- Joined
- Dec 22, 2011
- Messages
- 47,254
The comment I responded to literally said Blake didn’t read the fine print… that would literally imply our lawyers missed something.
We didn’t get in trouble for the Adidas-NCAA conflict.
You don’t like the uniforms and claim they are the worse we’be ever had…imo they are CLEARLY the best we’ve had since the early 2000’s, and it’s not particularly close at all. … that’s all just personal opinion. You think I’m wrong I think your wrong.
What isn’t opinion is how much money we have received. So again how much money has Adidas paid us? If it is above $7M/yr on average this far, the entire idea that Adidas has screwed us on the contract or that we would have gotten more from Nike is basically BS. If we got less than that then sure maybe it’s possible we could have been making more with Nike - but we also know the results are that we haven’t been national title competitors like we were when you were saying we were top 10 in merch sales….
So unless you guys actually have the numbers that explicitly show adidas gave us less than Nike offered, all I have to go on is what was actually reported and that that we get around $9m/yr while Nike was $2M/y and about zero chance we make an additional $7m/yr off merch if that’s what Bama brings in…
Btw I like Nike way better than Adidas, so miss me with all that bs too.
Blake did read the fine print. He knew exactly what was in the contract. Do you know what "fine print" actually is? It's when you sign something like a work order, and then on the back there is really small writing which details all the exceptions and limitations. That is NOT what happened here, regardless of Relly's fine work to try to put things into layman's terms that people like you could understand. The reality is that BETA BLAKE was too stupid to understand how a company like adidas could follow the letter of the contract without honoring the spirit of the contract.
Anyhow, I'm not going to belabor that point, except to say that the contract is EXACTLY what Relly and I have talked about, a document that fluffed a big "up-front guarantee" number (without enough upside potential) and one that did not specify enough of the details and merely assumed that adidas wanted to treat us like a flagship as they promised to do.
As for the rest of your nonsense..."we didn't get in trouble for the adidas-NCAA conflict"? Oh, sure, we didn't go on probation, but we were dead in the recruiting waters for multiple years and had to (not-quite) fill our basketball roster with transfers.
The uniforms? Like Beta Blake, you clearly need to work on your reading comprehension. I am talking about the original uniforms that adidas provided. The ones that were so bad that the NAMES on the jerseys had to be fixed after a couple of games, and we had some god-awful feather-sleeves, and numbers that were screen-printed instead of embroidered. Absolute garbage. Yes, things have gotten better SINCE, but others have continued to point out the problems with the fit, not to mention the U on the front of the jersey. And make no mistake, I very loudly and clearly criticized the Nike "bra-strap" jersey, so let's not pretend that I am one-sided about this stuff.
Finally, I'm just going to sum up the "money" garbage. As has been made clear, we signed a TWELVE-YEAR DEAL. Twelve years. That is insane when you switch companies. I mean, if we re-upped with Nike for 12 years, after being with Nike for TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS, you could understand the shared history and trust between the parties. But 12 years is at the top of the range for ANY all-apparel deal. I don't even know if Oregon has a 12 year deal with Nike (but if they did, I would understand it).
The reason I reference the 12 years is because a lot can change in 12 years (while being stuck in a below-market contract, just waiting for it to expire). For instance, just in the past 12 years, Fanatics has significantly changed how the sports apparel retail business operates. So, maybe, JUST MAYBE, we can dispense with the whole antiquated notion that UM will sell less apparel than state schools because because because fewer students, UM Bookstore, AllCanes, CanesWear...the world has changed, and we are stuck with less adidas merch to sell on ANY retail platform, not because people don't want UM gear, but because they can't get enough quality UM gear.
Wake up. Comprehend what you read. Respect the fact that some people know way more about this than you do (and I'm clearly referring to @Rellyrell here).
Four hundred years ago, the Lenape Indians sold Manhattan to the Dutch for about $25 worth of beads and trinkets. Which is exactly what happened with Beta Blake. He thought he was going to impress people with a bigger "guaranteed" number, but he sold off the FIRST and longest university all-sports shoe-and-apparel relationship (with Nike) for a whole lot of nothing (from adidas). And then he failed to monitor the "most-favored-nation" clause of the contract as Louisville swooped in and got a lot more than beads and trinkets.
Facts. Not feelings.