Superstars

I intended to write tonight about the new catchphrase which I predict will sweep the nation with a stickiness that FTW can only dream of—Wheel suck!—but Roger Ehrenberg’s description of geeks vs. businessfolk derailed me.

Ehrenberg dissects Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid of Yahoo. (Full disclosure: as a card-carrying Idiot Retail Investor, I made a trade recently that correctly called the takeover bid but I totally botched the execution on the profit-making side. More on this good news/bad news joke later.)

Ehrenberg cites Michael Lewis to compare the geek culture of Yahoo! to the insular baseball clubhouse of skilled craftsmen whose finesse-based talent is not readily apparent to the casual observer, leading to a somewhat exclusive club wary of those not in the show. In contrast, Microsoft is like the football locker room, where muscle mass and physical presence alone asserts dominance, yielding self-confidence and hubris not found in the cliquish Yahoo! ranks, demonstrated by an ability to work with customers and listen to needs and find the problems to solve.

And therein lies the “train wreck” Ehrenberg predicts—a culture clash that inevitably plays out like one of my favorite shows of the 70s—Superstars. In the wintry off-season, Superstars became the best reason for a kid to watch ABC TV on Sunday afternoon in the 70s. Athletes from different sports competed in a decathalon of events. Forbidden to participate in their own specialties, the athletes could choose from such events as rowing, swimming, bowling, weightlifting and several other sports.

The results weren’t pretty for the baseball players. Maybe it hurt that invariably, the role model for the athletic baseball player ended up being some slow infielder like Ron “Penguin” Cey or a past-his-prime 40-year-old Lou Brock. In 28 seasons, football players won the competition 15 times (I count four-time winner Renaldo Nehemiah as a football player even though he won three seasons as a 110 Hurdler before his NFL career began), and only in 1991 did Toronto Blue Jay .259-hitter Kelly Gruber finally represent for the baseball players.

Does this mean that the Yahoo! culture is doomed, much like Ron Cey coming in last in the 100 yard dash in 1978? Or does it signal that Microsoft’s ability to put its business muscle to use will dominate, like OJ’s triumphant performance in 1975?

I tend to go along with Ehrenberg’s conclusion and predict the more dire outcome–it’s going to end up like Joe Frazier nearly drowning in the swimming competition. Frazier, after admitting he didn’t know how to swim, was asked why he entered the event:

How was I to know I couldn’t unless I tried it?

Given the dearth of winning strategies on Ballmer’s watch during the past eight years of MSFT’s 40%+ stock price slide, that quote might well serve as the retrospective logic and epitaph for this most recent bid.

Wheel suck, indeed.