Steve Jobs, MVP

Steve Jobs, American entrepreneur and innovator, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc., died at age 56 from pancreatic cancer on Oct. 5, 2011. Jobs who suffered from a rare form of pancreatic cancer and had a liver transplant in 2009, stepped down as Apple’s CEO on Aug. 24, 2011 stating that he could “no longer meet his duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO.

In his lifetime, Jobs, according to Business Report, built the world’s most valuable technology company by creating devices that changed how people use electronics and revolutionized at least six different industries, among them computer, music and mobile phone.

In a brief statement announcing Jobs’ death (without mentioning where he died), Apple stated: “We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today…The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife (of 20 years), Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.”

If there is anything that links Jobs (who was no “sports heavy”, according to Mark Kreidler of ESPN) to sports it could be his insight that all great things are accomplished not by individuals working alone but by individuals working as a team, as a group. Or, as Kreidler points out, Jobs is a man who embodied survivorship: “He had that fighting spirit. Not just with cancer, but life.”

Kreidler says that Jobs, who called those who supported Apple as ”our fans in the bleachers,” swam competitively as a kid but abandoned the endeavor as he got older, spending his time instead at Hewlett-Packard seminars and other computed-relating ventures. He briefly took up golf in the 1900’s before concluding, as so many have done, that he could never put in the hours required to get good at it.

Although Jobs did not come up with innovations and products that were specifically for sports, his creations did impact sports in unexpected and unimaginable ways. Kreidler says coaches now routinely use iPads to draw up game plans and critiques and send them along to their players. Kriedler adds that the iPad, a relatively new addition to the product stable, has already found huge favor among time-conscious coaches who can download video, take it on the airplane and commence their suffering immediately as they “review the film.”

One sports event which is associated with Jobs and Apple is the launching of the Macintosh personal computer in 1984 that, according to Kriedler, led Jobs and his cohorts to what proved to be a profound and forward-looking decision: they would use one of the most American events on the calendar, the Super Bowl, as the place to debut perhaps the most audacious commercial ever created. 

Writer mike Wolfe says that in a number of ways, Jobs and the iPhone have impacted golf. Wolfe says the iPhone brought how the game is played and shared to a new level.

Although camera phones were around long before the iPhone but rarely would the former produce pictures with the quality of the latter, according to Wolfe. The quality of the camera on the iPhone made it possible for golfers around the world to take pictures and share them with other golfers. The quality of the course and the beauty of the game can be captured without being expert photographers.

As a training aid, Wolfe says the iPhone has created a new way for the golfer to improve his game by taking a look at the iPing Cradle. Wolfe says that this iPhone application can analyze one’s putting stroke so one can self correct.

The iPod is probably the most visible as one sees iPod ear buds dangling from the ears of athletes as they train, travel and, when it is allowed, during warm ups minutes before a game.

For all his creativity and impact on human life, some do offer glimpses of Jobs’ humanity. Ken Auletta in The New Yorker wrote, “…One big question is whether the unbelievably innovative culture he forged will live. Jobs was not a great human being, but he was a great, transformative and historical figure. Many books were dashed off describing what a tyrannical person Jobs could be – how he took the parking spaces of the handicapped, how he reduced employees to tears. Those tales will fade like yesterday’s newspapers. What will stand erect like an indestructible monument are the things Jobs created that changed our lives: The Macintosh; the iTunes store; Pixar, which forever changed animation; the iPod, iPhone and iPad. For three decades, even as he got older, Jobs and Apple remained ‘cool’”.

Despite what some call his “erratic behavior” and his aversion for corporate philanthropy (and social concerns), Jobs deserves the MVP title.