Athletes who talk

Please. If you want a big famous athlete in your ad, there’s a right way and a wrong way to make it happen. The way to do it properly is to show the athlete in black and white, in slow motion, bouncing the basketball, cracking the baseball bat, or launching the football. Have them look all serious into the camera, and keep their mouths shut. The way to screw it all up is to give the athlete lines.

Just look at Michael Jordan. One of the greatest athletes in history and the man cannot pronounce words. It blew my mind that MCI, a communications company, used a spokesperson who could barely communicate. He sounded like a drunk stockbroker chewing taffy. I thought, damn, if someone wanted to pay me a million dollars to say something asinine like, "Now I can talk with all my Space Jam buddies", I would make damn sure that what I said clearly sounded like "Now I can talk with all my Space Jam buddies".

Hanes, the underwear brand, finally got it right. Please notice next time you see a Hanes commercial with Michael Jordan - he doesn't speak. He'll just smile real big or raise an eyebrow. Finally! Other companies should take a lesson from Hanes. Do not ask athletes to talk. They are not good at it.

I think Jordan could handle a simple two-word phrase;I'd like to see him back over Charlie Sheen, then raise an eyebrow, grin, and say, "My bad!"

Of course, not all famous "athletes" need to talk.

The sad part is that back in the day black athletes actually WERE articulate. Then came this whole "Ebonics" thing and suddenly the ability to speak coherently was seen as unnecessary 

Seriously, just listen to black athletes from the 60s and 70s speak and compare it to those of the last decade. It's a night and day difference. And if guys like Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali didn't think sounding articulate was selling out to whitey then it's beyond stupid for anyone these days to believe that.