Recently there was an article on the Internet that Nike Inc. has agreed to a $252 million deal with Ohio State University that extends its current sponsorship by 15 years. How far-reaching these contracts are and how they have reshaped college athletics? In reality, Nike, Adidas and Under Armour have, in a sense, come to own college campuses in way that many casual observers may find shocking.
Here are some facts that I think needs to be a concern for collegiate sports and what has become the new norm in the world of NCAA and its affiliations.
1. The University of Alabama's contract with Nike stipulates that“upper-level” administrators must wear Nike gear, specifically mandating that university officials must wear Nike golf shoes on outings with donors. Most, if not all of the contracts require athletic department personnel to wear the apparel of the sponsoring company. Alabama's is the only one that seems to extend to the president's office.
2. In recent contracts, Nike has mandated that athletic departments that want a new logo must offer the job to Nike first. Nike has the option to design the new logo -at its expense - and gift it to the university.
3. Logo sprawl. The logos of Nike, Adidas and Under Armour are seemingly everywhere at sporting events. It's no accident. UCLA's contract with Adidas stipulates it gets an ad on the auxiliary scoreboard in the iconic Pauley Pavilion, home of its basketball teams. Nike's deal with the University of Oklahoma includes placement of a swoosh on the football team's equipment truck. The University of Washington contract with Nike mandates a swoosh on the net of the varsity volleyball team.
4. Internships. When Alabama renegotiated its deal with Nike in 2010 after winning the national championship in football, Nike kicked in two paid internships for Alabama students at its Washington County headquarters. The perk now appears in the contracts of dozens of top football schools, including Oregon, Oregon State, Ohio State, Kentucky and the University of Washington.
5. Tom Izzo's giant Nike deal. Nike pays the Michigan State basketball coach $400,000 per year. Deals between basketball coaches and sneaker companies used to be routine. The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate galvanized public sentiment against the deals in 1991. Public records requests for similar deals between Nike, Adidas and Under Armour and top college football coaches have yet to turn up any similar deals.
Here are examples of details and a story about the Pac-12 Conference's contracts with Nike, Adidas and Under Armour. Millions of dollars of equipment. Seven-figure cash payments and giant merchandise budgets for coaches. Hundreds of tickets for football games. Hospitality tents for VIPs. This past summer, the Portland Business Journal filed a public records request for the shoe and apparel contract of every Football Bowl Subdivision team. Roughly half of the 125 universities have responded. In the Pac-12, the University of Arizona was the only school that didn't respond. Stanford and the University of Southern California are private institutions and they're not required to disclose financial contracts. Nike outfits 10 of the conference’s schools. The University of Utah works with Under Armour and UCLA works with Adidas.
Much of the above information comes from a couple of articles written by Matthew Kish, a staff reporter for the Portland Business Journal, in Oregon. I remember I first heard of these deals back when I worked at Bobby Knight's summer basketball camps. Coach Knight was connected, to a small degree, to an Adidas contract for his team to wear Adidas shoes and gear. Back then Indiana and Knight received 100 thousand dollars a year. Here is what Coach Knight did with the money. He paid his volunteer coaches a living wage, because back then basketball teams were allowed two volunteer coaches, not now. What money was left was put into a fund for his players for any outstanding expenses, maybe for their families, or whatever other needs that might accrue. Mind you, he did not use any of that money for his own needs. I can't say that I know of any other college basketball coach who did that with what was called "shoe money" back then. Seems that the meaning of "shoe money" has become an archaic term, to what is, in my belief, now ownership of college athletic programs.
From what I understand, Coach Krzyzewski's shoe contract at Duke University is worth several million dollars, I have no idea what is done with that money, or how much it averages yearly, but in my findings this is what he gets. All in addition to his yearly salary, and he isn't the only Division 1 coach to be compensated by one of these companies. The funds become endorsement money, and like pro athletes, these compensated dollars are part of a contract to endorse and use said apparel of these corporations, like Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour. This is called "Big Business."
A recent tale was passed my way from a friend of mine who is involved in promoting games, mostly basketball. He told me that he and a committee he was on were promoting a local holiday college basketball tournament, involving local D-1 schools with other big name college programs. What has complicated the idea is the fact that some of the big named apparel corporations refuse to "allow" a school who gets endorsement money to play a school under contract with a competitor. My response to that was: What? Hypothetically speaking, if one college is sponsored by Adidas, Adidas can say to that school; “You cannot compete against another college program because they are sponsored by Nike”. This only applies in a non-conference scenario, and can’t be an issue in league play.
Who says that college athletic programs are titled as amateur programs, and do not play for pay? Of course this money is not designed for paying the athletes, but these endorsements are directly a result from players representing their respective college, or university. Can this be another case for changing the college athlete's status from amateur to professional, or semi-professional? I wrote an article this past fall about the Northwestern University and how there was a question, through the football program, to pay players. This is something that has been tossed around over the past year as a possibility.
What is happening to Amateur athletics? This could become a reign of terror against college sports programs, maybe it's already too late. I think the NCAA has a pandemic problem. Whatever happened to the idea that collegiate sports are an extracurricular activity? This is just another thorn in the side of the NCAA and what seems to be a misrepresentation of amateur athletics. Last year there was the addition and implementation of "one and done," for the athletes that want out of their current school, to move onto another school, with no loss of eligibility, or just play one year in college before going pro. This is another exploitation of the athlete, and in some cases, where a coach can recruit a player with the knowledge that he or she would only be around for a year. Corporations like Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour are exploiting these colleges and universities, with little regret. Something has gone amuck, like a bug bite that has festered into a disease, with no foreseeable cure.
