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This chapter explores the lawsuit that Wally Butts, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, filed against the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post in 1963. The lawsuit began when the former head football coach of the University of Georgia (UGA) sued the publishing company for libel after its magazine published a story accusing him of fixing the 1962 UGA–Alabama football game with the help of legendary University of Alabama football coach Bear Bryant. This case marked the first time the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that a sporting figure was a public figure, that a former football coach was a celebrity, and that to win a defamation suit, public figures needed to prove actual malice (that the publisher had knowledge the statement was false or published it with reckless disregard of its falsity).

This chapter explores Jackie Robinson’s early twenty-first-century reputation. It argues that while Robinson is enjoying a remarkable as well as posthumous admiration, the cost is often obscured by the false and often disingenuous promotion of racial tolerance and acceptance through the Robinson saga. Rather than viewing the ubiquitous characterizations of Robinson as indicative of the triumph of democracy and progress, the Robinson mystique should be viewed as being trivialized by virtue of its continued trumpeting of duty and comportment that belie the range of complex premises that lay beneath the unabashed cheerleading.

This chapter introduces the concept of celebrity and the rise of the sporting celebrity. It explains the evolution of the laws of reputation, specifically defamation, the rights of privacy, and the right of publicity. It also provides the legal and cultural backdrop in order to understand where the cases in the subsequent chapters fit in the history of celebrity and law. It argues that in the twenty-first century, sport celebrities are not known solely for their exploits on the field or court. They are famous every moment, and—because they are celebrities—members of the media stalk them and report on their every step and misstep. The media needs celebrities, and celebrities need the media. But periodically the two conflict over who really controls the image of the celebrity.

This chapter explores the life and legacy of Paul Robeson. Robeson was one of the few African Americans who made a name for himself on the broader American sporting scene. While at Rutgers University from 1915 to 1919, he was awarded fifteen letters as an intercollegiate participant in football, baseball, basketball, and track and field. However, his athletic achievements have been overshadowed by other aspects of his life such as his career as a film and stage actor.

This chapter explores the life and legacy of Jim Thorpe. As a Native American born in a nondescript cabin in Oklahoma Indian Territory in 1887, he was an unlikely candidate for international admiration, or even national respect. It is shown that while Thorpe was consciously developed by his handlers to be a uniquely physical being, he is subsequently betrayed by the very same faction that helped construct both his athletic prowess and his burgeoning reputation.

This chapter explores Joe Montana's lawsuit against the San Jose Mercury News. Montana was one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the National Football League. In San Francisco, he led four teams to victory in the Super Bowl and was named the Most Valuable Player of three of those games. After each Super Bowl victory, the local newspaper, not surprisingly, ran stories about Montana and the team and included photographs. These stories and photographs were clearly protected as documenting newsworthy events under the First Amendment. After the fourth Super Bowl victory, however, the San Jose Mercury News released and sold a poster that included photos of Montana from all four Super Bowls. Montana felt that the use of his photograph in the poster was a violation of his right of publicity—that the newspaper had used his image without his permission and profited from it. Montana's lawsuit highlighted the question of what was newsworthy and thus protected by freedom of speech, and how long that newsworthy privilege lasted. His case also reflected the shift in laws of reputation from protecting dignity to protecting the celebrity's financial interest in his image.

This chapter discusses how the stories presented in this book invoke the iron fist of myth. These are not simple, tragic tales. They are myths of admonishment and disapprobation. They sanction and scourge. They punish and cast out. Myth was never made simply to teach or entertain. Myth has one main purpose—the construction, maintenance, and surveillance of social order.

This chapter examines the evolution of Clemente’s reputation. It attempts to explain the speed with which Clemente’s reputation enjoyed a virtual overnight redemption as a result of his untimely death, through the prism of dual process theories, specifically the continuum model of impression formation. The impressions that people hold of one person and how these are formed over long periods of time demonstrate tremendous potential for expanding our understanding of both how reputations change and what changing suggests.

This chapter explores the reputations of Tommie Smith and John Carlos. It argues that the challenge of attempting to place Smith and Carlos in any sort of context is informed solely by the perception of what took place during the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City and why. Despite a myriad books, articles, debates, and even documentaries, there remains such a wide range of conjecture and assumptions that continue to swirl about each man’s role in what has been popularly deemed “a black power protest” that trying to move beyond 1968 often proves to be futile.

This chapter presents the story of James Nathaniel “Jim” Brown, considered as one of the greatest fullbacks in the history of football. The decline of his public image can be traced back to his 1964 autobiography, Off My Chest, where he shared his views about the issue of race in America. From then on he was no longer just Jimmy Brown, the player who helped elevate the NFL into mainstream American consciousness. Rather, he took the first steps toward becoming Jim Brown, angry black man.

This chapter explores the life and legacy of Curt Flood. Flood had publicly challenged the hegemony of baseball by requesting freedom through the elimination of the reserve clause and a reversal of baseball’s antitrust exemption. While not the first challenge to the reserve clause, Flood’s was definitely the most demonized, denounced, and surveilled, thus reflecting the historic moment of challenge, his blackness, and the realities of American racism.

This chapter explores the life and legacy of Bill Russell. In the 1960s Russell was considered as the most dominant player in basketball. However, he was largely disliked by many fans and the media due to his seemingly somber demeanor, his outspokenness, particularly on issues of race and racial equality, and his intimidating presence. Twenty years later, his public persona underwent a change. No longer viewed as aloof, he was seen as approachable and even revered, an insightful icon of the professional game and an impressionable culture. The chapter raises the following questions: Was it that Russell himself was changing, or was it perhaps part and parcel of a more widespread cultural shift? How was it possible that the world of sports and media could converge to construct a decidedly different view of Bill Russell than the guy Americans had once known?

This chapter explores Warren Spahn's lawsuit against a publishing house in Spahn v. Julian Messner, Inc. Spahn was remarkable baseball pitcher and a veteran of World War II. In 1964, Julian Messner Inc. published a child-targeted biography (called in the business at the time, a juvenile biography) of Spahn, who then sued to stop publication on the grounds that it violated all four of the tenants of privacy: invasion, false light, private facts, and appropriation. The Warren Spahn Story told the story of the perfect man: a good son, a good baseball player, a good husband, and a good soldier. The author of the book admitted that his research consisted of looking at a few magazine stories and clippings, and that he had made no effort to speak with Spahn himself, his family, his teammates, or any of his friends or acquaintances. Spahn won an injunction against future distribution of the book and $10,000 in damages. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the case re-tried using the actual malice standard of the Butts case, and Spahn won again. The decisions concluded that Spahn had the right to demand that the basic facts of his life be told accurately, and it required authors of biographies to make a good faith effort to represent their subjects truthfully.

This chapter explores the lawsuit filed by hockey player Tony Twist against Todd McFarlane. McFarlane was a hockey fan who created the comic book Spawn in 1992, a dark, surreal fantasy about a CIA assassin who dies, goes to hell, and returns to earth as an agent of the devil. In 1993, his evil henchman and enforcer, Anthony Twistelli (called Tony Twist) was introduced. The only thing the character and the hockey player had in common was the name and the reputation of being an enforcer, although MacFarlane admitted in notes to the readers at the end of one issue that he named his character after the hockey player. The real Tony Twist sued for appropriation of his image, and the initial jury awarded him almost $25 million dollars in damages. The trial court, though, threw out the verdict, concluding that Twist had not proven appropriation, because it was the use of his name and not his identity. On appeal, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that Twist's name was part of his identity and that the predominant purpose of naming the character after the hockey player was commercial: the court believed McFarlane hoped to profit from Twist's name and not simply to create art.

This chapter explores Tiger Woods' lawsuit against the artist Rick Rush. In 1997, Woods made history by winning the prestigious Masters tournament for the first time and doing so by a record twelve strokes. Inspired by his victory, Rush created a serigraph of Woods' driving the ball while flanked by his caddie and his opponents' caddie. Floating in the sky above the scene were the faces of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and other legendary golfers. The painting was then reproduced as a lithograph and five thousand copies were offered for sale. When Woods learned of the artwork, he sued Rush for violating his right of publicity. Rush argued that his work was protected under the First Amendment as art, while Woods argued that the work was merely sports merchandise like a poster and that it was subject to the right of publicity. The court agreed with Rush and said that regardless of the multiple copies, it was still art and deserved full First Amendment protection.

This chapter explores the Don Newcombe's lawsuit against Coors Brewing Company Newcombe played in the Negro baseball leagues until 1949, when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed him after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. He had a stellar career, winning the Most Valuable Player award, the Cy Young Award, and the Rookie of the Year award. However, his career in Major League Baseball was cut short in 1960, in part because of a continuing battle with alcohol. Eventually, Newcombe acknowledged his problem, and, as a recovering alcoholic, he served as a spokesman for the National Institute on Drug and Alcohol Abuse. As an anti-alcohol advocate, Newcombe was shocked when he discovered an advertisement for Killian's Irish Red Beer (a brand produced by Coors Brewing) that featured a drawing of an old-time baseball game in which the pitcher was a recognizable version of Newcombe. He sued Coors for a violation of his right of publicity but lost in the federal district court. Despite that decision, the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with Newcombe and overturned the lower court, establishing that celebrity athletes had the right to choose how their image was used in advertising and allowing them to disassociate themselves from products they found distasteful.

This concluding chapter considers the interconnectedness of the six lawsuits and how these paragons of sport attempted to protect their images and their identities. The legal cases presented in this book are essentially about identity, control, and money. Each of the sporting celebrities highlighted in the preceding chapters wanted to control his identity, image, and reputation; when he lost control of those basic parts of humanity, he turned, with varying degrees of success, to the court system. The struggle to determine who the world sees you as and who profits from you continues. The six legal cases are links in the ongoing evolution of the laws of reputation; they are the story of how celebrities struggle to control how they are viewed; and they provide a window into how the law protects our right of expression as a nation in the context of or in balance with our rights of reputation as individuals.