With the Winter Olympics starting shortly in Vancouver we are being bombarded by commercials telling us who to cheer for and what to eat and drink. Often the sales job is delivered by the Olympic athletes themselves.

Is this the power of sport? Is it to ‘open happiness’ through a bottle of Coke? Or is it just a way for athletes to shill for corporations? Is this all that sports has to offer?

Michael Jordan is the classic example of the vacuous 1990s. He was hawking everything under the sun. It didn’t matter if the shoes bearing his name were made in sweatshops. The money paid to Jordan by Nike could have lifted all the workers who made his shoes out of poverty. Instead it just went into Jordan’s pocket. His salary from basketball alone was $30 million a year, but this was not enough.

Many critics were asking why Jordan couldn’t use his celebrity for better social use. Activists asked Michael Jordan to endorse North Carolina Democrat Harvey Gantt in his 1990 run for Senator against the Republican Jesse Helms, an out and out racist. Jordan said that he wouldn’t take sides because “Republicans buy sneakers, too”. Can you get anymore shallow?

Tiger Woods has followed in the footsteps of Michael Jordan. He too has become his own corporation and at one time was worth $1 billion. But what meaning has this brought him? Very little. What a waste.

There was a time when athletes stood up for what they believed in. Muhammad Ali won the heavy weight gold medal in boxing at the Rome Summer Olympics in 1960. When he returned home to the United States, with a gold medal around his neck he went to order a hamburger. He was denied because he was black. In a fit of anger, Ali threw his gold medal into the Ohio River. It was worthless to him.

Ali was later drafted into the army during the Vietnam War. He would have never had to actually fight in the war. He would have been used by the military to boost troop morale by showcasing his boxing skills and giving motivational speeches.

In a rare stand by an athlete, Ali said that he would not fight in the US Army. Ali said, “Man, I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong” and also aptly said that, “No Viet Cong ever called me a nigger”. He later went on to say that, “If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to twenty-two million of my people, they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow”.

He knew the consequences of taking such a stand. “I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollars”. Yet he took a stand despite the negative media and public assault. Ali bravely said that, “I don’t have to be who you want me to be”.

The most popular Olympic political protest ever was in Mexico City in 1968. Tommie Smith set a world record in the 200 metre dash on his way to the gold medal. John Carlos, also an African American, finished third. During the medal ceremony Smith and Carlos, in solidarity with black power, raised their fists in the air while the American anthem played. Symbolically they stood in bare feet and wore beads in protest of black poverty and the history of lynching.

The cost of this action was huge. They were expelled from the Games. Both struggled upon returning home. Despite being educated, they were unable to find work. The strain was so great that Carlos’s wife committed suicide.

Smith eventually went back to school to get a master’s degree in sociology and coached track at Santa Monica College. Carlos eventually found work as a counsellor at Palm Springs High School. In time they were vindicated and in 2008 received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Their act was so powerful that it lives on today. Do you remember anything else about the 1968 Olympics? Ali was also vindicated in time and was named the athlete of the Twentieth Century. Their actions will live on forever.

Ali, Smith, and Carlos did not stand for corporations, they stood for human rights. They transcended sports. Today’s athletes should do the same.

(The source of much of this article was ‘A People’s History of Sports in the United States’ by Dave Zirin which was published in 2008).