Olympic Fame: It Can Be a Flaky Thing

Got a telephone call about my window of opportunity following the Summer Olympics.

“Didn’t you write about the Olympics?” asked the guy from General Mills Inc. “Sure,” I told him. “Great,” he said. “Wanna be on a Wheaties box?”

In my dreams.

Actually, my phone hasn’t been ringing. It turns out that, despite my championship journalism during the Atlanta Games, a Wheaties box isn’t in my future unless I buy one. Something about writers and their newspaper columns having a short shelf life. Either that or there’s a bias against love handles and bald spots.

What is this Wheaties thing all about, anyway? What is the marketing psychology here that motivates consumers? It’s one thing to sell a product on the assumption that buyers will naively assume it’s actually being used by the celebrity pitching it. But Wheaties has always been absolutely up front about these product endorsements being born of the moment.

We have no idea whether any of the U.S. gold medalists picked to sell their faces to General Mills--so far, sprinter Michael Johnson, decathlon winner Dan O’Brien, swimmers Tom Dolan and Amy Van Dyken and the entire team of female gymnasts--ever crunched a single Wheatie.

And if they did, are we expected to attribute their gold to their cereal? Was it the “breakfast of champions” that made Johnson one, or what she ate in the morning that zoomed injured gymnast Kerri Strug toward that last vault? Or perhaps shoppers will buy the flakes just for the picture that’s suitable for framing. Let’s see, what about over the fireplace . . . next to Mary Lou Retton.

Whatever the case, these are not sour grapes when I caution U.S. Olympians about getting giddy over their prospects for fame and riches.

Not that they’re without commercial worth to special interests. After all, in a striking example of how incumbent chief executives command the most TV cameras and sound bites in election years, President Clinton, Hillary and Chelsea had nearly 600 U.S. Olympians drop by Wednesday for a spectacular 10-minute photo op (beamed live by CNN and MSNBC) in front of the White House. An hour later, Clinton was back on the lawn ruminating for the cameras about Mars, one-celled organisms and Republicans. Take that, Bob!

Jerry Springer would embrace them just as warmly should any of the Olympians themselves be Martians, or merely Nazi transsexuals or foul-talking slugs who sleep around with their siblings or in-laws. And there’s always the slim possibility that an especially gregarious Olympian will be hosting a radio or TV talk show if Richard Jewell falls through. (Prison would dim his prospects, yet being merely indicted for the Atlanta bombing and tried but acquitted would only increase his leverage.)

Actually, America’s 1996 gold medalists are already in TV’s cross hairs as targets in talk-show booking wars, with Jay and Dave duking it out for top Olympians, but daytime’s Rosie O’Donnell being the first this week to land the prized Strug.

Her lead guest Wednesday was gold medalist swimmer Gary Hall Jr., a free spirit who cheerfully delivered his five minutes of mellow chat before giving way to that frizzed UFO, Richard Simmons, blasting into the studio with a garland of roses pinned to his sequined tank top, then hitting the floor in a spread eagle before bouncing up to shriek: “Hi, everybody!!!”

Well before the arrival of the next guest, Meat Loaf, Olympian Hall had been erased from the show’s memory. It was as if he had never existed, a metaphor for what sports agents say is true about nearly all gold medalists: Their commercial value and stay in the national consciousness is very limited.

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The irony here is that most Olympians interviewed on NBC during the Games were vastly more thoughtful and articulate--thus potentially better role models for youth--than the mumbling, often-surly super jocks usually getting camera time. The latter includes the most prominent members of the gold medal Dream Team of men’s basketballers, none of whom (unless they were standing on their knees and hidden in the crowd) appeared to be among the Olympians accepting the president’s invitation to visit Wednesday. Can’t blame them. What’s so special about a house smaller than yours?

The few U.S. gold medalists who do earn big commercial deals sometimes end up looking foolish even while acquiring wealth. Most notably, there was 1970s swimming great Mark Spitz and his ill-suited, inadvertently comic “blade close” razor spots that helped shave him from the TV ranks of commercial spokesmen.

And gymnast Retton’s face was just about everywhere after she won her 1984 gold medal, most notably in Wheaties commercials that found her flashing a grin of such blinding toothiness that some consumers may have run out to buy Grape Nuts Flakes just in protest.

Retton was anointed a commercial success, nonetheless. Whether Strug, the most renowned of this year’s U.S. gymnasts, comes even close to matching the more loquacious Retton’s big payday remains to be seen. Safe to say she won’t be signing any fat contracts to do voice-overs. Nor apparently will that 14-year-old published author, cherubic gymnast Dominique Moceanu, leaving her ample time to work on the second volume of her memoirs.

Speaking of life on Mars. . . .