The following is reprinted with permission from The Plain Dealer Publishing Co. © Copyright 2026 The Plain Dealer Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved.
Bottom Line Clouds Vision of Athletes
by BILL LIVINGSTON
April 18, 1997Tiger Woods is a walking billboard. "Captain Swoosh," as he has been called, wears the Nike emblem on his cap and on his sweater. Regrettably, he can't have it embroidered on his Masters Tournament green jacket.
It is what you would expect from a 21-year-old, blessed with a $40 million endorsement contract with the world's leading purveyor of overpriced sneakers to the masses. But, as a symbol, the Nike swoosh ought to rank with Hester Prynne's scarlet letter.
The company mass-produces shoes in sweatshops in Asia. The appalling conditions there would not be tolerated in the United States. Reports say the workers are paid $2 per day. Three frugal meals cost slightly more than that. For errors in worksmanship or shortfalls in production, the women are hazed like first-year cadets at The Citadel. The New York Times reported an instance in which workers were forced to run punishment laps around the factory until some passed out.
Woods really must be the Michael Jordan of golf. Like Jordan, Nike's most recognizable spokesman, Woods has done nothing to jeopardize the big money Nike is paying him.
Of course, Utah guard John Stockton; Lute Olson, coach of the college basketball champions from Arizona; and Joe Paterno, the college football legend at Penn State, have been silent, too. They all endorse Nike. None has taken a stand on principle.
When you are talking about multinational corporations, you are not talking in terms of black or white. Only green.
The biggest change, as the golden anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier passes, is the loss of a social conscience in sports. Certainly, it is a sign of great progress since 1947 that black athletes can make millions of dollars in endorsements.
It is also a sign of social and spiritual impoverishment that no one, black or white, feels the need to condemn Nike's labor conditions.
The equipment companies call the tune on the world's athletic stage. At the Atlanta Olympics, I began each day with a phone call to Nike and Reebok, both of whom had rented offices near the Main Press Center. I called to see which of their endorsers-superstars was available in a news conference at their facilities. The U.S. Olympic Committee could guarantee the presence of athletes in the more obscure sports in the MPC. The shoe companies could deliver the biggest names.
Shaquille O'Neal, for example, would discuss his huge contract with the Lakers only at the Reebok offices.
The biggest labor story in this decade was the shutdown of the major-league baseball season, playoffs and World Series in 1994, as greedy players and greedy owners squabbled over how to divide the money.
Where is the Robinson spirit? Nine days before his death, Robinson was chiding major-league baseball for its lack of minority managers.
Where, as Bob Dole wondered in the last presidential campaign, is the outrage?
It was his moral opposition to the war in Vietnam that made Muhammad Ali more than a great boxer in the 1970s. John Carlos and Tommie Smith endured the wrath of the International Olympic Committee to protest racial inequality in 1968. Magic Johnson resigned from President Bush's AIDS Commission in the 1990s to protest its inactivity.
Would the millionaire players of all races and all sports speak out if they didn't offend anyone?
If so, then they have forgotten the lesson of the oyster. It is the irritant, the grit of the sand, that produces the pearl.
Would the Asian sweatshops matter if the workers were empowered politically in this country?
If so, then we have forgotten Robinson's lesson - that those who are different from us, those "others," have their own value and their own human dignity.
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