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Washington is now an Adidas school (dropped Nike)

That's a great question. I actually don't know if this went to market. CU could have very easily just re-upped without putting itself on the market, it's Nike, plenty of schools do. Under Armour was on a buying spree during that time, they'd just inked a deal with CAL for far greater.
 
Since Nike is going cheap on CU, I have no incentive to buy Nike gear and Russell Athletic (did you notice some CU players wearing those under their shoulder pads?) compression shirts at Wal-Mart does feel better the Nike Pro Combat ones (I have at least five of them) and cost much less. CU's players who wore those RA compression shirts probably would agree with me. I have a CU Nike hoodie from 2010 (black with a big Ralphie logo and gold stripes on the shoulders like USC's stripes) and it's holding up great after years of use.

RA announced last year they are exiting the uniform business and focusing on consumer apparel only so GT will have a new contract with Nike, UA, or Addias or someone else.

If Nike, UA, or Addias gave CU a big contract, I'd run out and buy new CU gear with whoever gave CU that coin.

I'm thinking the Nike contracts with the NFL and NBA lessened the incentive for Nike to give CU a deal more in the range of their peers. CU's extension came two months after UCLA and UA announced their deal. Utah even has a better deal with UA than what CU has despite having a similar number of sports. UA is paying Utah about twice what CU is getting paid with Nike. ASU's Addias deal is about $5M per year. That is where my beef lies with Nike and that is why I hope CU ditches Nike after the contract is up in 2024-25. I'd have not been complaining about CU's new deal with Nike if the deal was closer to what ASU and Utah are making with their companies.
 
Lately we haven't been about brand. Although I have found that Nike fit my feet much better than either NB or UA, the wife tends to fit better in UA or Adidas. The kids where whatever fits and is cheap, sometimes that is the generic brand from Academy sports (BCG). They have a mixture of stuff from Nike, UA, Champion, BCG, etc. They aren't brand loyal. I think with all the options today, most kids, outside of the hardcore basketball shoe crowd, are really brand agnostic and will go with whatever is new or cool or whatever is comfortable.
 
AeroBuff99 said:
Lately we haven't been about brand. Although I have found that Nike fit my feet much better than either NB or UA, the wife tends to fit better in UA or Adidas. The kids where whatever fits and is cheap, sometimes that is the generic brand from Academy sports (BCG). They have a mixture of stuff from Nike, UA, Champion, BCG, etc. They aren't brand loyal. I think with all the options today, most kids, outside of the hardcore basketball shoe crowd, are really brand agnostic and will go with whatever is new or cool or whatever is comfortable.
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We were bound for a backlash. Fashion is always changing. For a long while, sportswear brands were very important. Too important. Makes sense that what's cool is to move away from decking yourself out in the latest Nike or believing that the logo on your gym shorts says something about who you are.
 
Basketball has to lead the way. At this point, CU is at the bottom of P 12 schools in terms of appeal to California kids and highly rated athletes from all over.

IMO, MM is never going to be very successful here. Just not a very good coach.

If CU can get to competing for the P 12 championship in BB on a regular basis, then hopefully the brand improves and kids see CU differently.
 
Clean Undies said:
I’m not sure you’d win that bet.

Didn’t UA and Adidas have an opportunity to make CU a better offer? And if they did extend a better offer, then wouldn’t internal policies require that CU should accept the best deal?

There is no need to speculate because the market has spoken.
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That is a big negative Undies.

This process is exempt from the formal internal policies that otherwise would have required CU to receive other formal proposals. UA and Addidas were both given courtesy phone calls to informally discuss what they might offer to CU. During those calls CU made it clear to UA and Addidas that they weren't switching. When Nike submitted their proposal to CU, they were aware CU would not be looking at UA or Addidas. Thus the only formal offer CU received was from Nike. Zippo competition.

Of course, this allowed Nike to take a different stance during the detailed negotiation process than they otherwise would have. Feel free to pull a Public Records Request for associated documents if you don't believe any of this.
 
All you have to do is look at the comps for the same time frame, then look at what CU got. It's pretty clear this did not go to bid. IMO, the only schools in the Pac that are understandably beholden to Nike are Oregon, Stanford, and USC. Everyone else should go get the best deal possible. UCLA, CAL, UW profited big time from putting themselves on the open market.
 
newkid said:
All you have to do is look at the comps for the same time frame, then look at what CU got. It's pretty clear this did not go to bid. IMO, the only schools in the Pac that are understandably beholden to Nike are Oregon, Stanford, and USC. Everyone else should go get the best deal possible. UCLA, CAL, UW profited big time from putting themselves on the open market.
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Sure. Each athletic director has a responsibility to negotiate the best deal possible.

CitizenKane said:
That is a big negative Undies.

This process is exempt from the formal internal policies that otherwise would have required CU to receive other formal proposals. UA and Addidas were both given courtesy phone calls to informally discuss what they might offer to CU. During those calls CU made it clear to UA and Addidas that they weren't switching. When Nike submitted their proposal to CU, they were aware CU would not be looking at UA or Addidas. Thus the only formal offer CU received was from Nike. Zippo competition.

Of course, this allowed Nike to take a different stance during the detailed negotiation process than they otherwise would have. Feel free to pull a Public Records Request for associated documents if you don't believe any of this.
Click to expand...

You say that UA or Adidas were given courtesy calls and brushed off.

Presumably any company interested in setting up a sponsorship deal knew when CU’s contract with Nike was up for renewal and had the wherewithal to make an attractive offer.

UA or Adidas had the opportunity to pitch CU with some back-up-the-Brinks big number. If UA or Adidas wanted to get Rick George’s attention by throwing some big figures around, nothing was stopping them from doing so. It sounds like neither company thought the CU account was worth bending over backwards to win.

According to your post, competitors were discouraged by CU from bidding. That’s on CU.

It’s hard to blame Nike for any decision that was Rick George’s to make.

Rick George has been successful with funding the IPF, champions center, and he significantly raised the income of CU over the past few years. So it’s tough for me to criticize RG’s overall performance too harshly based on how the Nike deal turned out. I’m prone to trust that RG knows what he’s doing.
 
Some of those contracts are inflated due to the "value" of the equipment. I think the only real number that should matter is the amount of cash given to a school. In any apparel deal the market value of the equipment is going to vary based on the number of sports and types of sports the school offers. CU has fewer sports and one of them is Skiing which has its own equipment provider. Nike also partners with CU in R&D which may not be included in the value of the apparel contract. I think UA probably inflated the value of the equipment in the UCLA deal, but they still had a significant cash portion.
 
Clean Undies said:
Sure. Each athletic director has a responsibility to negotiate the best deal possible.



You say that UA or Adidas were given courtesy calls and brushed off.

Presumably any company interested in setting up a sponsorship deal knew when CU’s contract with Nike was up for renewal and had the wherewithal to make an attractive offer.

UA or Adidas had the opportunity to pitch CU with some back-up-the-Brinks big number. If UA or Adidas wanted to get Rick George’s attention by throwing some big figures around, nothing was stopping them from doing so. It sounds like neither company thought the CU account was worth bending over backwards to win.

According to your post, competitors were discouraged by CU from bidding. That’s on CU.

It’s hard to blame Nike for any decision that was Rick George’s to make.

Rick George has been successful with funding the IPF, champions center, and he significantly raised the income of CU over the past few years. So it’s tough for me to criticize RG’s overall performance too harshly based on how the Nike deal turned out. I’m prone to trust that RG knows what he’s doing.
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All of this is on the AD (RG to be more precise), none of this is on Nike. RG had a lot of reasons to not go to market, but at the end of the day, this was a colossal mistake (Oh and UA and Addidas weren't ever given the opportunity to talk numbers with CU). Thankfully, it is one of the few he has made. With any luck RG will opt out when CU has the chance and will do better next time.
 
CitizenKane said:
All of this is on the AD (RG to be more precise), none of this is on Nike. RG had a lot of reasons to not go to market, but at the end of the day, this was a colossal mistake (Oh and UA and Addidas weren't ever given the opportunity to talk numbers with CU). Thankfully, it is one of the few he has made. With any luck RG will opt out when CU has the chance and will do better next time.
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Would you be disappointed if RG drove a better deal w/ Nike? Or is there a strong case that CU should be done with those Duck lovers?
 
Could anyone find the actual signed Nike extension? It should be available by now and should provide us with when those opt out clauses would happen.

RG did bring the Champions Center so I think RG is deserving of a mulligan with the Nike contract but he can't mess up like this again.
 
The amount of money left on the table is probably not as much as most people appear to think. ASU receives only a million dollars more per year and is smack in the middle of a metro area twice as big as Denver with an undergraduate population three times larger than CU's enrollment. And ASU wasn't a national laughingstock in football for the several years immediately preceding their new deal. adidas wasn't going to pay more for us than it paid for ASU.

I guess we look at Utah getting $6.5 million from Under Armour and think we should be on comparable footing, but Utah's success in revenue sports in the several years preceding its deal was vastly superior to CU's success (or failure) over the same period. My guess is that Utah apparel sales also outpaced our sales by a significant factor over the same time period, and the diminshed value of adding a second school (CU) in the time zone would have further dropped Under Armour's offer. If you actually break down the numbers, cash from Utah's deal is less than $1 million per year more than the cash we receive(d) from Nike. A lot, but not nearly the $3.4 million annual difference on the face of the deals.

Bottom line: I think we're talking about at most a few hundred thousand dollars cash left on the table each year. Not millions.
 
I think there's a decent chance CU could have gotten more than Utah actually. Utah was already at UA, UA didn't need to over pay to get them like they did for everyone else. Under Armour's plan has been western expansion. CU is a pretty solid candidate when you consider how spread out in the west the alumni base is. As opposed to Utah, which is far more regional.
 
Why does the spread of alums matter? Nebraska's deal is almost $12 million per year. Its alumni spread is dog****. The value of the CU athletics brand was at or close to an all time low when the deal was done. I explained why it was unlikely adidas would have offered more than it gave ASU. Why would Under Armour have outbid Nike and adidas by more than $3 million per year to surpass Utah's deal? The mistake Rick George made was negotiating a ten year deal given the state of the AD. He should've pushed for a five year deal.
 
I think there are different factors for different schools, especially when you consider a brand's plans. Location, wins, size, alumni base/buying power etc. Not all schools check all the boxes. Not a stretch to imagine that UA has more to gain by outbidding and landing CU than paying Utah more.
 
Utah and SLC has the NBA Jazz franchise but no NFL, no MLB, no NHL. It makes sense to me how much potential there is for the Utah Utes athletic department to be the top sports brand in Salt Lake.

In Denver, The CU Buffs compete with all the pro franchises for apparel money. Could Utah benefit from a more lucrative apparal deal than CU because the Utes face much less competition and saturation from professional sports?

As fans, do we expect and demand that CU compares favorably to P12 peers for apparal deals? Do P12 presidents and chancellors expect the conference to compete with the B1G, SEC, B12-4+2 and ACC?

I get the sense that CU is a school that treats athletics as a “nice to have”, but not something that is at the core of the CU system’s identity. As a result, it’s tough to expect CU to out spend, out earn, out cheat, and out perform institutions that are more sports-centric.
 
Jalapeno said:
Since Nike is going cheap on CU, I have no incentive to buy Nike gear and Russell Athletic (did you notice some CU players wearing those under their shoulder pads?) compression shirts at Wal-Mart does feel better the Nike Pro Combat ones (I have at least five of them) and cost much less. CU's players who wore those RA compression shirts probably would agree with me. I have a CU Nike hoodie from 2010 (black with a big Ralphie logo and gold stripes on the shoulders like USC's stripes) and it's holding up great after years of use.

RA announced last year they are exiting the uniform business and focusing on consumer apparel only so GT will have a new contract with Nike, UA, or Addias or someone else.

If Nike, UA, or Addias gave CU a big contract, I'd run out and buy new CU gear with whoever gave CU that coin.

I'm thinking the Nike contracts with the NFL and NBA lessened the incentive for Nike to give CU a deal more in the range of their peers. CU's extension came two months after UCLA and UA announced their deal. Utah even has a better deal with UA than what CU has despite having a similar number of sports. UA is paying Utah about twice what CU is getting paid with Nike. ASU's Addias deal is about $5M per year. That is where my beef lies with Nike and that is why I hope CU ditches Nike after the contract is up in 2024-25. I'd have not been complaining about CU's new deal with Nike if the deal was closer to what ASU and Utah are making with their companies.
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Maybe we could become the first Wal-Mart school?
 
AeroBuff99 said:
Lately we haven't been about brand. Although I have found that Nike fit my feet much better than either NB or UA, the wife tends to fit better in UA or Adidas. The kids where whatever fits and is cheap, sometimes that is the generic brand from Academy sports (BCG). They have a mixture of stuff from Nike, UA, Champion, BCG, etc. They aren't brand loyal. I think with all the options today, most kids, outside of the hardcore basketball shoe crowd, are really brand agnostic and will go with whatever is new or cool or whatever is comfortable.
Click to expand...
I spent a few years buying the equipment for a league. I know it is about the payday, but the addidas soft goods last longer.
 
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