Currently here at the annual conference for the North American Society for Sport Management, at Cornell University. I have to say that the quality has been mixed thus far, though have seen some good stuff from the Canadian theorists here. Most of all, I have to marvel at the beauty of the Cornell campus, here in Ithaca, New York — absolutely stunning.

Personally speaking, I presented on corporate social responsibility in sport management this morning, and will discuss prosumerism in sport management tomorrow afternoon.

smithers:

[Aside] One of the problems with the corporation is that it absolves humans from any liability in its operation: it is its own entity, a fiction.

This is reflected in the singular pronoun that is used to describe the firm: "it".

Continuing to use the pronoun "it" to refer to a firm reinforces a structure that negates the essence of what the firm really is, which is the sum (and then some) of its people. There hasn't been a firm yet that has existed without people. To maintain a solidarity with all of these people that make up the world's firms, I must therefore use the plural pronoun "they".

[Exit]

The brilliant Sid Meier creates a golf environment to level the playing field between men and women, and virtual Annika Sorenstam kicks virtual Vijay Singh's ass.

Dewq over at Sport … mediated has explored the idea of sport as globalanguage, noting that "sport transcends cultures to the point that it can be viewed as a global form of communication … emerg[ing] as a 'glocal' form of interaction where identities of self and collective identities are (re)created".

Agreed, though I might suggest that it is a globalanguage with many dialects.

How about Latin as first globalanguage?

What, you ask? Latin only spread to certain cultures around the planet, and only exists today in a subset of the world's languages. There's no way that Latin could be considered a globalanguage.

But what about in the context of sport, I reply? Consider this: the Olympics, one of two truly global sporting events, boasts thousands of athletes from hundreds of countries around the world. And it also boasts hundreds of translators. Why? There is no one truly universal language that is spoken around the world, despite the ambitions of English. Yet every single athlete in that competition speaks and fully understands three Latin words, which form a sign so overpowering it totally consumes each of their lives: citius, altius, fortius.

Latin, then, is a globalanguage. Or at least it's a dialect of the sport globalanguage.

"First, for the people who say LeBron was LeBorn in hype, and this all reeks of public relations gimmick, like Annika Sorenstam at the Colonial reeks of public relations gimmick, hey, listen up. It's all a public relations gimmick, Jack. Getting you to come out to any stadium, stadium-seating multiplex, amusement park, arena or golf course venue to spend your loot on 'attractions' is a gimmick, so please, gimmick me a break. Spectacle is what we do around here." — Ralph Wiley

Well, I was wrong: LeBron James has agreed to a seven-year endorsement deal with Nike, the same company that launched Air Jordan into the global mediaspace and who no doubt will deify LeBron in much the same fashion. Since Nike is reportedly signing Kobe Bryant as well, the "Battles" should be memorable. Oh, and Vince? Your endorsement career has just been relegated to C-list status.

Here's how the markets reacted:

In other news, those efficient Germans offer us a guide to making clones.

Not to be outdone, Michael Lewis offers us a guide to create baseball cyborgs through the science of Sabermetrics.

Still on baseball, the 2525 edition of the Encyclopedia Legenda chronicles the sport's demise in two parts (one, two).

As our bodies are outered by electric technologies, we are coming to a reconsideration of what it means to be human, or at least what it means to have a human body. For some, this has forced an exaggeration of some element of the human body, in a process that might be termed highlighting the grotesque.

Basically speaking, we are composed in varying proportions of muscle, fat and bone. Any one of these elements may be exaggerated, by those in sport and in broader society; taken to grotesque proportions, we have hypermuscularization, obesity and anorexia, respectively. At the centre of this tripolar schema is the individual's perception of self, since most often one sees one's own actions as "normal". It is elsewhere in the schema that the other lies, which is the way that one believes he or she is perceived by other individuals. The closer these two points are to overlapping at the origin, the increased sense of self-adequacy an individual will possess.

This tripolarization effect is partly due to the Iron Curtain of Baudrillardian hyperreality. The star mechanism used by the sportocracy and the rest of the entertainment complex to sell products offers a very narrow range of body types from the spectrum that actually exists, presenting a cloning effect in the electric mediaspace. It is no coincidence that the latest instalments of both the Star Wars and Matrix epics feature battles against clones — they are meant partially as critiques of how the body is represented in postmodern society.

The grotesque exaggeration of bodily components can be seen as a response to these replicating clones: on the one hand, obesity is a rejection of this simulacra; on the other hand, hypermuscularization and anorexia are hyper-realizations of the simulacra, which tend toward a state of cyborgification.

McLuhan's work on postliterate society, while in my opinion underrated as a roadmap of digital culture, sells itself somewhat short by examining electric media predominantly as a social and psychological issue without a full consideration of the implications for the physical body. To his credit, however, these bodily implications are only becoming apparent decades after his passing, and require further consideration as we progress on our posthuman evolution.

While visiting Vancouver's spectacular Stanley Park recently, I chanced upon a beautiful statue of Harry Jerome, British Columbia's Athlete of the Century. In 1960, Jerome set a world record in the 100 metres of 10.0 seconds. He sprinted for Canada in the 1960, 1964, and 1968 Summer Olympics, earning 100 metre bronze in Tokyo. He also won the gold medals in the 1966 Commonwealth Games and the 1967 Pan-American Games. For these athletic accomplishments and his service to the community, Harry Jerome received the Order of Canada, our highest civilian honour.

A year after Jerome's setting of the world record in the 100 metres, a boy named Ben Johnson was born in Jamaica. After emigrating to Canada in 1976, Johnson went on to star as a sprinter on the National team, winning gold in the 100 metres at the 1987 World Championships in a world record time of 9.83 seconds. A year later, in a magnificent race against U.S. archrival Carl Lewis at the Seoul Olympics, Johnson again took the gold medal, trimming the world record to 9.79 seconds.

Unfortunately, the glory earned by Johnson and basked in by the rest of Canada would turn to ignominy only days later, when post-race urine samples indicated the presence of stanozolol, a performance-enhancing steroid. Johnson's gold medal and world record were stripped, and he departed South Korea under a cloud of controversy; later, his 1987 world record would be stripped, erasing Johnson's name for all-time from the pantheon of citius, altius, fortius.

Meanwhile, fans back home reacted with a uniquely Canadian mixture of shock, pride, anger, embarassment, and general teeth-gnashing, leading to a federal Commission of Inquiry into the Use of Drugs and Banned Practices Intended to Increase Athletic Performance, otherwise known as the Dubin Inquiry. The commission changed the face of high-performance sport in Canada, and was influential in the 1999 establishment of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Johnson returned to world class sprinting drug-free in 1991, but showed the rust of his absence and performed poorly. Two years later, and obviously bulked up, he was banned for life by the IAAF after testing positive for steroids once again.

It would be tempting at this point to moralize about the respective values of Harry Jerome and Ben Johnson, but I'll refrain. Instead, I will offer the following question:

Point-two-one? Point-two-one?

Oh wait, that's not a question. Ummm … how about:

What the fuck?

Ben Johnson screwed his entire career for a measly 0.21 seconds, and that's just about the only way you can put it. To Johnson's credit, though, he did have a lot of help: advanced training methods, biomechanical analysis, peak nutritional information, videotape feedback, daily massage, cutting-edge rehabilitative technologies, sport psychology interventions, and, of course, the anabolic steroid stanozolol. Harry Jerome, on the other hand, was a pioneer of weight training in sprinting, and did some of his best running with a 30-centimetre scar on his left thigh after severing his quadriceps muscle. Even with this substantial cyborgian advantage, however, all Big Ben did was better the record by point-two-one.

That's 28 years and a hell of a lot of expense — for a return of 0.03 seconds per Olympiad.

Most industries wouldn't pay a dime for that kind of just noticeable difference. But the sportocracy does, despite the high K/L ratio of the cyborgian "laboratory sports".

Makes you kind of wonder what the return is for them, doesn't it?

Detroit, New Jersey, Dallas and San Antonio?

You were snickering, David Stern. You thought that it would be clear sailing ahead with the four dogs the NHL is trotting out this spring in quest of Stanley. But then Webber goes down, Shaq, Kobe and Iverson get ousted, and all of a sudden your most marketable player in the pro hoops final four is a domestic abuse felon. Ouch.

The all-Texas western final effectively cuts that audience in half, while those in the east will simply tune out Detroit. I mean, they try to compare these guys to the Piston teams of old, but come on. The yesteryear champs certainly were the Bad Boys, but with Isiah, Joe D., and the Microwave, they could also flat out score when need be.

Nota bene, Mr. Stern: you might be in even bigger economic trouble than Mr. Bettman. I hope at least that the lottery show proves profitable.

But between basketball and hockey, I bet Jersey people sure think that life is worthwhile right now though …

(ps. Go Stevie Nash, eh?)

fitness clubs: well-lit red light district?

fitness club cardio equipment: Foucaultian production of cyborg athletes?

front row of aerobics class: panopticism by choice?

treadmills: hamster wheel of the posthuman age?

Bally's, Nubody's, et al: soon to connect to the power grid?

New Jersey, Anaheim, Minnesota, and Ottawa?

Sorry, NHL, but you are in big trouble economically. But then again, you already knew that, didn't you?

FIRST WAR OF THE CYBORG

*** e y e s   o n l y ***

Drug Front

A New Mexican religious group sues the U.S. government for the right to take psychedelic drugs in search of self-transcendent spiritual experiences. The pharmaceutical military-industrial complex counters with a series of prominent talking heads "hired to appear in videos resembling newscasts that are actually paid for by drug makers and other health care companies, blurring the line between journalism and advertising".

Media Front

Farhad Manjoo of Salon Counterintelligence uncovers a plot to have your TV spy on you.

Body Movement Front

Megacorp, drawing upon the work of noted military historian John Bale, is having mixed results with the indoctrination of the human POWs.

"Reading Foucault's history of the prison, Discipline and Punish (1979), I was struck by the great similarity between the transition of punishment on the one hand, and of sport on the other, each being transformed from activities undertaken in corporal/public space to those found in carceral/private space. … Indeed, the stadium is regarded as such a secure form of containment that it is, intact, actually used as a prison in times of national security or repression" (Bale, 1994, p. 83).

The POWs respond with subversive body movements.

References:

Bale, J. (1994). Landscapes of modern sport. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

Ralph Wiley compares MJ and the Bambino at the end of their respective careers. Is this how the Second Golden Age of professional sport comes to a close?

"We live, love, learn. Even if we are athletes. Imagine that. To say athletes and sports are precluded from this process is, in fact, insulting, that a Tommie or a Toni Smith are like cattle and should just give their milk and moo and shut up and not have their own feelings." — Ralph Wiley

From The Sports Guy:

One Iverson note: Is anyone else excited to see what he's capable of in the celebration department as the playoffs drag along? In Game 1 of the Hornets series, he poured in 55, then pranced around during a stoppage in play — first, he pointed to the sky at one of the 25 dead friends, then he pounded his chest like he was giving himself CPR, then he pulled his jersey out and proudly displayed the letters, then he screamed happy expletives to the crowd, then he pointed at the sky again … the whole display lasted for about 25 seconds. He's completely insane. if they make the Finals, he might perform a strip tease like Ned in Slap Shot.

Due to poor Human intelligence over the past several decades, Machines have gained ground in the First War of the Cyborg. Maps are provided below for three scenarios in the Battle of Dialectic Potential.

Key battle fronts include body movement, communications media, and the natural environment. More information to be posted shortly …

Marty Burns of Sports Illustrated notes in his NBA Playoffs Shootaround:

Worst quote: "It was a good game. Both teams played hard." — Blazers forward Rasheed Wallace after his team?s victory in Game 4. By giving the same non-answer to five questions at a postgame news conference, Wallace was fined $30,000 by the NBA.

Actually, it was really only $10,000 for that incident and $20,000 for a separate violation of NBA media access regulations, but the important question is this:

Since when has perfect quality control ever been a bad thing in business?

Ayo my quality control, captivates your party patrol
Your mind, body, and soul
For whom the bell tolls, let the rhythm explode
Big, bad, and bold b-boys of old
Many styles we hold, let the story be told
Whether platinum or gold, we use breath control

– Jurassic 5, Quality Control

I've been meaning to comment for some time on Nike's latest basketball ad campaign, titled "The Battle". For quite some time, Nike advertising has been amongst the most cutting-edge, and this latest offering continues in that tradition.

There are two parts (so far) to "The Battle": "Speed" and "Elevation". "Speed" features Steve Nash, Gary Payton, Jason Kidd, and Tony Parker in a matchup of some of the best point guards in the NBA going at each other one-on-one. Footage of their head-to-head matchups is spliced together with clips of great ballhandling and defence by other anonymous playground athletes. "Elevation", on the other hand, features Richard Jefferson and Vince Carter trying to outdo each other in a showdown of mano-a-mano dunking one-upmanship. The result is a spectacular montage of power, grace, and artistry, which finally ends with a rim that has been torn from its moorings.

What might be most interesting about the entire campaign is in the way it forces us to reconsider the nature of competition. No score is kept, no clear cut winner emerges, yet we are truly witnessing sport taking place at its highest level. As I have mentioned earlier, we need to understand the new dialectic of sport, which is both competitive and cooperative at the same time. Without the latter, we negate the art that is created through athletic bodies in motion.

Nike seems to understand this fact, and their latest campaign (as well as some others) is a response to the postmodern reality of sport. This response is encapsulated at the close of each spot, which features the ubiquitous swoosh — a highly symbolic brand mark and an art form in its own right — faced off against itself. It's imperative that Nike understands this new reality — if they miss this crucial point, then they may find that their raison d'etre will cease to exist.

While surfing the tube this afternoon, I stopped for a bit at the hockey game on TSN, featuring Canada versus Switzerland at the 2003 IIHF World Championship in Finland. The game was a slower paced affair than that usually seen in international hockey, but the fans seemed quite into it, cheering loudly and waving flags while U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" played over the stadium sound system in the background.

*sound of needle scratching across record*

Umm … Sunday, Bloody Sunday?

Wow, that's certainly not "Who Let the Dogs Out?" or any of these other classic sports songs. This is U2 at its early protesting finest, being played for the entertainment pleasure of the sportocratic masses:

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality.
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die.

They certainly do things a little different in Europe, what?

I was just reading the blog published by the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, appropriately titled What is The Message?. While there, I came across a post by Mark Federman, Chief Strategist and head of McLuhan Management Studies in the program, imploring us to question how our identities (which he terms digiSelves) are constructed, challenged, and potentially violated in digital environments. He concluded the post by asking: "Physically, we are protected in law by habeas corpus ? literally, 'you have the body'. Is our digiSelf protected by habeas virtualis ? 'you have the effect'?"

This reminded me of a conversation I had about sport videogames with a colleague of mine, Dave Parkatti, who was enrolled in the combined MBA/LLB program at the University of Alberta, and is a very sharp tack as well as a good friend. My question/probe and his speculative, thoroughly generous response are posted below:

Imagine a case scenario where a kid is playing in a virtual environment "as" Kobe Bryant. While attempting to "be" Kobe (ie. "assuming" his identity in cyberspace), the kid slips and breaks his neck. Is it possible that the kid's mother can sue Kobe or the game maker for damages? Can Kobe sue if the kid performs some defamatory action while "in" Kobe's cyberbody at an online pickup game? Finally, athletes (I believe) grant their likenesses to appear in videogames. Is there a limit to how far this relationship can go? For example, consider a videogame that wants to add biometric data such as VO2 max and heart rate in order to provide a realistic fatigue simulation: is there such a thing as public information and private information? Or would the franchise own that data when they test the athletes in preseason?

Regarding the sports tort liability topics themselves, they certainly are intriguing. If you want my opinion, the defamation issue is most fascinating.

In the kid-slipping-as-Kobe scenario, one could expect both a defence of consent (kid knowingly & voluntarily assumed risk of sporting/gaming activity) and defence of contributory negligence to possibly come to the aid of a game-maker defendant. It is nevertheless an interesting intersection of product liability cases and sport injury cases; whereas the latter hold no negligence to arise at all on the part of other participants if the injury occurs in the normal course of a game, the former cases do obviously hold manufacturers liable in negligence if they ought to have reasonably foreseen consumers incurring injury through use of their product in the way in question.

Here, though, I think the proper analogy for virtual gaming systems would be roller blades: the product is merely enabling a participant to engage in a sporting activity, and so long as the product itself is not defective by reason of negligent manufacture, the participant's inability to reasonably use that product is their own fault. Of course, what constitutes reasonable use becomes the crucial question, if, unlike roller blades, a virtual gaming system conflates Kobe's virtual abilities with those objectively ascribable to the participant.

In other words, if a reasonable user would be led to think he or she could actually and safely jump higher or move faster than their normal abilities through use of the virtual system, as counter posed to the reasonable rollerblader who knows or ought to know that going too fast for his own skill level is dangerous, then liability may exist for the game maker (subject again, importantly, to the aforementioned defences). As for Kobe however, I couldn't see liability arising for him, barring actual endorsement by him of such extraordinary abilities being made possible through the system.

The question of appropriation of personality in the context of videogames is likewise interesting. As that tort currently operates, a person will always have the legal right to protect against exploitation of their own image, personality, voice, identity, name, etc. so long as such exploitation occurs for commercial endorsement purposes and without that person's consent. Hence, the contractual agreement which contains athlete consent in the context of sport videogames holds as I see it the key to any suit possibly brought by those athletes; if they actually agree to a contract so broadly worded as to essentially include every and all aspects of their "personality", then as a matter of contract law there should be no reason why a game maker couldn't utilize biometric data.

While this implies that private information of personality not included in such a contract is off-limits to game-makers, even then the neat question of a subject-matter defence arises: if athlete personalities come to be no longer seen as selling games as they would Wheaties in a commercial, but rather as constituting the actual subject-matter of a work of art (big case law example pertains to an unauthorized book about Glenn Gould), then Electronic Arts might very well someday be as in the clear as Kitty Kelly is today.

To think of a non-sports example, it is very possible to imagine a legit virtual reality experience based on unauthorized autobiographical information pertaining to Princess Di, where the user could interact with Diana, her actions and responses based on an amalgam of personal information already known to the public or newly extracted from insider sources. Hence while one might think that biometric data is something wholly private in the absence of consent, the paparazzi has shown the private sphere to be fleeting in regard to subject matter information, and if a game maker were to discover that biometric data from an inside team source, then a subject-matter defence would potentially cover it.

This of course does not discount a likely equitable cause of action against the disclosing team doctors or officials, who could be personally liable for breach of confidence or breach of fiduciary duty vis a vis the athlete. These individuals or the team would only "own" such information, and be free to disclose or sell it without liability, if - as mentioned before - they had already extracted a (broad) contractual waiver from the athlete.

As indicated, I think the defamation question regarding virtual pro-athlete experiences is most fascinating. Certainly, it is plausible that the tort could be made out quite easily- take the example of a notorious virtual team of Kobes who are known in the gamer universe as playing with a basketball in one hand and a court-side metal chair (WWF-style) in the other. Such conduct by these players, observable by the gaming public, could be argued to raise an inference in right-thinking members of society generally that Kobe endorses that way of playing, thereby causing Kobe to be lowered in their estimation or shunned.

Aside from actions against the gamers themselves (probably successful but not prone to substantial recovery of damages, or wise from a PR standpoint), the more lucrative action to be taken by Kobe naturally would be against the deep-pocketed game maker, which would have to show that it had no control or responsibility for that specific action of its gamers. If, for example, the experience was programmed such that only Kobe (and no other b-ball persona) could pick up a chair, then the game maker probably would be liable for defamation. If not, though, the game maker is obviously not like an employer and vicariously liable for defamatory actions of its gamers. Also, a whole can of worms exists with respect to mods being developed by hackers, thereby distorting what was intended or made originally permissible by the game maker.

The whole issue is pressing, given that a la Barry Bonds as we discussed, an athlete's reputational capital is oftentimes more valuable these days than his or her human capital/athletic skills.

Many thanks for your assistance, DP.

To return to Federman, the study of the digiSelf is certainly both interesting and crucial, but this is even more true for the study of the fusion of digiSelves.