pursuits.