Featuring Enfield Town’s advertising, the essence of winners, Zach LaVine’s leaps, identical pole vaulters and the Premier League’s reluctance to pay the living wage
Forrest Allen, one of the foremost basketball coaches in the early 20th century, was no fan of the slam dunk. He set out his case for raising the hoop an extra two feet off the ground in an article entitled “Dunking Isn’t Basketball” for Country Gentleman magazine in 1935. “Those tall fellows were leaping at the 10-foot baskets and were literally ‘dunking’ the ball into the hoop, just as a doughnut is inelegantly dipped into the morning coffee,” he wrote, with an air of haughty despair. “And I say that is not basketball. My conception of the game is that goals should be shot and not dunked.”
The Premier League just secured a record breaking £5.14bn by selling the TV rights to their matches. However, these staggeringly wealthy football clubs still pay some of their employees less than the minimum amount needed to cover the cost of living in the UK, which is currently £9.15 per hour in London and £7.85 outside. It would take these staff 13 years to earn as much as some top players earn in a week. Do these clubs seriously expect us to believe that they can’t afford to pay their staff – who provide essential services such as cleaning, catering and stewarding – the basic amount needed to ensure a decent quality of life for them and their families? The chief executive of the Premier League, Richard Scudamore, recently indicated that he had no intention of taking action to make sure that clubs distribute their wealth equally amongst all those that make football matches possible. I am calling on Scudamore to change his mind about clubs’ obligations to their employees. I am asking him to take the lead on this issue by making the Premier League an accredited Living Wage employer and set an example to the 20 other clubs.
Elite athletes, at their telescoped apex, all have something in common with the way in which he whittled away everything in his being that might have distracted from the narrow scope of winning. There are no leisure activities for someone with these priorities; there is no leisure, period. If this does not seem like a club to which you’d like to belong, congratulations: you are not Arnold Palmer, or Michael Jordan, or Kobe Bryant, or Serena Williams, or Lance Armstrong. It’s not unusual for humans to hate losing, and there are plenty of athletes (and non-athletes) that value winning above anything else on earth. But while many and maybe most professional athletes fit those categories, there are others whose entire essences are signified by the idea of winning things, more things than everyone else.
“Just be original. I get guys sending folios and they look like they’ve just seen the back of a Sunday newspaper and thought ‘that’s what’s required’. If that’s what they get from their contracted agency, you’ve got to break out, you’ve got to get something that makes people think twice. If you’re mad on football and you think you’ve got a knowledge of the game, then you’ll get good pictures. But do it your way.”
This. http://ift.tt/1wiLf9i
Continue reading...
source Sport | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1Bh1MR6
No comments:
Post a Comment