Public Relations. I would like to define this as a facilitator of communication between organization and stakeholders (publics). Publics include employer, employees, legal personals, customers (of course), media, and in sports, players. I firmly believe that PR in any organization is THE department, who handle those relationships, because, first, my students will be in those positions someday and second, it is definitely PR, who will control information delivered to the outside of organization.
In sports, and any kind of entertainment industry, where PR needs to deal with “celebrities”, PR pros, well, actually, whole organization has a very unique public. Players are people, who usually have high self-esteem and a strong competitive characteristic. Without that, they cannot be in that place. According to NCAA.org, there are 119 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Schools. There are also 144 Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) Schools. FBS has 85 scholarship limits and FCS has 63 scholarship limits. That number gives me about 20,000 football players. Assuming that one-fourth of them are seniors, we will have 5,000 football players graduating and waiting for being drafted by NFL, if they ever want to make it to the NFL. Then, how many players are drafted in 7 rounds of NFL draft? Approximately, 250 players or less. Just itself gives me this stat. One out of 20 students will be drafted. This is not all. If you want to play regularly and make a good money in the NFL, the situation becomes bit more competitive. Assuming that only first and second round pick-ups will have a shot at the starting position, one out of 85 students, approximately, will have a chance to be rich. Well, considering minimum salary of NFL for first-year players is about $300,000, if you are drafted, it means, your wage is already higher than average people. But, before thinking about college graduates, how good and competitive you should be to be recruited by one of the FBS schools. Alabama High School Athletic Association, which is not the biggest high school association in the state, solely has 401 senior high schools, according to Wikipedia website. Well, after calculating all these, I would like to tell my son, who wants to be a soccer player, don’t even think about it. He may even need to compete with people in Europe, Asia, South America, well, literally, everywhere.
Hew… Well, then, What’s the problem, Micheal Vick?
Why did you work so hard, Michael? Picture obtained from nydailynews.com
I know it is hard to deal with celebrities and I think they deserve it, since they worked so hard to get what they wanted to get. So, it is really hard for sports organizations to communicate with these celebrities, because, very often, they do not have to think about their future, because they already accomplished their biggest dream.
When Roger Goodell introduced Tony Dungy as a mentor of Michael Vick and even invited Wayne Pacelle, the head of Humane Society, to 60 minutes interview, what he was doing was PR. In one of my research, I analyzed many crisis situations in newspapers, and many of them blamed a person and tried to differentiate him or her from the organization. I know NFL needed Michael Vick, probably, but, not really. I don’t think so. Atlanta Falcons already found their quarterback at Matt Ryan. Which NFL team really needed a player like Michael Vick? Philadelphia Eagles might not need him with Donovan McNabb, who won 132 games for 11 seasons with Eagles as a starter. Then, why did Roger Goodell have to protect Michael Vick?
I, often, tell my students, PR is a mother nature, well, parent nature, I guess. I have a son and I apologize when he does something wrong in public. Why? Because I love him and I want him to be successful. And, also, he will be my future, someday. He will be my happiness in the future, in my 60s and 70s. So, I would like to protect him as much as possible. Sometimes, I give him a punishment, because I really care of him. That is PR. And, what Roger Goodell did was exactly PR. Anderson William, a scholar, wrote an article about NFL’s PR history in Public Relations Review (2008)’s special issue. He insisted that NFL values PR the most among professional sports organizations in the U.S. Roger Goodell just showed that. So, I often told my students NFL handled Vick’s case much better than other organizations did with their crises, such as Steroid issue in MLB. I don’t really think MLB was supportive to players.
In this case, though, PR hurt itself, eventually. If you are a business person, you may say, show me the money, and will say, look at Michael Vick. You should just let him go. Well, it was a typical conversation with people in business when I studied for my doctoral degree in communication. Does relationship and good communication bring a profit? Well, maybe not. Or, it may not be measurable at all.
When my son makes same mistakes over and over, sometimes, he hurts my feeling. And, I am saying that you just hurt my feeling and are you happy when I am sad? When my students try to fool me, it hurts my feelings so badly. And, I also want to tell my students, if you fool me, you may get a good grade in my course, but, you may not be able to be successful in your life. I just don’t want to see that. And, I really hope students understand that.
Michael, I know and I hope you are innocent and you are not really related with the shooting the other day. I want to believe in your comments. But, look, what did Roger Goodell do to you? What did Tony Dungy do to you? What about the NFL? What about the fans who accepted you in the NFL again? What about the children you gave a speech to? And, most importantly, what about yourself? Did you really have to be there?
Well, this is very sad Sports PR issue. I really hope he is OK and Eagles gives him one more chance. But, it is very sad. Michael Vick worked so hard to go to Virginia Tech and competed even harder to be picked by Falcons. In PR, we need to deal with this kind of public. And, the most important thing is to understand them and really try to help them in person. And, that is clearly a job of PR, because PR is a parent nature and PR is a facilitator of communication.
The day Michael Vick became a son of NFL, Picture obtained from Sports Illustrated
Public Relations, Social Media, and Sports 