It's Called Creating Rider Value, bro.

Yes, this is another post about Christophe Pourcel. But I don't know if I am talking to Christophe or his agent. The question is, which of them is blowing it harder? We have Pourcel, a rider who won a Supercross title and nearly won an outdoor title, struggling (and now failing) to find a ride for the coming season. The word around the water cooler has been that CP is asking for a fat stack of cash to ride next season, but hell, the kid is fast as shit, so why not? If you ask me, Pourcel is worth about as much as any other rider out there, if not more. The guy's riding style obviously suits riding a 450, so even though I have not seen him race one, I will mortgage the house on a bet that he will be podium material every race.

So what does all of this mean? It just brings me back to the original question: Why is this kid going the way of the T-Rex? Here's the thing about Pourcel - in this day in age when riders are Twittering and blogging and YouTubing until my computer commits suicide, CP is nowhere to be seen. The guy [or his agent] doesn't put the Pourcel brand out there for the public perception much at all. Take a rider like Pourcel's former teammate, Dean Wilson. That kid is funny, outgoing, oh yeah, and also fast as shit. I mean, Deano pretty much makes the Dirt Shark videos at each race. He's fun to watch and is always there for us to see. He stays in the limelight, even though he didn't win as much as his French colleague. Pourcel is just a very reserved guy. Sure, he was even in the Dirt Shark videos once in a while, but it wasn't anything to change your pants over. In the video blog world, Deano has created a higher value for himself than Pourcel. There's also the world of Twitter, where guys like Chad Reed absolutely refuse to let us forget about them for more than a few minutes at a time. Pourcel might give us a lonely little tweet every once in a great while, but nothing too heavy. The social media age is upon us, Broey Novices, so every pro rider should be tweeting the shit out of the motonet, constantly refreshing his image in the internet browser of our minds. But again, I must ask if this is the fault of Christophe or his agent. Christophe's job is to ride fast and do well at the races. He did his job. His agent's job is to control the public's perception of him to communicate a high value to the sponsors. Yeah guy, he's not doing his job. I know that it's the responsibility of these riders to actually do all this tweeting and blogging and all that chocolatey goodness, but it's the agent who has to be constantly in his ear and up his ass about all that. So I say, get off the couch, CP's agent, and if your rider doesn't feel like tweeting and blogging, then just sign in to the account and do it for him ferchrissakes, because you are about to make a solid commission on a year off for your client. Enjoy the taste of that squeeze, chief.