Marketing, CVS, and the NBA

I'm in Florida right now at my company's annual meeting. I'm staying at the Marriot World Center Hotel, which is, according to its website, that largest Marriot in the world. Oh, and each room has its own balcony. Mine overlooks one of the parking lots.

Still, it must be a pretty nice hotel because there's some kind of a big NBA Pre-Draft meeting going on, and I wouldn't imagine that the NBA would scrimp on the accommodations when it comes to something like this, whatever it is. I don't know what it's about exactly, but I do know that there are a lot of fit-looking coach types walking around in expensive basketball shoes and wearing the logos of various college and NBA teams. A surprising number of them are bald, for some reason, and this morning they made me feel self-conscious at the fitness center.

I mention all of this within the context of this blog as an example of how sportsified we've become as a culture. I used to work at Springfield College, the Birthplace of Basketball, where James Naismith first hung up the peach baskets and invented an industry. The first basketball hall of fame was located right on Springfield College's Campus, until college officials agreed to sell or give (I'm not clear on the details) all of their memorabilia to the Basketball Hall of Fame—capital letters—in downtown Springfield. This was before Magic and Larry and Michael and the NBA and ESPN and the NCAA helped make basketball into a global, multi-billion-dollar business where a bunch of bald men in basketball shorts can sit around in a posh hotel and talk about a two-round draft.

And the kids sense all of this. The sportification reaches all the way down to the pre-school set. Last night I called home and Owen insisted upon giving me the baseball game update: Big Papi was up and the Red Sox were winning. Now, for Owen, and his older brother, Sam, the joy of baseball comes from the physical activity and the fun of mimicry and pretending to be Big Papi or Manny. But it's also becoming commercial, as happened over the weekend when we made a trip to CVS to print out a couple of pictures and I ended up buying each of them a ball with a big Gothic 'B' on it. (I know, I know, it's my fault for enabling them, but I've kept the receipt and I'm hoping that I'll be able to write off the expense once I get a book deal.) And, of course, the teams know this, too, and they've have spent and continue to spend enormous amounts of money on marketing to ensure that a trip to CVS, for instance, can't just be a quick trip but instead must be a battle between too-permissive parents and spoiled children over what extras need to be bought.

Sorry, I guess that wound's still a little raw.