Word: sporting
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...born soccer star Freddy Adu, who just turned 14. (Nike will not confirm exact figures.) He has been hailed as the next Renaldo--and maybe even Pele--but for now he's the rising star of the U.S. under-17 team. "Nike builds brands around star athletes," says IMG sports agent Max Eisenbud. "There is a reason they're getting involved with this kid. If he dominates the sport at 17, it's not a big investment." Two years ago Nike signed tennis prodigy Brendan Evans, now 17, for $250,000, and Russian tennis ace Maria Sharapova, 16, pocketed...
David Baker had been working for six years to lift his sport from near oblivion when he heard the words he longed to hear. It was the first Sunday of Gulf War II, and NBC anchor Tom Brokaw was wrapping up his report on the latest round of U.S. bombings in Iraq. "And now," Brokaw solemnly intoned, "back to arena football...
Baker, 50, is commissioner of the Arena Football League (AFL), whose 16 teams play an exciting, fast-paced version of the sport with eight-man squads on a 50-yd. field, usually set up in a basketball or hockey facility. Arena football has been around since 1987 but hasn't taken off until this spring when NBC--having lost big bucks on overpriced major sports--turned over a prime weekend slot to the AFL. The network has broadcast 56 AFL games over the past four months and will showcase the semifinals and the championship, Arena Bowl XVII, for most...
Once Baker had spread his philosophy, he was ready to enlist help from the big leagues. In January 1998 he arranged a meeting with NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Unlike another football start-up, the U.S. Football League of the 1980s, the AFL was not competing for the sport's best players. (It couldn't afford them.) So Baker figured both leagues could benefit from a partnership. What was scheduled as a 15-minute meet-and-greet in Tagliabue's Manhattan office turned into a two-hour briefing on the AFL's business plan. Tagliabue was so taken that he quickly...
...sits in a room that is empty save for a few chairs, a drained tequila bottle and back issues of Handguns for Sport and Defense magazine strewn across the floor. In his early 40s, M.R. (who only allowed his initials to be published) has the calm self-assurance of a skilled artisan; a mason or a carpenter, perhaps, a tradesman who is good with his hands. He is known?and feared?for those giant hands and his sweet, clear voice. "He'll be smiling and talking, and the next thing, he's breaking his victim's neck," a colleague says...