Who are Tiger and LeBron? By Michael Belkin

Society “knows” Tiger Woods and LeBron James through television and commercials in particular. Although commercials are “scripted”, in the cases of Tiger and LeBron, they nonetheless serve as a medium through which the athletes are exposed in ways that are simply inaccessible outside the realm of an advertisement due to the predictable, conformist nature of most press conferences and in-game interviews. I will examine how television spurs on a type of “networked thinking” in which different corporations (like Nike and ESPN) both glorify and demystify athletes to drive up fan interest which in turn increases corporate revenue. For Tiger and LeBron, commercials also reveal shades of sentimentalism and humanity that they are unwilling to let out in other mediums. Commercials ultimately alter the athletes’ true egos and identities—or in the worlds of Jorge Borges, “There was no one in him” (Borges, 91).

In Tiger’s first commercial with Nike, the name Tiger Woods does not refer to just the golfer. Instead, Tiger Woods refers to a youthful, proletarian movement of golf to the non-white American lower-middle class. The children saying “I am Tiger Woods” can be understood through Descartes: “the mere fact that God created me makes it highly plausible that I have somehow been made in his image and likeness, and that I perceive this likeness, in which the idea of God is contained, by means of the same faculty by which I perceive myself” (Descartes, 80). Nike makes Tiger the God that Descartes describes by molding his identity from golfer to a God-like figure for the purpose of expanding the golf market to minorities. The irony comes at the end when Tiger swings but does not speak, and the commercial is concluded with a Nike swoosh appearing. One would think that Tiger himself would claim “I am Tiger Woods”, but the effect of his not speaking is to liberate the notion that Tiger Woods is more than just a golfer; even more, he holds a shared identity between his own self and any particular young golfer wearing Nike’s gear. Because Nike currently pays Tiger 20 million dollars a year, in return, they use the formal structure of commercials as a mechanism to help shape Tiger’s image to the public in ways that will make him more attractive for the purpose of selling more equipment. It would be awkward for Tiger to hold a press conference and say: “I want poor, black kids to golf,” for doing so would be controversial given the aristocratic nature of the game. Yet that is effectively what Nike is saying in “I am Tiger Woods,” and thus the commercial provides a medium for unspeakable things to be said or at least conveyed at a minimum that simply do not occur in the ways society “knows” Tiger outside of commercials.

Nike typically airs commercials during sports events (as evident in the golf shown before “I am Tiger Woods”) or episodes of Sports Center. Although Nike and Sports Center are separate corporations, their success is interwoven by engaging in a type of “networked thinking”, or a shared ideology in terms of how they portray Tiger and LeBron, that intensifies society’s infatuation with star athletes. It comes as no surprise, as Jeffrey Sconce explains, that television “has discovered that the cultivation of story worlds (diegesis) is a crucial element in its success as is storytelling…they create worlds that viewers gradually feel they inhabit along with the characters” (Sconce, 95). In addition to “I am Tiger Woods,” a perfect example of this “cultivation” has been the suggestions that LeBron is the “King” of Cleveland. Upon initial glance, the notion of LeBron being a King seems preposterous—how can a basketball player be the King of a city? Surely his aura did not spring just from his actions on the court. Something greater must have been at work.



This Sports Center commercial reveals television’s role in the diegesis of LeBron’s status as King. The significance of the commercial lies in the joke itself. The commercial is only funny because the viewer has an ingrained understanding of LeBron as the King. It is funny, therefore, because Scott Van Pelt (a Sports Center anchor) appears completely oblivious to this understanding despite LeBron’s innocuous attempt to claim the chair that is clearly meant for him. By further extending the notion of “King James”, Sports Center not only benefits because more people will watch the program with a heightened interest in following LeBron, but Nike will sell more basketball shoes and gear with LeBron being understood as something more than just a regular basketball player as well. Similar to “I am Tiger Woods”, this Sports Center commercial reveals the subtle networked thinking used to explode athletes’ identities for the purpose of gaining fan interest and ultimately driving economic profit. The role of diegesis, therefore, or the cultivation of a story world, manifests itself within the identities of both Tiger (expanding golf to blue-collar individuals) and LeBron (King of Cleveland) for the purpose of making them known in ways that would otherwise be impossible without the role of commercial advertising. However diegetic such identities may be, the role that Tiger played in actually opening golf up to the middle class and LeBron’s influence in Cleveland were real. Therefore, despite the ads’ seemingly diegetic nature, they make a genuine difference in how the athletes are understood.

Imagine you are watching either a televised golf event or basketball game on ESPN (the channel which broadcasts Sports Center) involving either Tiger or LeBron. As the game unfolds live before your eyes, announcers talk about how amazing Tiger and LeBron are, and then suggest that the viewer should watch Sports Center later on (it airs every night) to view expert, critical analysis concerning the athletes’ performance. Meanwhile, during commercial breaks of such programs (the actual sports event or Sports Center episode), companies like Nike will air ads featuring famous athletes. What develops is a more sophisticated, layered version of what Nick Browne describes as the “Supertext” that spans across various programs and commercial sequences in a mutually beneficial relationships for all parties involved. Given that “the business of television is showing ads to audiences”, it comes as no surprise that star athletes would be used because it brings a certain level of authenticity in the advertisement especially when aired in conjunction with a sporting event (Browne, 587). Although the “I am Tiger Woods” Nike ad may only appear as a mechanism for Nike to sell golf equipment, within the “Megatext” of television, the advertisement directly affects every television network that is associated with golf. Television is fundamentally all about consumption; from the vantage point of both viewing an actual program and the constant exposure to commercial advertising, both forms of consumption serve as the backbone of television as we know it.



Before “Rise”, LeBron had never even gone so far as to question his decision to leave Cleveland for Miami. Given LeBron’s refusal to express any remorse for his public relations debacle in a live setting, one must question the motive behind making “Rise.”



Specifically, one must ask who was asking the question “What should I Do”—are those really LeBron’s heartfelt words, or did Nike strategically coax him to raise the question “Should I admit that I’ve made mistakes?” as he sits in a director’s chair wearing the same purple shirt that he did in the press conference? LeBron has had ample opportunities to express remorse over the way he left, and none better than in a post game interview after his Miami Heat destroyed the Cavaliers in front of the city that viewed him as their King.



When Craig Segar asks LeBron if he wants to apologize, he responds by saying, without an ounce of hesitation: “No, I don’t want to apologize.” The fact that LeBron hinted at it only in a Nike advertisement, and has not once publicly apologized, reveals how advertising changes LeBron’s identity. The product Nike is selling is none other than LeBron himself. If fans do not like LeBron, they will not buy his shoes. The aim of “Rise”, therefore, is to show potential customers a more open-minded and inquisitive side of LeBron to make him more likable so more fans will like him and ultimately buy Nike’s shoes.



In “The Nature of Pronouns”, Emil Benveniste explains that language produces a sense of “person”, and that one can only be them self when speaking their own words. This paradigm fails to hold sway with both LeBron (What should I do?) and Tiger in his most recent Nike ad as their genuine voices and egos are superseded by Nike’s portraying them in a light that improves their public image. Advertising will always be a mechanism to show shades of vulnerability. Although Tiger made a legitimate attempt to apologize for his cheating scandal,



he clearly read from a script and thus appears insincere. In his most recent Nike commercial, the camera slowly zooms into Tiger’s face as his deceased father (Earl) asks, “Did you learn anything?” Similar to “Rise”, Tiger is made vulnerable in this commercial, but only through the words of his father. In both of Nike’s most recent commercials for LeBron and Tiger, neither star athlete’s genuine voice comes through.

Commercials expand the boundaries of how society knows Tiger and LeBron. In “Borges and I”, Borges contemplates the divergence between how he and society understand Borges: “I shall remain in Borges, not myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar…I do not know which of us has written this page” (Borges, 90). The dilemma Borges raises, a compromised ego, can be directly tied to Tiger and LeBron given how commercials speak for them in ways that they cannot. Tiger and LeBron may question their identities in commercials in a similar way that Borges does in his short piece, asking: who is really speaking and is this genuinely me? Commercials effectively mobilize their identities by creating multiple versions of how consumers understand them by allowing their identities to become malleable and ultimately likable in ways Tiger and LeBron do not let on in press conferences and interviews. In Nike commercials Tiger and LeBron appear more like Nike products than a true individuals, more like expensive shoes than legitimate egos.