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For the good of the sport: Football, charity and PR
February 8th, 2010 | 
Author: 
I watched some of the Super Bowl yesterday, still reflecting on the difference between British and American footballers in the wake of John Terry’s spectacular PR meltdown last week.
I think I’ve now spotted the one major difference between the two breeds of footballer on either side of the Atlantic: the British footballer, at the height of his game and money-earning potential, tends to be a rock-em-sock-em hedonist, in it only for the lifestyle, the thrill, the women, the ability to be so rich they can get away with it. American footballers, on the other hand, tend to be do-gooders. Most importantly, they are encouraged to be so.
Take the Walter Payton Man of the Year award for example; every year an American footballer is named Man of the Year for his charitable and voluntary work outside football. The winner’s prize, apart from the honour, is a $25,000 donation by the committee to the footballer’s favourite charity. All 31 runners-up can nominate a charity, each of whom will be given $1000. The PR value is enormous, in that it allows the public to sympathise with very highly paid sports personalities.
British footballers, bereft of any encouragement to be public spirited, tend not to appear at all charitable. The only example of a charitable player that springs to mind immediately is Niall Quinn, who used his testimonial match, on retiring from playing football at Sunderland, to raise over £1 million for charity, an act so surprising that it won him several awards, including an honorary MBE. Most lower rung footballers use such games to line their pockets against retirement. The higher paid they are, the less likely they are to be seen giving to anyone but their immediate circle.
I’d suggest that it is high time the FA consider the American awards-for-charitable-work PR model for British football, as the ongoing culture amongst players of wealth without responsibility, of sleaze and selfishness, is quite capable of killing the sport entirely in the eyes of the British public.
Posted in Mark My Words | 
Tags: charity, chelsea, football, john terry, niall quinn, PR, sunderland, super bowl, walter payton, wealth
What words of wisdom! I totally agree with what you say so why does the FA do the same?
When people have good ideas you should learn from them. This solution to FA problems is so obvious I can’t believe they hadn’t thought of it before. Perhaps their PR agency is making too much money from them not going down this route.
Love the new look website.
twitter.com/ideasuk
I’m not sure that an awards ceremony will be sufficient to entice all footballers into good works. One of the major problems may be that, unlike NFL football, FA footballers can start playing in a professional club environment from an early age. The NFL minimum age requirement pushes players into college ball, allowing young talented men to exercise (or exorcise) their youthful misdemeanours outside of the wider public domain. Meanwhile, much to Alan Hansen’s chagrin, you can win with kids under FA rules. Exposing young men to money and celebrity and depriving them of a social ‘coed’ mix in their teenage years might well undermine their future social skills.
But what’s more, the article seems to ignore the fact that there is a strong sense of philanthrophy in football circles. How many of these efforts are PR stunts, token gestures by clubs, or just general jumping on the bandwagon is anyone’s guess, but there is no doubt that some footballers do champion good causes.
Some cynics might say that they are just used as figureheads by shrewd campaigners, but whether American or British, it’s invariably hard to judge how much sportsmen and women really are the main ‘passion and drive’ of their respective organisations.
Perhaps the best example of both the points above is the enigma that is Craig Bellamy. Famed for being an irritable, uncontrollable ‘lout’ from an early age, he is the archetypal misbehaving footballer (albeit not of the salacious calibre of John Terry). On the flipside, he has committed £650,000 to his own Foundation to build and maintain a football academy and football league in formerly war-torn Sierra Leone. Not quite a contradiction in terms, but as surprising as it is creditworthy.
So it appears that while the playboy lifestyles and on-pitch histrionics of today’s footballers are evident problems, our rich sportsmen clearly can’t be dismissed as unredeemable narcissists. Might one even go as far as to say that Bristish media and society are more concerned with sporting errants than sporting do-gooders?…
United Through Sport – Sports Charity and Volunteering Overseas
discover that kind of information am glad Ifoundfriend, and basically.
British footballers, bereft of any encouragement to be public spirited, tend not to appear at all charitable.