I like to think of myself as a forward-thinking coach. Part of being this way is understanding that landscapes are constantly changing in sports. In this social media era of athletics and sports, it is important to remember and recognize that athletes themselves are now brands.
4 years ago I was at The Standard for a party (I forget which one but my friend Martin was hosting) and I was talking to somebody working at Balenciaga. You know, before it got canceled. Anyway, this diva was OBSESSED with Serena Williams. I asked him why high fashion houses haven’t merged with sports stars yet, as this to me seemed like a marketing no-brainer. He said he kept putting sports stars forward for partnerships and deals but that it was still a hard sell. This I understand. Everything in terms of casting in fashion is always a fight.
World Number 1 and current Wimbledon and US Open Champion Carlos Alcaraz is the brand ambassador for Louis Vuitton.
Fast forward to spring/summer 2023 and we have nothing but sports stars as the ambassadors for high fashion houses. And no rinky-dink small up and coming designers either but Louis Vuitton babes, have ya heard of them? Carlos Alcaraz was announced as their new brand ambassador right before winning Wimbledon earlier this year; Félix Auger-Aliassime is the brand ambassador for Dior; Jannik Sinner is working with Gucci and got special dispensation from Wimbledon to carry a Gucci monogrammed bag onto Centre Court this year. All very prolific fashion brands with all very big sports stars. We honestly love to see it! The time has arrived.
The kids these days are walking brands and billboards, drawing great significance and importance to the causes near and dear to their heart. I mean hello!? The white Nike bucket-hat Carlitos wore at Wimbledon sold out and I’ve seen several white buck-hat knock-offs since. I walk past one at the Urban Outfitter’s window on my walk to Brooklyn Bridge Park every morning.
We are living in different times now. We are so close to living in a time where athletes are able to close deals and keep their full check while also participating at NCAA (college sports) in America. This was not always the case when I was an athlete myself.
I hate to make it all about me and go Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite on that ass, but back in my day when I was a student athlete, we weren’t allowed to make money off our image. We had to maintain “amateur” status. This means we couldn’t swim professionally either. If we swam professionally and won prize money, we got to keep upwards of what we could prove the trip cost. So we had to keep receipts and proof of purchase and then whatever was leftover in terms of prize money we had to return.
Can you imagine how depressing this was? Winning prize money for your talent and not even being able to keep it. For non-sensical reasons. Oh my god how suffocating is that? It was very strict. We couldn’t even host swim clinics to make money or anything. But this of course has all changed and I’m going to tell you how it all changed.
Image Credit: Donatella Versace’s Instagram.
Texas A&M Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel trademarked the name “Johnny Football” and alongside it came a lot of controversy. It opened a pandora’s box of questioning the NCAA’s exploitation of student athletes. Why did the NCAA seek to make so much money off the back of their athletes in the excess of millions of dollars yet the athletes themselves weren’t allowed to exploit their own talent, image, and namesake to make a dime for themselves? It was sort of around this time that the media began tearing Johnny Manziel to shreds.
It did beg a good question at the time though: why is it that all these media companies can make so much money off the back of student athletes and their image, without the athletes themselves making any money off their own image? It is absolutely non-sensical.
And the Supreme Court of the United States agreed. In June 2021 during the NCAA vs Alston case the Supreme Court unanimously held that the NCAA may no longer restrict member institutions from offering education-related compensation and benefits to student athletes. In laments terms: student athletes can now make money from education-related compensation, aka swim clinics. This is a small step in the right direction but still a far cry from where we need to be.
Now there are legal challenges to the “amateur status” business model that the NCAA holds onto in order to keep their enterprise running. It is only a matter of time before the student athletes are completely liberated from this very strange desire to keep athletes “amateur,” so media companies can line their pockets up with money.
As a coach in order to anticipate this change, when it comes to social media and trying to control the image of my athletes, I’m going adopt a laissez-faire attitude. I believe that as a coach, there are far more useful ways for me to use my time. Like writing engaging practices that are going to contribute to my team’s success. This is what I’d rather be doing. Rather than fretting over athletes’ behavior online.
Canadian tennis star Felix Auger Aliassime at the Dior fashion show earlier this year.
Controlling and policing social media isn’t part of the job description of a coach yet it has somehow become this unwritten rule and responsibility. I have no interest in doing this type of work. If I did then I’d apply to be a social media manager, not a coach.
I’d rather spend my time finding ways to inspire my swimmers. This is what the job is about: extracting my swimmers’ best effort at practice every day. So much so that they’re going to care more for their recovery and post-practice nutrition than anything else.
As for going out, during my time at Texas A&M they encouraged athletes to limit their alcohol consumption to once per month. At “Champs Class,” which is a compulsory class every freshman Texas A&M student athlete must take, we had a presentation on alcohol and all the ways it can interfere with muscle development, sleep cycles, and hormonal imbalances. Once per month ensured minimal damage to the body and it takes about a month of abstaining from alcohol in order for the body to reset its tolerance.
Learning this as a student athlete was so helpful. The Aggie Athletic department understood that kids are going to do what kids are going to do, so the least they could do is encourage their athletes to drink responsibly and in a way that is going to ensure their academic and sporting success.
This influenced me to only go out once per month. I honestly think this is what saved my studies and swimming. Not everybody adhered to this rule of course, but I did notice that the kids exercised more self-discipline and control around alcohol always had higher grades and performed better at the end of year competitions.
Jannik Sinner got special dispensation at this year’s Wimbledon to carry a Gucci monogrammed bag onto the court.
Kids are social creatures. It is normal after all the stress of tertiary classes and mid-term exams to want to blow of some steam every now and again. Sometimes it is necessary. After a night of fun dancing or karaoke on a full moon, I feel more focused for the upcoming month. It is very important to release tension! As much as we want to think our student athletes are all going to sit at home and play the sims on their laptop every Saturday night, this is simply unrealistic. Especially in a city like New York City where there is so much going on. Don’t be naïve!
I’ve heard stories of coaches punishing their athletes because they posted that they went out on their Instagram stories the night prior. I find these things really inane and rather silly. If somebody goes out the night prior but then shows up to practice and turns out a good workout, what else matters? Furthermore, all because they were out the night before doesn’t necessarily mean that they were drinking and getting rambunctious. There were plenty of nights I went out in college and didn’t drink. I was a considerate teammate too and would volunteer to be the designated driver. Social media is the worst because so much is contextual and making assumptions over what a person is doing is such a waste of time and energy.
I’d like to work with an athletic department that allows me to coach in such a way that encourages but doesn’t restrict. I think this is the way and this is the future. These kids and their social media pages are brands. Whether they are real or caricatures of themselves remains to be seen, but it doesn’t work in anybody’s favor to try and censor athletes. Let them show off their personalities! Sports is all about personalities.
Hiring me as a college swim coach is a big risk because I’m a bit of a lunatic online. But please understand that online persona is simply this: an online persona. It is performance art. It is an overwhelmingly large personality in a space where personality is so desperately needed. The sport of swimming needs to showcase more personalities!
I cannot tell you how refreshing it was to see and hear Cate Campbell talk trash about the American swim team on national television in Australia these last World Champs! Finally, we are beginning to see some personalities from our swim stars. People are starting to make things interesting. I wonder what the inspiration was behind all of this?
America’s Breaststroke sweetheart and multiple Olympic gold medalist Lilly King talked trash right back! Lilly isn’t new to controversy of course. Do you remember when Lilly waved her finger in the ready room at Russia’s Yulia Efimova at the Rio 2016 Olympics? Wow. What a fabulous moment for sports! It grew the rivalry and hyped things up for the final. And all the drama that had led up to the women’s 100M Breaststroke final in Rio made it absolutely electric!
The mature executives in upper-management of athletics need to understand that sports is entertainment! Yes, we all wish to exercise good sportsmanship but can’t we have some fun at the same time too? These athletes work so hard for their bodies, can’t they show them off online too? Nobody here is aging backwards. Nobody here is getting any younger either. We should be fostering an environment where people feel proud of their bodies, not shame.
There is so much room to grow in the sport of swimming. So many stories to be told and lives shared. It isn’t always the gold medalists that always have the most interesting stories that are needing to be told either: Yusra Mardini taught us that. There is so much potential to grow this sport through the art of creation and story-telling. I feel like this is what I’ve been brought here to do.
At the end of the day: it comes back down to the athletes themselves. That’s the reason why we’re here. This is why people tune in. We want to see what the sports stars are wearing. How they’ve cut their hair. What brands they’re wearing. We want to hear about the things that are near and dear to their heart. We want to listen to what they’ve got to say. We like it when they feed us parts of their puzzling personalities that are surprising, unpredictable, and interesting.
The time has come for all the worlds of entertainment to collide. No more artists looking down on athletes and no more athletes looking down on artists, the lifestyle is the same at the end of the day. We slave our guts out everyday to produce the best quality work that we can, and social media should be seen as the vessel and the medium in which we can choose to express that journey. I’m a coach that recognizes this as an opportunity and less of a hindrance and I’m a part of that changing landscape and future.
This is the type of coach I’d be. No nonsense when it comes to the day-to-day practices, but with enough room and space for my athletes to grow and blossom and develop their own winning identities and personalities. The kids these days don’t even have to be very good to make money from their sport either, they just have to be creative, have an imagination, and develop a following.