The Philippine Online Chronicles

We’re right smack in the middle of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines season. The already popular UAAP has in recent years been elevated to the level of grand spectacle thanks to the incredible barrage of marketing and advertising efforts that have been going on. Ateneo-La Salle battles have suddenly become the business of everybody never mind what school they’re from. And UP’s basketball plight is...

So moving on. This year, the UAAP adopted the slogan Where Heroes Are Made. To add to this, Gatorade came out with a campaign in which they declared they were fuelling today’s heroes. The visuals of these ads were of the most popular UAAP basketball players. Geeking out, I decided to look up the word “hero” in the dictionary and read: “a person of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble quality.” That pretty much was what I thought a hero was. Growing up, I’d hear the term used to talk about figures from those in Greek mythology to those from Krypton. People who take action when things like, say, life and death hang in the balance.

Now I’m as big of a basketball fan as the next person. I’ve been watching the NBA since the days of Magic and Bird and rooted for Crispa in the glory days of their rivalry with Toyota. I know the work that goes into becoming a fine-tuned athlete. I know what they mean when they say they have to leave it all out on the floor and just gut it out. It all is really very intense. But hero?

Last year we were terribly hit by Ondoy and in the aftermath we were all hearing story after story about how people risked their lives to save their neighbours. Soon after, t-shirts came out: Where I’m From, Everybody Is A Hero. And we were. Collectively we had gone through tragedy and had pulled ourselves through. We were, for that moment, idealized versions of ourselves – sacrificing to help the guy beside us. That is what the UAAP and Gatorade are tapping into now, the fact that we have again become aware that heroes exist.

But with the exception of a few natural disasters, we live in a time and place where the risks aren’t severe. Unlike the other parts of the world, we are not in a perpetual state of war. Many are poor, but there is no wholesale famine or widespread epidemics. These are the circumstances that necessarily breed heroes. And how about those of us who are the target audience of the UAAP and all the attached ads attached, what is our world that our heroes are no longer those who have to defend their home, but those who simply have to win ball games?

Recently, Nike has also come up with a campaign with a UAAP theme. The tagline: New Game, New Breed, New Legacy – again with pictures of the hotshot basketball players. The UAAP is no longer a sports tournament, it’s an epic battle. The need for heroes will be fed even if their rise and circumstances have to be manufactured and sold.