Champions & "Cool"
Imagine if your young aspiring athlete came to you and said: "Mom, can you buy me this shirt?" A t-shirt with the word "Dope" written on the front. Your immediate reaction might be to ask, Why suggest to the world that you lack intelligence? More frighteningly, you worry that your kid thinks advertising drugs add up to "cool" and perhaps wonder if he/she could even be lured into taking drugs? Then your child says no mom, "dope does not mean I lack intelligence or take drugs", it refers to my "cool" moves on the skateboard.
By the way mom, Nike's other shirt emblazoned with "Get High" does not mean "high" in the illegal substance sense it actually relates to elevation or to feel good due to your performance. As adults, have we become too judgmental, perhaps superimposing upon our kids words which meant something else in our era? Or is the recent controversy with Nike t-shirts and their edgy association with drugs just another example of advertising pushing the limits and trying to create "cool" - and to what end? Why can't sport be about sweat, commitment, hard work, effort, achieving goals, winning and fun? Aren't these things "cool"?
In Sport, true champions and players of the game do not arrive at the top through casual participation and embodying slogans hoping to be "cool" and to create an image. They arrive at the top through daily and very real effort and time. If a true champion in sport were to be described as "cool", it would not be based on wearing the latest fashion trend, it would come from within. It would come from their effort and results. Champions do not create "cool" and in fact as the superficial definition of "cool" goes they may in fact not be "cool".
Nike has gone too far with these shirts. Pushing the edge and creating artificial "coolness" does not build future champions. The constant drumbeat of graying the lines of appropriateness, especially in promoting the superficial and material is not the path towards building a stronger and more confident youth.