Bruce Dowbiggin
Air: How Running Shoes Changed the Sports Business Forever

In Ben Affleck’s terrific film Air, basketball talent scout Jimmy Vaccaro is risking his career on signing Michael Jordan, who’s just been drafted third overall in the 1984 NBA draft. He gambles everything on his company NIKE, not noted for its hoops shoes, winning over Jordan and his family to a radical new design.
When Jordan’s mother, played powerfully by Viola Davis, demands a percentage of every Air Jordan shoe sold, Vacarro balks, thinking his publicly held company will never approve such a radical concept. The deal looks ready to collapse, with Adidas set to move in. As they do throughout the film, viewers are yelling at the NIKE executives on screen, “Trust us! He’s going to be great! Give him what he wants!”
Being onside with history is a wonderful conceit in an era where certainty is lost and liars prosper. The audience knows what will happen if Jordan puts on the NIKE shoes and goes on to become the global sports superstar earning billions. The shoes will generate $162 M the first year in production. Jordan still receives $40 M a year for his share in the shoe. (He’s set to sell the NBA Charlotte Bobcats for $3B.)
So, of course, Jordan signs with NIKE, the shoes sell like crazy and he fulfills his destiny as a great star, winning eight NBA titles and two Olympic gold medals. Affleck (who plays NIKE founder Phil Knight) throws in a rapid slide show on what’s still to come, including the murder of Jordan’s father, James; Michael mysteriously quitting to play baseball for two years and the defining final years of his brilliant career with the Chicago Bulls.
For this reason Affleck has made a wise decision in limiting his business story to the summer of 1984. He knows that the voluminous ten-part documentary series The Jordan Rules has already trod on the dramas of his Bulls career. His straightforward underdog story allows audiences to revel in the birth of their modern culture without any of the attendant culture wars.
Like Moneyball and The Blind Side, Air delivers an uncomplicated sports business story, this time about a prominent black athlete who eschewed politics with the line, “Republicans buy running shoes, too.” It’s what they used to call an all-American story. Like Hoosiers.Thanks to then ultra-competitive Jordan the NBA went from late-night delayed broadcast nowhere in 1980 to a global brand synonymous with wealth and power.
Then Knight stepped back in 2016. By 2017, NIKE was handing out multi-millions to disgruntled NFL QB Colin Kaepernick for disrespecting the national anthem. It led the way in funnelling millions to #BLM, even as the organizers used it to buy Hollywood homes for themselves. Knight’s company will be synonymous with slave labour in China and censoring NBA figures who challenge the proximity of the league and its Chinese paymasters.
None of this is even hinted at in Air. Cause-obsessed critics missed the low-hanging fruit. Instead, Peter Bradshaw of the far-left Guardian trashed the film for “looking like the most expensive in-house corporate promo in history: shallow, parochial and obtuse”. Predictably, the critic from @NPR railed against the film’s embrace of corporate culture. Aisha Harris calls it a “craven exercise in capitalist exaltation”.
The real issue is not capitalism but the corruption of athletics by the paymasters on the Left since 1984. Thanks to the new NIKE management progressive politics ensnare nearly every positive achieved by Jordan’s triumph. Knight’s bold initiatives and unapologetic opportunism have been bled away, replaced by the DEI and ESG and climate radicalism of people who’ve succeeded him in the C suite at NIKE.
If you want to know what that accomplished watch ESPN’s three Rs for about an hour. Race. Resentment. Radical environmentalism. As a result, the second act of this script would be something far more sombre than the giddiness of wooing Jordan and his family. The LeBron James generation of young players following Jordan reject his neutrality for unabashed acceptance of the latest grievance meme. They flaunt their riches even as they toe the line with China.
On the same topic, it would be interesting to see a film about how the NHL exploited— and then squandered— its Jordan Rules moment. Parallel to the Bulls star’s ascension the NHL experienced its own Jordan in Wayne Gretzky. A once-in-a century star, Gretzky possessed all the marketable qualities of Jordan in his NHL career that began in 1979.
Using the new marketing schemes exploited by Jordan and NIKE, L.A. Kings owner Bruce McNall wooed Gretzky to Hollywood in 1988 from remote Edmonton in the most famous trade in NHL history. For a time it seemed the NHL had gotten religion in their marketing, adding Disney as an owner and exploiting the synergies of Gretzky to open up the league to the southern U.S.
But then McNall was sent to prison for fraud, and Gretzky failed to deliver a Stanley Cup to the entertainment capital of the world. He moved twice more to teams that promised a chance at a fifth Cup, but it never worked out. There was no Air Gretzky. Disney and Waste Management, the prize new owners, abandoned the league when commissioner Gary Bettman became more obsessed with labour stoppages than talking up the product to the world.
International play seemed to flourish for a time, but by the 2020s, Gary Bettman’s league was what it had been, an isolated North American operation seemingly uninterested in the global reach enjoyed by the NBA. Blanket expansion of the continent, not the world, seems their goal. Gretzky, who once denied ever betting on sports, now pimps for legalized betting at MGM.
So yes, Jordan’s shoe was a blatant marketing manipulation of the culture. Its controversial China impact is massive. But the net impact of Knight, Vaccaro and the Jordan family living out the American dream puts anything the NHL has managed in its history to shame.
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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Bruce Dowbiggin
Canadians Thinks America Owes Them. Trump Has Other Ideas

Breaking: It’s now being reported that in the 2024 U.S. election, zero Canadians voted for Donald Trump. In fact, zero Canadians voted for anyone on the ballot. They’re not allowed to. And yet rage monkeys in the Canadian media seem to have the idea that Canada is— and should be— an immediate priority of POTUS 47.
Here’s Globe & Mail/ CBC wind therapist Andrew Coyne about ten exits past normal on the idea of Donald Trump on Canadian soil. Okay, on Alberta soil. “We’re going to roll out the red carpet for the wannabe dictator of America at the very moment he is moving to suppress dissent with armed force?” (You mean like the Truckers Convoy?)
Cartoonist Michael DeAdder, who likely cries if you use improper pronouns, says “Hold my kombucha”. His latest etching has Trump asking a veteran what he did in the war. The witty retort is “Fought against people like you”. Get it? Trump murders six millions Jews. But The Hill keeps this guy working, and the laughs just keep on coming. Free speech!

The presumption is jaw-dropping. Even as Trump’s approval rating hits 53 percent, Canadians online were echoing Democrats’ fever dreams of forming a shadow government to take over from Trump via coup. This sense of impunity at a distance is why the Canadian government— along with other drive-by virtue signallers UK, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia— have imposed sanctions on two sitting members of the Israeli cabinet. They know it will rile Trump’s America.
For ordinary Canadians, Trump became a post-it note to justify giving Team Liberal another swing at ruining the nation. “We used to be such friends! He’s a tyrant.!” This just in: Love him or hate him Trump is employed by Americans to do their bidding. He’s not a sentimental buddy of Canada who’ll cut us some slack for old time’s sake. He has no remittance from Canada to please the Laurentian elites. If your defence is non-existent and your military gender-obsessed: you had it coming.
Are his policies jostling Canada? Absolutely. Read Art of the Deal. The 51st state jibe when Justin soiled himself was rude. But it worked on pliant Canadian liberals. Now the The Little Banker is disavowing the dissolute decade of Trudeau while employing Conservatives’ policies on defence spending, inter-provincial trade and border security. Hell, he’s naming longtime Tories to his personal staff.

In the end Carney knows this ain’t mock Parliament. That his dossier begins and ends with satisfying the beast to the south. None of this should be a surprise. Yet Canadians dozed when Trump made clear in his election campaign that the American economy is the greatest in the world. If you want to fish in that pond it’s not going to be for free. That means tariffs for a range of U.S. industries that couldn’t compete in a Biden world.
We can argue how well tariffs work, but Trump wants them to reduce taxes on the people who elected him. Not the Canadians who fly first class but pay economy. And who have pushed his approval ratings into the 50s, higher than ever before. (Likely to spike higher after the No Kings Riot season peters out.)
No wonder Canadians preferred the guy before Trump, the senile sock puppet whose government was run by anonymous figures using the auto-pen. Sleepy Joe let Canada slide into mediocrity and financial peril without any judgement. It was comfortable. Then The Donald had the nerve to expose the ditch Canada was in.
Canada, Trump pointed out, was delinquent on its defence, harbouring Chinese drug lords, printing money like Canadian Tire and its banks were involved in money laundering. That was the nice stuff. Try Organized fentanyl networks operating with impunity in the largest cities of the nation So dumping on Trump in salty cartoons allows Canada’s Mod Squad to ignore the real issues that should have been litigated in the April election.
We have written extensively about the ruse that was played on gormless Canadians in “U.S. Voters Smelled A Rat But Canadian Voters Bought The Cheese” We have catalogued Canada’s drug and money laundering disgrace in “Chinese Gangs Dominate Canada: Why Will Voters Give Liberals Another Term?” We’ve described the real-estate bubble economy created by Trudeau and sidekick Carney that threatens to crash the economy and ruin seniors’ pensions in
In the end, it is still la-la-la-la We Can’t Hear You. Trump-obsessed Boomers more concerned with the equity in their jumped-up bungalows gave the finger to the next generations and blamed it all on Orange Man Bad. In the monotone of Canadian political comment it all seemed so easy. Turn against Trump. Cash another dividend. Cheer on MSNBC and CNN bitch sessions.
The Family Compact don’t get it. Their Antifa heroes down south plan demos and “nonviolent” activity to crater the public resolve. In Canada that still works. But in the U.S. the Covid reverb is hitting the natural governing class of the nation. While they craft fine phrases about democracy the consumers remember them using a virus to stop society.
The appetite for Gavin Newsom blovaitors and Jen Psaki fart catchers is crashing in America. Riots may be coming in the U.S., but it won’t be like George Floyd and Covid and the pussy hats. At some point Canada’s docile classes better wake up, too. America owes them nothing. They need to earn the respect.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Simone Biles Fails To Stick The Landing Going After Riley Gaines

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. George Orwell
Or, in the case of Olympic legend Simone Biles, only gymnasts believe in the incendiary issue of trans men competing in women’s sports. Biles, who has made a secondary career as an object of pity, took exception when former swimmer Riley Gaines, an opponent of trans men competing against women, sent a picture of Minnesota softball team that recently won a state title with a pitcher who is reported to be transgender.
“Comments off lol,’ Gaines wrote in response to the post which wasn’t permitting any comments from the public. “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”
That brought Biles into the fray. ‘You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. ‘You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! ‘But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!’
She then poked Gaines again, saying: ‘Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.” (Gaines husband is 6-foot-4)

The loser reference was to Gaines having lost to a trans swimmer in an NCAA race. Since then Gaines has launched a campaign to outlaw biological males from competing with cisgendered girls and women. She has testified in the U.S. Congress and has appeared in numerous interviews espousing a position supported by the vast majority of Americans.

One might think the proof of this position— unquestioned as recently as a decade ago— would be obvious. But Biles and gender radicals who’ve tried to make trans into the Emancipation Proclamation of the 21st century are not giving up the fight.
Here’s someone named Nancy Armour in USA Today. “There is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do..” When legislation banning trans men in girls/ women sports was presented in the U.S. Congress 106 Democrats voted against the motion. The chattering class on CBC, MSNBC and CNN likewise have a cohort of those opposing the ban.
But it was the outburst from Biles that most appalled fans who’d worshipped her as the GOAT of Olympic gymnastics and then sympathized with her victimization by Dr. Larry Nasser. Even when she bailed on her teammates at the 2024 Games they cut her slack. But suddenly a woman who’s preached against body shaming and intolerance was deriding a fellow athlete’s body and mocking her complaints.
Critics were quick to post Biles’ hypocrisy about compassion, citing her own tear-stained testimony about how she was taken advantage by a doctor. Here’s how we described her psychological distress last August during the Olympics. “Prominent among them was gymnast Simone Biles who described the abuse she’d suffered from a male trainer and on social media as the greatest female gymnast in history. Even as she added more golds to her mantle she’d seemed unable to find peace in her accomplishments.
“Due to mental blocks, she’d had to step away from the sport for a time to get her head straight. She had a lot of company from fellow competitors who described sexual harassment and intimidation on social media for their unhappiness. (Hence the constant mental health commercials on the TV broadcasts.)”
Now the same role model is mocking Gaines? It seems unthinkable. As for the claims that men have no advantage against women, it was pointed out that there are zero women who try to reverse the equation, going into men’s sports. They show the hard truths about competitive records of men versus women in a range of sports. They describe the physical risks for women playing against larger, stronger men. Here. Here. And here.
It’s still stunning to see Biles toeing the radical LGBTQ line while asking for traditional pity of a victimized woman herself. Or the amount of support that the cause has garnered from progressives throughout society. When did people became so obtuse about the growth this societal contagion?
We wrote earlier this year about how such notions take hold. MacDonald Laurier Institute fellow Mia Hughes charted a history of similar social contagions such as bulimia and multiple-personality disorder. “In 1972, British psychologist Gerald Russell treated a woman with an unusual eating disorder involving binging and purging. Over the next seven years, he saw a further 30 woman presenting with the same condition. In 1979, he wrote a paper published in Psychological Medicine, in which he gave it the name bulimia nervosa….
“Then something remarkable happened. The illness swept the globe like wildfire… affecting an estimated 30 million people by the mid-1990s, the majority of whom were teenage girls and young women. The explanation for this rapid spread is what philosopher Ian Hacking calls ‘semantic contagion’ – how the process of naming and describing a condition creates the means by which the condition spreads. The epidemic of multiple-personality disorder in the 90s was spread this same way… Multiple studies demonstrate the media’s culpability in the spread of social contagions.”
The new contagion is trans athletes. USA Today is just one example of how influencers try to legitimize campaigns to boost their own self esteem. As the battle to reverse the trans incursion shows, there are only too many willing to play politics in the gender debate. Like the pro-Palestinian movement in North America the trans athlete hoax exists is a bubble where reality and fiction can co-exist, knowing they’ll never be put to the test.
Orwell called it doublethink “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Biles and the liberal elites have it mastered. Nursing their grievance while finding it a fault in others.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, Bruce is regular media contributor. The new book from there team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin is Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. In paperback and Kindle on #Amazon. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
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