Oregon Volleyball Posters: Off To A Bad Start

Last year (2011), Oregon Volleyball decided to make what might have been the worst volleyball poster in the history of the sport. In summary, the overlying message of the poster was that distinct and unique characteristics (no matter how positive or negative they may be) do not define the players on our team. Height truly does not define Haley, who is ~5'3. Long legs do not define Alaina, who is 6'3. Swagger doesn't define Lauren Plum, although she has an awful lot of it. And certainly a 4.0 doesn't define Katherine Fisher, who's a First-Team All Academic American. No, rather it is victory that defines these tremendous individuals. Let us now take a step back and disregard that the poster is essentially one half of someone's face with a photoshopped O for an iris, and that you can't actually read the wording on the left side of the poster with the dark gray on black writing, and definitely don't pay attention to the fact that you can hardly tell that the poster is for volleyball. Put all of those things aside, and realize that the poster is still essentially stating that a 4.0 GPA is a less defining characteristic of an athlete than winning the game she plays. Why knowledge and hard work off the court can't co-exist with victory, I'm not quite sure. Overall, it sent a pretty terrible message to the fans (especially the children, to whom most of the posters go to) while leaving out the main point of any athletic poster: that the sport that they're promoting is awesome.

However, this is all old news to almost all of my readers, and you've all certainly been thinking the same thing as I have; there's no way that this years poster could be worse than lasts. At least, that's what I was thinking, until the Oregon Duck's Facebook page let out a preview of one of our 2012 posters. Have a look. 

Alright, so let's see what we're working with. First off, there are two Alaina's, immediately capturing the attention of anyone who glances at the poster. She's Miss Oregon USA and Volleyball Player; the poster is already doing a better job than last year's by telling us what sport she actually plays. Now hmmm... what's this in the middle? With these two Alaina's on one poster, I'm pretty sure you don't need anything else , but let's take a closer look.

"If you think that the world's a stage,

And all the men and women are merely players, 

you haven't met my team"

I'm going to let you go back up and read that again. Have you read it twice yet? If so, your face should have the same kind of inquisitive look on it as if one of your best friends just told you that their favorite band was Nickelback. I've read that  quote perhaps 20 times and haven't quite made sense of it yet, but I will interpret it to the best of my ability: the poster is implying that our volleyball players aren't merely players, they're other things as well, for example, Miss Oregon. Oh, and fuck Shakespeare. (I can't make any other sense of it than that). Why couldn't the poster just stop at 2 pictures of Alaina??? It had everything I needed until I read that quote!

Of course, the most ironic part of it all is that the poster is stating that Alaina is more than just an athlete. She's someone outside of the realm of the world's stage: she does beauty pageants. Yes, the same pageants where the women are put up on a stage for the world to see. I don't think the marketing team really quite knew what the metaphor of "the world's stage" and "players" meant... and even if they didn't, even if they stopped to think for one second in the case of Alaina (the athlete they're highlighting), SHE'S STILL LITERALLY PUT ON THE STAGE AS A PLAYER FOR THE WORLD TO SEE. In Shakespeare's original quote, "players" doesn't mean that they're literally athletes playing a game. And even if it did, even if it meant they were always competing, in the case of Alaina's two pictures (volleyball and pageantry), she literally is a player. I know reading Shakespeare is hard to interpret when you're a freshman in high school, but marketing truly did a terrible job at this one.

Kurt, from Facebook, put it best: "I'm not following the Shakespeare reference. Athletes (and pageant contestants) are certainly players on a stage for our entertainment. What else do they think they are?"

To which the Duck's page replied: @kurt:  Winners.

Kurt: Win or lose, they play. So they're players. And the volleyball court is their stage. Still don't get it, but not going to worry about it. Oh, well.

Kurt certainly is a bigger man than I, as his argument is quite logical (and he understands the metaphor), yet he is still willing to drop the subject. Hat's off to you, Kurt.

I realized that I left out the most critical question; why is this poster attacking the quote of a man that wrote it over 400 years ago? What was going through the mind of the person who thought of this? Why did they chose a well known, well loved Shakespeare quote?  They could have as easily gone with:

"If you think a rose by any other name,
would smell as sweet,
you haven't met my team"

It still would have made just as much sense. 

Overall, I'd say this poster is better than last years; we can appreciate all of Alaina (rather than half of her face), know what sport she plays, and it doesn't dismiss the academic success of #12. Still, I'd give it a solid F, especially since they had the potential to make it so much better.