Pro Athletes

* Overview
* Professional
* Pro Athletes
* Virtual
* Augmented Reality
* Extreme
* Sports Entertainment

Basically, if you're a pro athlete, you are überconnected. You have everything you want and everything is taken care of for you. You are actually your own mini-Corp (think of Gretzky or Jordan) with many business, PR, HR, and health and wellness people taking care of you. Time actually spent "on the road" is minimal and even when you're away, there will be a frepod (see Glossary) that will replicate home for you.

Pro athletes are the most widely recognizable people in society. Because of that, the athlete's image is actually a logo. For that reason, when an athlete is signed to a pro team (in effect, becoming connected) the Corp owns that athlete's likeness in perpetuity. This certainly means the Corp will control publication of pictures, distribution of the athlete's games, creation of virtual athletes of that likeness, etc., but there are also rumors that some Corps, with this "likeness" clause, also control the patents and rights to the athlete's DNA. When you get right down to it, this is not biotech, but bioCorp. In the final analysis (even apart from the rumors), the athlete (bio) and the Corp can't be separated. Some might think that this is the "dark side" of pro sports, but so far none of the athletes have come forward to "tell all" (or even some).

And why would they complain? Apart from any rumored dark side, the pro athlete has fame, fortune, adulation, and, for the extraordinary athletes, the undying gratitude of the Corp. Some say that certain pro athletes have even met THE head of their Corp. Certainly, Corp leaders seem to enjoy hanging out with the athletes and sometimes even get the athletes to play an AR game with them.

So how do you get to be a pro athlete? Children are streamed around grade 4 and placed into appropriate educational or training streams. Children with natural athletic gifts attend the Human Kinetic Development schools. They all receive general physical development training, but eventually their primary sport is identified and they begin to specialize. If a child turns out to be a great natural athlete but doesn't show enough skills in one area to become a pro, that child may be released from the stream, or directed into another branch of the HKD school (for example, behavioral research). As they grow older, pro-athletes-to-be are scouted for various elite Corp HKD schools. Here they receive (for free) more training, as well as education in telegenics, PR, sports entertainment, etc.

When pro athletes emerge from the school, they are ready to join a specific team and are already comfortable with interviews, business models, fan attention, and all the other aspects of playing sports and being an icon. Because these athletes are screened and trained from such a young age, they are well-prepared for the pleasures and pressures of their sport star life, and there are very few at the pro-level who crash and burn. Besides that, there are few temptations that the athletes can't obtain, and none that the Corps can't control. There isn't much reason or opportunity for an athlete to turn rebel or addict. Not to say that there haven't been instances or this in the past, or that there won't be more crashing rebels and burning addicts in the future...