Why should Montana lend his name and presence to a profit making enterprise for less than his price? Would an oscar winner? Hell, a speaker won't come to commencement without his hefty "honorarium." Montana has hardly snubbed a charity, he has declined to expose himself in a garish spectacle which featured the likes of Mike Jagger for $1000 and a dish of porrige. He is free to do so.He is ethically and morally free to do so. He is not "cheap" but brimming with integrity. Merely repeating conclusionary statements to the contraty does not make him otherwise.
I can only say that if you think the capital of hype, the Super Bowl, is somehow so sacred that the normal rules of commerce do not apply, you are probably naive enough to think you can get a free ticket merely for the asking. This is not sport, it is the business of sport. On the field where they show us sport, we cannot apply soccer rules to the game of football. For the hype, we cannot substitute distorted notions of "history" and "greatness" for the laws of supply and demand.
Next, we will be treated to calls on FR for Exxon to surrender its "unconscionable" profits.
When I was a boy I was a rabid Brooklyn Dodger fan until I awoke to find my heroes had decamped to LA. My ten year old heart eventually mended and I have Walter O'Malley to thank for a lesson in reality which I have never forgotten. The Germans have a saying, " Schnapps is Schnapps und Geschaeft ist Geschaeft" Booze is booze but business is business.
Walter O'Malley must have had some German blood in him, would you deny Montana the same ethnic claim? We all love our heroes but that should be kept in the field and not exported where it does not fit.
If we remember that greatness on the field is not the equivalent of moral virtue off the field, we will be less disappointed when Joe cannot say, "...it ain't so." Montana is not deserving of either our opprobrium or adulation for his life off the field because of his previous exploits on it.
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Long and lame response. I hope your are not a cheap person a Joe Montana is, you will find great difficulty in your life.
Montana was being SMALL (like Bradshaw), unlike the other 30+ folks who did do a goodwill tour for the fans, and the world of those watching.
SMALL is bad! Magnanimous is good.