A little while ago, during a Sunday night NFL game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles, something happened that the NFL didn’t like. Brent Celek, a tight end for the Eagles, caught a touchdown pass, gave the ball to the officials, looked around to be sure he knew where NBC’s cameras were positioned, and promptly struck the Captain Morgan pose.
Is Celek just a big fan of the spiced rum that’s being aggressively marketed to 21- to 49-year-old males across a broad spectrum of televised sporting events? Maybe. But that’s not why he did it. Turns out he was doing it for charity. Really.
You see, Captain Morgan was in the midst of a promotion wherein the company would donate $10,000 to a charity called Gridiron Greats each time a player is caught on camera striking the pose during a game. The plan was to escalate the contribution to $25,000 for a playoff game and 100 grand for any player going “Morgan” on us in the Super Bowl. If you haven’t heard of it, Gridiron Greats is devoted to helping former NFL players who have fallen on hard financial or medical times since leaving the game. Certainly a charity one would think the NFL would be totally behind.
And they are. Except when it comes to players striking promotional poses during games. The league has informed Celek and the rest of its players that any further such displays will be looked upon with extreme prejudice. To its credit, the league did not fine Celek … this time. But they also warned that any future promotional posing – by anybody – would result in significant fines. So it’s “Farewell My Captain” for NFL end zones and telecasts in the future.
That’s fine. It’s their league and their product and their games. They have multibillion-dollar contracts in place with Fox, ABC, ESPN and NBC to provide a platform on which advertisers will pay billions of their own dollars to market their products to the league’s millions of fans. Some have even referred to the NFL’s stadia as the world’s largest television studios. Hell, the league even has its own cable network. Promotion, marketing and selling are what they are all about.
But in explaining the decision to a reporter from Yahoo!® Sports, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said something interesting. “A company can’t pay a player to somehow promote its product on the field. Every league has the same rule….”
Whoa, hang on there. Every league has the same rule? Really? Has he watched a Major League Soccer game recently? Did he not notice that the players on every team have their primary sponsor’s name emblazoned across the front of their jersey, in the grand tradition of Europe and South America’s premier soccer clubs?
And maybe he’s never seen a NASCAR race, where each car is basically a rolling billboard. The cars are never just “cars,” but always “ the #20 Home Depot Toyota” or “the #88 Amp Energy/National Guard Chevrolet,” and where every race ends in the comical Victory Lane spectacle of the winning driver continually putting on and taking off the hats of as many sponsors as possible in a ritual known as the “hat dance.” Coke even has a deal with the drivers on its payroll that pays extra if they are seen drinking a Coke product on camera during a pre- or post-race interview. Watch a race sometime. You’ll be amazed how thirsty these guys are when the cameras are on.
In professional tennis, you won’t see a player – male or female – without logos all over their shirts, their shoes, their equipment bags and stenciled onto the strings of their rackets. On the PGA Tour, Ryan Moore has received a lot of ink lately because he doesn’t have a bunch of logos and sponsorship deals. He’s the exception, the weird one.
OK, I know what you’re thinking. That’s soccer and stock car racing. Fringe sports. And tennis and golf are – well – tennis and golf. The NFL is different. Or is it? Next time you watch a game, look at the headsets the coaches are all wearing. You’ll notice that they are all Motorolas, just brimming with big, camera-friendly Motorola logos. Watch a lot of games. Tell me if you see any Samsung or Panasonic or Hitachi headsets.
I’ll save you the time. You won’t. All Motorola. Getting plenty of camera time, on the sidelines and in the booths, all during the game. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Do you think Motorola is getting all of that for free? Didn’t think so.
So there is promotion going on during the game and on the field (well, on the sidelines, anyway). The difference is, the league is controlling this promotion. The Captain Morgan stunt took them by surprise. If there’s one thing the NFL doesn’t like, it’s surprises (to be fair, Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL aren’t big fans of surprises either).
Don’t get me wrong. The NFL is a multibillion-dollar enterprise. They are absolutely correct in wanting to control all aspects of the product they put on the field, and broadcast into our homes. They owe it to the sponsors who pay them for the exclusivity a contract with the league ensures. But to insist that there is no on-field promotion going on in professional sports – even in their own – is asking us to believe something that the visual evidence says simply isn’t so.
That said, you have to tip your cap to Captain Morgan for giving it a shot. Taking on the monolith that is the NFL takes no small amount of guts. I honestly don’t know if they are currently an advertiser in NFL games. If they are, I certainly hope the league is willing to let bygones be bygones and allow them to continue to do so. The company has said that they will continue to look for ways to raise money for Gridiron Greats, which is a very worthy cause. Maybe the NFL and Captain Morgan can collaborate on a mutually acceptable way to raise brand awareness for their spiced rum while raising money for the league’s sometimes-forgotten former players. That would be a goal very much worth pursuing.
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