The Chris Moeller Archives

Marketing tools abroad

This month has seen our president engaged in another social media war with an African-American person. I think it might be connected to the lunar cycle. Trump got three UCLA men’s basketball players released from the threat of several years in Chinese shoplifting jail, and the high-profile father of one of the players, sports apparel company CEO Lavar Ball, refuses to express his gratitude for services delivered.

Forget for a moment the fact that the three players, all of them incoming freshmen, immediately thanked Trump publicly at a press conference for his intervention on behalf of their home country, and Trump and Ball both recognize, without saying so, that a thank you from Ball would be a form of groveling by “one of the blacks” for what Trump, with all of his presidential power, did for him and them. I wouldn’t thank him either, under the circumstances. There was no motive whatsoever in Trump's actions that wasn't selfish.

What I really want to know is why UCLA athletes are visiting China for a week, representing their school and the Pac 12 conference, and promoting men’s college basketball in the United States, but not getting paid any money to do it. The three “student athletes” were reportedly caught shoplifting at Louis Vuitton during the full hour and a half they were given to sight-see between their slate of games, practices, and photo ops. The school website promotes two locations that the team visited during their time in Shanghai and Hangzhou. One  is the world’s largest retail commerce company, Alibaba Group, and the other is Shanghai’s Disney Resort. I’m sure Coach Steve Alford has the guys career networking at Alibaba, the Chinese equivalent of Amazon. Upon graduation, they will each certainly be able to get jobs there, after Alibaba has purchased the distribution rights of the Pac-12 Networks to provide across linear and digital channels on Chinese YouTube, making it the first college sports TV network made available in mainland China. This sounds like a fantastic travel abroad or cultural exchange program. That conference network will be great for enrollment in the Pac 12 and UCLA. International students, on average, pay two and a half times what state residents do.

To say that these athletes were not on this trip to be used primarily as marketing tools is to speak in very naïve language. Do those that will have profited the most from this trip bear any responsibility to make sure 18-year-olds don’t do dumb shit while they’re there? What was done to prepare these men? I'm only asking. The arrest, subsequent hotel detention, and eventual release is a terrific reminder that the Pac 12 athletic conference and its “global initiative” is now doing business in a country with laws that are very different than ours. As each of the news releases on this subject were quick to tell us, the men each faced a punishment upwards of three to ten years in prison. Good thing we have skilled educators on the scene like Alford, especially one of the highest-paid ones in the California university system, to help guide them, along with the aid of President Trump's Twitter feed.

posted by CM @ 11:55 PM