On Athletes and Celebrity Today: A Few Thoughts

Recently writing about Aces: Iron Eagle III I found myself thinking about the niche that athletes like Rachel McLish (the film's female lead) used to occupy pop culturally, and how these days it seems smaller than it used to be. That can seem a matter of the ever-intensifying pop cultural fragmentation we now take for granted--one aspect of which has been that all but the most popular spectator sports have seen their profiles fall greatly. ("What ever happened to tennis?" I wondered not so long ago. "What ever happened to anything but football, baseball, basketball?" I could have easily asked instead.)

Going along with that was the way in which certain aspects of the entertainment world where athletes could reach an audience extending beyond their sport's fan base have declined in visibility, or disappeared altogether. In the '90s, for instance, there was an abundance of fitness shows on ESPN, and American Gladiators on the air, while World Wrestling Entertainment was in its sensationally popular "Attitude Era" all of them helping make their names known to people who paid no attention whatsoever to their sports. (Even if one did not watch wrestling, they knew who the Rock was and what he was cooking.) More broadly television tended to the use of a 22-episode-a-season "standalone" episodic structure that was accommodating of the use of "special guests" who did not really have to be able to act to perk up interest, a bill that prominent sports figures could and did fit. (Thus did the Rock play his own father in an episode of That '70s Show in an early stage of his crossover to acting--and prophesy great things for his son.) This especially went for the more action-oriented shows, especially the kind that did not take themselves too seriously (like those syndicated action hours), where the physical presences and skills of, for instance, bodybuilders, were often a natural. (McLish's fellow Ms. Olympia Cory Everson was quite the regular here in those days, as in her recurring character of Atalanta on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and other spots on shows like Renegade, Tarzan: The Epic Adventures, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., and even Home Improvement, where she appeared as herself.*)

If bits of it remain that media world is gone now, without anything quite replacing it. One consequence is that, apart from it being harder to point to a latterday McLish (or Rock, or Cory Everson), one might notice how just as all this has meant that the actors of earlier years, like Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford, overshadow newer, younger performers with regard to public recognition (even movie stars aren't "movie stars" in the old way), so does it go with sports celebrities. Thus are they the spokespersons in commercials, with Shaquille O'Neal on the screen so often to be seen hawking everything from pizza to car insurance that one might scarcely realize that he retired back in 2011--precisely because a younger, more recent, player, whatever their ability or accomplishment, simply does not have the same opportunity to become as recognizable to the public, even in sports still as popular as basketball.

* McLish held the title in 1980 and 1982, Everson in 1984-1989.