I wrote typed this whole thing out off the page cause I'm a nice guy. I'm not even sure if this is what yorr talking about. Anyway.
5 Reasons You Don't want to be Sposnsored
Snowboarding is hectic - companies are cutting off the old dogs and huntin' for kids on the come-up. For some jacked-ass reason, everyone thinks they deserve to be sponsored. It's ingrained in the gene that makes people want to snowboard. But from the frontlines of the industry, we can tell you - with a nod and knuckle bump - it's not all it's cracked up to be. The following five reasons are just the beginning of why:
1. You'll never get the board you want. You'll be forced to ride a board that's too wide, too long, too short, or just plain ugly. The worst part - you'll have to pretend to like it. If word gets back to your sponsor you've been talking shit about product, it will be a quick end to a short career. You may argue, 'Well I'm sponsored, I can just get new stuff, right?' Wrong! On the bottom rung of the sponsorship ladder - where most people spend their entire careers - you'll be lucky to get one package a year from the local rep. And thats after getting past their voicemail barricade.
2. Outside of AOL chatrooms, people dont really think you're cool because you're spnsored. The only people who will be impressed are little kids - everyone else has found easier ways to get free stuff than selling their soul. But if your game is trying to keep pace with fourteen year olds, keep ripping bro - you're bound to blow up.
3. Once people find out you're sponsored, everyone will ask you to give them free stuff. Most likely you wont even get enough stuff for yourself, much less to hook up broke friends. When you only getting nine pairs of googles a year, few things are more annoying than a friend nagging you for new lenses.
4. It's not much of a career. Your tenure as a sponsored rider has about the same lifespan as an MTV sitcom ( The Osbornes not included). Injuries, bad attitudes, and falling behind the trends are all grounds for dismissal. When you done, your net earnings will probably total 300 dollars - for that third palce finnish in the local boarder cross race. Snowboarding also cuts into the time when you should be learning life skills - and you fing yourself at a dead-end ski bum job forever (only you wont care about ski bumming anymore).
5. Doing contests and shooting photos is not as fun as actually snowboarding. Regardless, you'll be expected to one or the other of these painstakingly useless activities everyday. What you once thought of as one of the best and funnest things ever - shredding - will become as stale as your old boot liners. Like a boring nine-to-five drone, you'll come to loath it all. You'll be, as they say, over it.
The Angry Interns, Transworld Sept 02.
That took me a long time so you better appreciate it.
_DECAfilm