PROVO — A Brigham Young University professor auctioned off advertising space on his shirt last week to supplement his income and drive home a point to his students.
French professor Corry Cropper's eBay auction generated few bidders, so it accomplished only one of his objectives. It also opened the door for his younger brother to take a playful shot at him.
"Want to get your message to the coveted 18-25-year-old market?" Cropper wrote in his eBay post. "Coaches aren't the only ones with a marketable presence on campus. If you win the auction, I will wear your T-shirt with logo to campus on the days I teach" for one week.
A big cash payout didn't materialize as it has for others, including five Arizona State University students who last month auctioned off ad space on their bellies to a mortgage company for $1,575. The Washington Post published a story about the quintet below the headline, "Advertising Gets Personal: Rule No. 1 — Sell Yourself"
Maybe Cropper's auction didn't get enough pre-sale publicity. Maybe his warning that he wouldn't wear anything offensive to BYU's standards scared off the casinos. Whatever the reason, the highest bid to slap a logo on Cropper's torso was just $41, and the winner was little brother Colin Cropper, who works in New York City for the investment firm Lehman Brothers.
"Forty bucks to humiliate my brother is nothing," said the younger Cropper, who quickly shipped a package to Utah that included two T-shirts the older brother wore to class this week. One was a basic green top with the words "Lehman Brothers" printed in small caps. The other shirt was custom made with the words, "My brother is better looking than me"
Cropper's brother also makes a lot more money, both the thirtysomething men said.
"I work for a Wall Street firm," Colin Cropper remembers thinking. "I'm pretty sure I can afford $40."
Their father joined the bidding, hoping to make the French professor wear a T-shirt declaring the superiority of Spanish. Pere/Padre Cropper is a high school Spanish teacher.
Cropper's BYU French literature class recently read "Gargantua," a satirical novel that parodies 17th century France by taking everything to the extreme to show how ridiculous things are.
"I wanted the auction to be a modern version of that," Cropper said. "I'd noticed lately that when I have to tell students they're wrong, or try to correct their course, they are used to the customers always being right. I feel on some level that education is turning more into entertainment than teaching."
He also said he wanted to make a statement about corporate America, taking commercialism to the extreme by putting himself up for sale.
"I sold my soul for whopping $41," he said with a laugh.
The familial banter about the virtues of higher education versus Wall Street were a major reason Colin Cropper made his brother wear the Lehman Brothers shirt.
Professor Cropper's thoughts on commercialism are not idle. He's writing a book about sports and 19th century France. One chapter is devoted to the thesis that Baron Pierre de Coubertin started the modern Olympic movement in an attempt to restore the elite to prominence in France.
Cropper's students enjoy his antics, including his self-sale.
"That was fun," said Kris Marin, a senior majoring in physiology and development biology. "He tried to apply what we were talking about and apply it to his own life and express his own view in a way that wasn't offensive to anybody."
BYU student Marin and younger brother Colin Cropper called the professor part outside-the-box thinker, part entertainer.
In class Thursday, Cropper broke his students into groups to discuss French Renaissance poetry. Each had to report back to the rest of the class using a drawing.
"Have an artist on your team," he said. "It's the Renaissance, baby. You need to give me a visual representation."
Earlier in the same class period, he taught about rhyme and launched into a limerick.
"A man in a ward bishopric," he started, counting out the rhythm before stopping himself. "No. All my friends know all these terrible Mormon limericks. I don't know any."
While some extra dough would have been nice, he said, at least his younger brother didn't make the Seattle Mariners fan wear New York Yankees gear.
"That," he said, "is the worst humiliation I can imagine."
His brother wouldn't change a thing.
"This way," Colin Cropper said, "it was pretty clear who was sticking it to him."
E-mail: twalch@desnews.com