Nike, long known as a popular but controversial advertiser, has done it again. The company’s new “Mrs. Jones” campaign features a close-up of a woman’s mouth speaking into a microphone. The ads touch on current sports topics such as players as role models, the relative unpopularity of track and field, and the pay discrepancy between male and female athletes. First, Nike is being downright hypocritical when it accuses the American public of forgetting about track and field athletes until the Olympics are right around the corner. When was the last time we heard anything much about track stars from Nike? Sometime shortly after the 1996 Olympics, I believe. Isn’t it funny that these new commercials started running just a few months before the Olympics?The most ridiculous commercial of the campaign is the one about the pay discrepancy between male and female athletes. Yes, a discrepancy exists. There is no denying that fact. Nike, of course, accuses the entire sports world of sexism and says that the female athletes work as hard as the males, so they deserve an equal wage.The ads conveniently ignore the fact that the top female athletes couldn’t compete with their male counterparts. Shaquille O’Neal would simply obliterate Rebecca Lobo in a game of one-on-one. Pete Sampras would whip Martina Hingis. Please don’t lecture me about Billie Jean King and her “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match with Bobby Riggs. Riggs was about 25 years past his prime, and definitely not the top male tennis player of the day. If I work just as hard as journalists Mike Lupica or Peter Gammons, I don’t necessarily deserve the same wages they earn simply because I tried. You are paid for the things that you are able to do, and if you can’t do your job as well as others you don’t deserve to be paid as well as they are.  Beyond the talent differences, women’s sports simply don’t draw the same interest as men’s sports. How many empty seats were there at Ohio State men’s basketball games this year? How about the women’s basketball games? The men’s hockey team came close to filling the Schott on some occasions this year, while the women’s team battled with intramurals to try to fill the old ice rink. This is repeated throughout pro sports as well. You can’t get a New York Knicks ticket without pulling a few favors. If you go to a New York Liberty (WNBA) game, you have entire sections of the stands to yourself. No fans equals no revenue, and that equals lower salaries. It’s the same reason Arena Football League players don’t earn as much as NFL players. It’s simple economics, folks.It is the same economic structure that makes Nike pay their male endorsers, like Kevin Garnett and Michael Jordan, far more than their female endorsers, like Mia Hamm. How can Nike preach about gender pay equity when their own pay scale is skewed on gender lines? I’m beginning to think that Nike was actually the winged Greek goddess of Hypocrisy. Since Nike is so supportive of hard-working females, maybe Mrs. Jones’ next crusade should be a battle for the female workers who toil away in ridiculously low-paying and often unsafe shoe-manufacturing sweatshops. These third world workers need our love. Can you dig it?
Thomas Orr is a senior journalism major who thinks that the WNBA is the perfect cure for insomnia.