Marcus Jordan, the son of NBA legend Michael Jordan, is a student and basketball player for the University of Central Florida. For the season-opening exhibition game he opted to wear Nike's Air Jordan shoes.
UCF, however, had a contract with Adidas requiring all players to always wear Adidas shoes. As a result of Jordan's action, Adidas has cancelled its $3 million contract with the univesity and may ask the university to pay them back for equipment previously used.
Jordan wore a pair of white Air Jordans with no prominent logos. His teammates wore white Adidas with black trademark stripes. Jordan also was wearing black ankle braces with the Adidas logo prominently displayed. As a result, the only clear logos near his feet belonged to Adidas.I wonder how many people understand that when they watch collegiate basketball games, they are watching paid advertisements for shoe brands running up and down the court. Presumably the same deals are reached in other sports as well...
More details at the Orlando Sentinel link.
As a UCF student, let me fill in some background here.
ReplyDelete1. UCF is the 3rd largest university in the country, though not known for our athletics, more our engineering. Some athletes who graduated from UCF include Daunte Culpepper and Matt Prater. We're more known for our astronauts, of which we've had four.
2. Marcus Jordan asked before deciding on UCF if he could still wear Nike shoes and UCF told him yes.
3. UCF asked Adidas if Jordan could wear Nike brand shoes and was told yes.
4. Adidas higher-ups overruled the lower-on-the-totem-pole Adidas folks who said Jordan could wear Nike.
5. Adidas faxed UCF immediately before the first exhibition game on Monday notifying them that Adidas would no longer honor the contract as UCF had broken the terms.
The local hope is that Nike will step up and replace the Adidas contract. We'll see. Jordan is getting slammed in the media and he did nothing wrong. He asked before arriving at UCF and both UCF and Adidas said he was OK to wear Nike shoes.
Sad thing is that if he hadn't asked no one probably would have ever noticed.
ReplyDeletePlease understand I'm not dissing Jordan. I'm just gobsmacked by how restrictively influential the corporations have become.
ReplyDeleteas a student athlete (rowing) at ucf i find this ridiculous. i wonder now what will become of the athletic gear that other teams usually get. because UCF is so cheap, we basically had a contract with addidas that alotted enough gear for one football team from a D1 NCAA institution, yet it is shared among all sports.
ReplyDelete