The Weekly Fare . . . June 5, 2003

Know Your Time

Who says the world doesn't make sense?

Well, I do. That's who.

This week in the news:

13-year-old (yes that's THIRTEEN-year-old) middle school player Freddie Adu signed a One Million Dollar contract with the Nike shoe company to wear their shoes while he kicks a ball (rather handily I must admit) through two poles into a net. This means Freddie cannot participate in college sports which shouldn't be a problem since he has decided to turn pro next year. This is fine with his mom who had to sign the contract for him.

His agents seem to be in full agreement.

Not to be outdone at Nike (much less by a thirteen-year-old), seventeen-year-old Lebron James signed a 90 Million Dollar (yes, that's NINETY MILLION DOLLAR) contract with the slightly less than cash strapped shoe and apparel behemoth. James, who grew up in acute poverty in the streets of Akron Ohio, shoots 59 percent from the free throw line (mediocre at best) and has never played a game of college basketball - much less professionally. In fact he hasn't graduated from high school yet. He refers to himself as "King James," plans on buying his "posse" (close friends) whatever cars they want for the rest of their lives and hasn't been able to keep a job because he's never had one.

Nike cited his "strong character and work ethic" in announcing the contract.

Now all of this leaves me with a lot of questions - not the least of which is how a company can afford to spend Ninety Million on marketing via one seventeen-year-old boy who by all accounts does play a pretty good game of high school basketball?

$90,000,000.00???

That's the gross national product of France, isn't it?

Actually, Nike will spend over One Billion Dollars in advertising this year. So maybe Lebron came cheap. With revenues of over Ten Billion Dollars, almost the entire GNP of El Salvador (no kidding), I guess spending just under one percent on a "spokesperson" isn't too far out of line.

But it sure does translate strangely in a world where 20,000 children reportedly still die of hunger every day. The disparity of wealth in the world and the bizarre nature by which we reward the "media-sports-celebrities" among us brings a certain nausea when we stop to contemplate it.

Hopefully such empty feelings in the pit of our stomachs, if not our souls, lead us to question at least some of the ways in which we contribute to the malaise. But generally I suspect that the best most of us can muster is to shake our heads and walk away. We can't change the history that brought us here and to try seems likely to be a waste of "the good" we think we can do. I'm not certain that's the case, but it sure is easy to feel that way.

And maybe there's not much Lebron can do either. I suspect that if I had been brought up in the inner city environment of Akron and you had given me Ninety Million Dollars at age seventeen (or One Million for that matter) I would have imploded and found the bottom long ago.

Ninety Million Dollars buys a great deal more than any seventeen-year-old wants or needs. Once young Lebron gets bored with basketball, his fame and a lifestyle of "whatever he wants," he is likely to find himself in a place where true happiness seems as far away as Ninety Million Dollars once did. I suppose he isn't doomed to it, but precedent seems to indicate that such a check comes with Ninety Million reasons to get the experience that only a good education can provide.

My guess is that college would have improved more than his foul shot.

But maybe the Ninety Million Nike payout to Lebron isn't really the more notable of the two. Perhaps Freddie Adu at the ripe old age of thirteen stands to lose more than even Lebron in the "good fortune" of his windfall.

Not that it's a forgone conclusion that Freddie is going to have a difficult life. In fact, when he ultimately signs his "big boy" contract, perhaps he will have garnered the experience of his first few years in the pros and go on to enjoy a healthy and prosperous and worthwhile life. Who knows? But one thing's for sure. The everyday joys and dreams and mysteries of growing up with one's peers (regardless of one's financial standing) will be lost forever, and I'm not sure Nike's One Million goes far in covering that.

Great sums of money don't necessarily lead to downfalls - even in the hands of youth. But to every season in our lives, and even within the yearly ones of professional sports, there is a "time."

If I had to bet the sum that these two boys are now making, I think I would wager that their times should have come a little later than sooner.

May we all have the wisdom and the courage to know our own.