Michael Jordan Just Wants to Direct
from
March/April 2002
by Sasha Issenberg
When Oakley Inc., a sunglasses manufacturer, went public back in
1995, the basketball superstar who agreed to endorse its product
requested an additional position: a seat on the board of directors.
Oakley agreed. You don’t say no to Michael Jordan.
Jordan isn’t the only jock to serve on a board. Others include tennis great Billie Jean King (Philip Morris), home-run champ Hank Aaron (Value City Department Stores), and two-time Super Bowl quarterback Roger Staubach (AMR and Brinker International).
Willie Davis, the Hall of Fame Green Bay Packers lineman, may hold the record for number of boards simultaneously served on, with 10 (Dow Chemical, Kmart, and Sarah Lee among them). Davis is also a successful entrepreneur—he heads All Pro Broadcasting, a business he launched in 1976—and has an M.B.A., which he earned at the University of Chicago during his playing years. He credits Packers coach Vince Lombardi with being a big factor in his learning curve. “He tried to build motivation around players to go out and execute the right game plan,” he says. “It’s the same scenario in business.”
What do jocks add to boards? A chance for other directors to rub shoulders with the famous, of course—but often much more. Dow chairman William S. Stavropoulos says that Davis “brings diversity to our board in the true sense of the word—diversity of experience. He’s a self-made man who exemplifies the discipline of sports and the entrepreneurial spirit.”
Jordan, who collects $25,000 a year in director fees (versus $500,000 for endorsing Oakley’s sunglasses), hasn’t yet intercepted such accolades. Perhaps that’s because, at 39, he’s still an active athlete whose primary focus remains the basketball court. Oakley is doing well—it earned $47.1 million in the first three quarters of 2001, up from $41.4 million over the same period in 2000—but the other directors aren’t saying how much of this came from Jordan’s endorsements and how much from his directorial skills. He doesn’t sit on either of the board’s two committees and his attendance at 2000’s five board meetings is tough to measure. The proxy is vague, and Oakley declined to provide the exact score.
