Rooting for the Sponsors at Sporting Events

Random Commentary on The Events of My Life (Through The Television)
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The grass is green and the sun is bright; on the court for his Wimbledon 2008 semifinal match is Rafael Nadal, the Spanish wunderkind of Tennis. After dominating the first set Nadal is struggling in the 2nd against opponent Rainer Shuttler (pronounced shitler) who manages to break his serve. Veteran commentator and former tennis great John McEnroe points out several times that Nadal's errors are caused by him slipping on the dry, worn out baseline grass of the Wimbledon center court. This is followed by several slow motion shots of Nadal's feet fumbling when running to make returns. Finally, while Nadal takes his traditional 3 hours before serving, NBC runs a close up sideshot on his sneakers. They are parted slightly with his front heel raised in the air as he puts slight pressure on his toes. The shot is reminiscent of many a shoe company advertisement and on the sneakers are two large, bold, emblazoned Nike Swooshes...

One can only imagine the Nike executives watching Breakfast at Wimbledon who spit out their morning coffee aghast at what has transpired. While nary a consumer bats an eye these executives have their whole morning ruined because of a 1 minute freeflowed segment needed to fill in the time between the end of one point and the start of the next. Who knows, but maybe Monday morning meetings are called over blackberries/iPhones/sidekicks to go over the terrible event and see if anything can be done to pressure NBC sports producers/broadcasters to stop similar future segments by threatening to move their advertisement dollars to more cooperative sporting events.

Several points afterwords Nadal's family, from the stands, threw him down another pair of sneakers and he went on to win the match. I'm sure Nike executives breathed a sigh of relief because Nadal was contractually obligated to strap on another pair of Nike's rather than the newest kicks off the Reebok line.