ESPN, whose parent company is Disney, is running commercials for college basketball’s pending championships in which actual Cinderella “stroke-of-midnight” footage shows her gliding down the stairs only to leave behind her footwear. But wait, her slipper looks different…that’s because it’s not her beautiful glass slipper…it’s a tennis shoe. A basketball shoe. Is nothing sacred, or am I being overly sensitive?

Synergy is something that Disney invented and has modeled for the corporate world for decades. One part of the company promotes the other and in turn, promotes itself. When you visit Disneyland, it stirs within you a desire to go home and buy the DVDs so you can relive the magic at home. But when you get home and watch the films, you want to run back to Disney World and experience the films in real time. It’s a perpetual money making cycle for the company and benefits families by building memories that last a lifetime. But where does this season’s basketball fit into this? Cinderella “shoots the rock”?

Disney DVD affecionados have been waiting for this year to come for a long time. Besides “Song of the South”, “Cinderella” has been one of the most anticipated releases on DVD to date. For decades, Disney has beautifully preserved the magic of this tale, while at the same time indoctrinating little girls on what a true “Princess” is. You see, since we have never had one, America’s idea of what a “Princess” is comes, for the most part, from Walt Disney. She’s regal. She’s polite. She’s selfless. Aurora, Snow White, and Cinderella “are” America’s Princesses.

However, when you visit Disneyland, you won’t find Aurora skateboarding to her post, slapping high fives to the kids as she whizzes by. You can bet that when these actresses are trained in representing the Princesses, they are given strict guidelines in how Snow White, for example, stands, kneels, clasps her hands, laughs, and what she says to children. I guarantee that the actors are not allowed to freelance it, telling the latest joke that she’s heard. No, because within “Cinderella” is a standard that Walt established, one that he lived and died by: one of excellence and honor. She does not belong in the country’s musty locker rooms. She’s an elegant princess, not a tom-boy. This commercial alarms me about the future of some of our most treasured personages. If Disney won’t protect her, who will?

Someone in Burbank didn’t think this over very well. Is boosting the ratings of an already mega-publicized, over-paid sports world really worth turning a “Disney Princess” into a scholastic gymnasium towel girl? Walt Disney brought us something memorable and honorable in Cinderella; a classic character who stands the test of time, with generation after generation of adorable little admirers who want to look, talk and be like her. The company has always used it’s characters to wonderfully promote the magical foundation that Walt Disney laid. And now to use one of it’s most beloved to advance basketball or any other sport where games, one after another come and go into oblivion, is short-sighted and distasteful. Apparently, this generation of bibbidy-bobbidy-boobs in corporate can’t see her through the same eyes that Walt did.

Like the story of “Cinderella”, the clock is ticking. Will the Disney historical legacy of magic be reduced to a ball that the sports world calls a “pumpkin”? Let's hope not.