As the streets continue to fill with blood, the sports world eagerly pursues its cut. Sports. What a sad joke. If the money were right, we’d be charged extra to watch with both eyes.
A New York Giants jersey is now being sold in black, with dark red numerals and dark red stitching of names of current Giants, such as Hakeem Nicks.
No one, by now, needs to be educated as to what that’s all about, any more than they need to be told what inspired Nike to turn the colors of the American Olympic teams it sponsored from red, white and blue to black and white.
And what a coincidence that dozens of pro and college teams that have abandoned their traditional colors — even schools such as the St. John’s Red Storm, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and the Harvard Crimson — to sell their souls to Nike, which has replaced the team/school colors with black.
At least some of the sellouts have the decency to admit black appears “more menacing” and/or helps recruit “student-athletes” — those who would choose a college based on uniform colors. Hey, you don’t wanna be caught dead, if you get my drift.
Significantly, these new, gang fashion-approved Giants jerseys are not knock-offs; they carry the licensing logo of both the NFL and the NFLPA. Their marketing divisions know what sells, and why.
After all, what makes gangsta rappers so appealing to sporting goods companies that they’d provide them their own lines of sneakers?
Brings to mind an under-reported protest by some Harlem residents a few years ago who knew — better than most — what MLB’s official cap-maker, New Era, was up to when it began to manufacture and flood urban markets with Yankees caps in the colors and designs that clearly attracted gang members.
New Era claimed that, gee, it had no idea! Said a spokesperson:
“It has come to our attention that some combinations of icons and colors on a select number of our caps could be too closely perceived to be in association with gangs.”
New Era had no idea its blue and gray Yankees caps were what the Crips liked; no idea the Yankees cap with the crown atop the interlocking NY were what the Latin Kings wanted; no idea Yankees caps designed with red and black bandana wraparounds were right up the Bloods’ alley.
Yep, pure accident, just a coincidence.
Nike’s latest transparent scheme to sell cheap, Third World-made sneakers as obscenely priced status symbols, uses LeBron James — in place of Michael Jordan — to sucker America’s most vulnerable, values-twisted inhabitants.
The LeBrons retail for $315. They’re sneakers.
Nike knows the game: 1) Rely on no-questions-asked, pop culture-certifying media to provide the buzz. 2) Establish an illogical retail price to create the illusion they’re valuable. 3) Keep the demand high by limiting the supply.
Then just sit back and watch the frenzy, enjoy the mayhem.
For 30 years, inner-city kids have been mugged and murdered for what companies such as Nike, often borrowing inspiration from street and prison gangs, have sold as overpriced, valueless status symbols.
Yet, other than doing it again, and again — and paying tens of millions to idols such as Jordan and James to stoke the come-on — Nike pretends to not know what it’s doing, how it does it and who it does it to. Yeah, just do it!
Recall what Nike and Reebok said when asked to explain the $220 price tags on their “pump” sneakers, a few years back?
They explained the price reflected the cost of technology to create the finest performance sneaker of all time!
But those pump sneakers were just an overpriced gimmick, fool’s gold that went out of style, replaced by the next sucker sell.
Forgive the “When I was a kid” stuff, but when I was a kid no one associated with a sport or sports encouraged kids and young adults to do anything illogical, anything stupid, anything dangerous and certainly nothing that would leave civil society at a loss.
No one who represented sports was so greedy that he’d push kids around, let alone down, encouraging them to admire and emulate the worst guys in the neighborhood.
Today? That’s the only plan. And everyone’s working off the same copy.
Don’t turn on Joe
Eye of the Beholder Dept.:
Having watched what Joe Girardi did after the Yankees’ loss in Chicago on Wednesday — leaving a postgame news gathering to tell a heckling interloper to take a hike, before returning to the media pack and calmly finishing his answer (it was shown to Chicago audiences, needlessly edited from view on YES) — I was impressed with his smooth, firm and effective moves.
Yet, on Thursday, during SNY’s studio show, the clip was shown attached to this question: “Is the pressure starting to get to Joe Girardi?”
* Everything’s a con. Golf Channel’s CBS-produced telecast from Bethpage on Friday had ignored Roberto Castro, who was two-over — until he aced the 14th. That appeared as if it were live, no “a moment ago” or anything close, as if a savant in the truck sensed it was coming!
* Here’s a wild guess: SNY’s “Mercedes-Benz Slow Motion Replay” during Mets telecasts would be more interesting if SNY ceased hiding them behind the Mercedes-Benz graphic.
* Speaking of slo-mo, C. Kovach, Manalapan, N.J., asks why Speed Channel, during slo-mo video within race telecasts, posts a graphic that reads, “Replay.” That’s easy: So viewers don’t think that what they’re watching in slo-mo is happening live.
* The Big Ten Network’s “Big Ten’s Greatest Games” last week aired the 1985 Alabama-Penn State game. ’Bama has never been in the Big Ten; Penn St. didn’t join until 1993.