Ethics and Shoes

This ethical issue is about shoes. Recently there has been a shoe dilemma for Marcus Jordan, the son of basketball great Michael Jordan. Marcus Jordan is a freshman at University of Central Florida. Marcus signed to play basketball for the school. During the signing he stated the only way he would play is if he could wear Air Jordan’s when he played, so UCF agreed and said he would be able to play in his Jordan’s. This becomes an ethical issue because UCF has signed a contract with Adidas and as many know the Jordan brand is part of Nike. The university could lose up to $2 million if Marcus wears his family’s shoes. The contract between UCF and Adidas is an exclusive $1.9 million contract states the athletes and coaches are required to use Adidas shoes, appeal and game equipment. This contract right now offers discounted prices and does not give free stuff to the Athletes. The contract is set to end in 2010 but UCF and Adidas were talking about expanding the contract to 6 more years, this will also give the school more free shoes, appeal and equipment.
The people at Adidas are not happy with the fact that UCF told Marcus that he could wear his shoes. They feel like since they are holding up their contract than so should UCF. The next issue comes between Marcus and his brand loyalty to a company that has supplied so much to his family. Marcus does not have a problem wearing the other Adidas sponsored items he just wants to wear the shoes.
I really know how Marcus feels about being loyal to his father’s company but I also feel that since Marcus has signed to play for an Adidas campus than he should have to respect that contract and wear all Adidas stuff. He has grown into a new world and new environment and should realize that not everything is about his needs. If he still wants to play ball than he should respect the contract and wear what all of his teammates are wearing. Marcus does not have a contract with Nike stating all he is going to wear are Nike’s he just feels obligated to because his father is the owner of the shoes. This does not mean Marcus has to lose ties with the Jordan brand, he can wear his Nike shoes everyday but when it comes to game days he should just put on the Adidas shoes like all of his other teammates. This is a tough issue to choose sides but what do you think? Should Marcus wear Adidas? Or Should Adidas just let him wear whatever is comfortable and also keep the contract with UCF?

-Megan Meade

Limon,L. (19 October 2009). Central Florida's promise to Michael Jordan's son jeopardizes school's lucrative Adidas contract. Retrieved from

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/basketball/bulls/chi-marcus-jordan-air-jordan,0,2862257.story

Homecoming Symposium

This past Friday I attended the homecoming symposium. I went and heard Dan Jones speak on things that will help you. Dan Jones is the Vice President of the event marketing division for Intersport. Dan has worked in the sport industry for 14 years and has been with Intersport for 7 years. This was a great opportunity to hear about what Dan did to get to the point where he is at and also learn about the different options in the world of sport marketing. Dan gave us 4 main tips on choosing a job the first one was, are you passionate about it? The next three are, can you be absolutely great at it, will it achieve your financial goals, and the last one is can you be proud of your job. He also gave us advice in getting a job in the field he said get as much experience as possible, be persistent, always use real communication and get outside of comfort zone. The other part of his presentation which this was the part I was most interested in was learning about the company of Intersport. I never thought about working with a company like this and after hearing his presentation it made me think that I would really want to have a job in this industry. His number one advice was don’t limit yourself to traditional jobs. One that that he said was there are numerous opportunities in sports industry other than the traditional working with a team. Intersport works in three different divisions; sport marketing, television, and digital. Intersport is a business to business marketing and that is one of the reasons why many people don’t know about this job. I really enjoyed his presentation and am glad that I went and saw him.
After listening to his presentation I used it to connect it to the class. This company deals with sponsorships and marketing brands at sporting events. One thing I first though about was the enclosure movement. When they closed baseball fields in with fence and charged admission to enter. They did not speak much about sponsorships of fields after this happened but I am sure many companies started to jump on the opportunity to be the head sponsor. Now looking around almost every park has a sponsor in the fields name like PETCO Park or Minute Maid Park. Another part of class that I thought about that has influenced the job of Dan Johns was when we discussed the top most influential events. Number one was ABCs Wide World of sports this would have affected the television department at Intersport.
For those of you who did not get to see Dan Jones and see what the organization of Intersport is like check out their web page at

http://www1.intersportnet.com/what_we_do.html
-Megan Meade