Ight I'll respond
@TheOriginalCane lol
I fully understand this lol. BUT just because something is bigger on the back end obviously doesn't mean you are guaranteed OR likely to surpass the significantly larger front-end figures. Again, this is all VERY basic math that I have no doubt the People at Nike and in our administration were more than capable of estimating. Given they knew what the sales figures were for the last 30 years, I'm sure they could make a very basic prediction. And I have never said ONCE that it isn't POSSIBLE to make more on the backend from the Nike structure. But should you bet on that? EX) Look at NFL player contracts. Do you think players would prefer to have low Front-end guarantees because they have high performance based incentives on the back end? Or do you think they just want the High guarantees? Sure they may be a star, but what if? QBs know full well they will be surpassed before their contract expires, yet they do it anyway.
That brings us to the 2nd point, if Athletic Success doesn't play any factor in how successful our Merch sales are, then why wouldn't Nike be willing to pay more up front? Why do they need their contracts to be so performance driven? Thats why I'm saying we have 8 years of hindsight to go on. And we have basically sucked in football, been meh in baseball, and now are pretty good in basketball. If you're argument is even with these results we are STILL a top selling merch school, AND if it was so obvious that this would be the case, then Nike should have jumped to match the Adidas offer and keep the 30 year partnership alive. The reality is, and I'm literally using Nike doing good business as my evidence, Nike thought Adidas was paying us more than we were worth. That is the OBVIOUS reality of the situation imo. Nike thought Adidas was overpaying us, and resetting the market, and they didn't want to match.
Now the aspect about how Adidas is weaselling their way out of paying us more (like how yall are saying we are supposed to be highest paid in ACC) - if that really is the case, I agree with yall. But that imo is a problem with our administration/lawyers being dumb - NOT by itself evidence that the switch from Nike was a bad move. Because you could simply say if our lawyers had done their job and we had the legal guarantee we'd be the highest paid in the ACC, we'd be making a **** load more and the Nike offer probably wouldn't have even come close for hopefully obvious reasons.
Right, Nike knew what we sold, and wanted to be in business with us. They just didn't want to pay us what Adidas was willing to because their assesment was if they paid us more than they offered they wouldn't profit. Sure they were willing to pay us a lot of money IF we sold a lot of merch, nobody is denying that possibility. And if we didn't have much success on the field and didn't sell much merch... you know like what ended up happening the last 8 years... We're just left with our **** in our hands while we could have been sitting with tens of millions up front.
Wait. Am I supposed to believe Nike didn't agree to match Adidas' deal, instead choosing to not have Miami at all in their portfolio, because they didn't want us converting equipment/gear into money as a way to "enrich" the deal? lmfao, to me that would be evidence of Nike not wanting to pay us. Why should Nike get any say in whether our AD - Whether Dumbass Blake James OR Brilliant Rad - chooses to take equipment/gear or Money? Lol That makes no ******* sense If our AD is an idiot, then Nike should let him be an idiot. It should be of no concern to Nike IF the value of equipment they are sending us is really 1:1 with the cash alternative in the contract. But saying that is a major reason why they were unwilling to pay us larger up front money - matching Adidas deal - makes no sense. Again, this has NOTHING to do with whether Blake was an idiot to do that or not. This is about The Contract with Adidas and Nike and which provided more money. So saying Nike didn't want us "enriching" the contract by converting equipment to Cash doesn't help the argument that the Nike deal would have paid more lol.
I think this is a good point. But I think this is actually the reason why the Contract length is the biggest issue with the switch to Adidas, which just so happens to be something I have REPEATEDLY agreed with
@Rellyrell on lol. That is CLEARLY imo the biggest mistake of the Adidas deal. I have zero issue - even after all these months of arguing about which deal would have paid more - with the payment structure. I don't care whether we are paid all on the front-end or all on the backend, as long as we get the most money possible - and in this case I think in the past 8 years the Adidas structure was actually smarter. The problem has always been the contract length and the actual management of the contract itself (talking about Adidas not holding their end of the deal or whatever). So when you say how the market for merch sales has changed (increased due to fanatics and general online increase), that would NOT have been an issue if our contract was up anytime from 2 years ago to now. Because we'd be entering the market again, and potentially resetting it again.
Look...
Setting aside the fact that
@Canedude08 is the only porster who will like or agree with your porsts...
I will point out two things.
First, even in the face of the evidence that Beta Blake was fired for mismanaging the Nike/adidas contracts, you continue to overestimate the extent to which the "UM Administration" had early knowledge of, or oversight of, the analysis and decision-making process behind the dumping of Nike and the leap to adidas. But you just...keep...repeating it...even though it isn't true.
"I have no doubt the People at Nike
and in our administration were more than capable of estimating."
Why do you say that, even when it has been explained that Beta Blake was hellbent to make his mark, that he was going to dump Nike no matter what? I'm trying to explain to you, that Beta Blake didn't do, or care about, any of the Excel-based modeling of numbers that he should have done. And I'm going to give you a 2-minute break here by not comparing you to Beta Blake, but all HE cared about was a one-slide PowerPoint presentation: "guaranteed money". There WAS NO comparison. You know why? Because Nike was not allowed to present its full royalty-heavy bid. As I have done for years, I have ACKNOWLEDGED that a straight comparison is difficult, or **** near impossible, because Beta Blake never allowed Nike the chance to full model out its pitch for comparison against adidas's Simple Jack numbers. That's why, when people like
@Rellyrell and myself talk about the hypothetical Nike deal (based on what we know about comparable deals in the industry), we are HONEST in saying that our comparative is one that we cannot prove out on the same basis as the adidas guaranteed money is proven out.
Which, of course, leads me into my second point. You continually choose to UNDERESTIMATE the industry knowledge that people like
@Rellyrell and myself have. Look, you are entitled to some skepticism. But we are real people who have had real experiences in life and in business, and we are not just making things up to win an argument. I am telling you straight-up, International Speedway Corporation and NASCAR (at that time, SEPARATE businesses, now since merged) were built on 5 and 10 year projections. There were practical reasons for this, as so much of our revenue was based on multi-year contracts, such as the TV contracts with Fox and ESPN (later NBC) and all of the sponsorship deals. But we had everything planned out for five to ten years, the only "variable" was ticket revenue, which is why we ran so many promotions.
And I am telling you FROM EXPERIENCE that I saw a company (50% owned by us) DESTROYED by promising "guaranteed" amounts instead of royalties. Lost over a half-billion (on the books) during the Great Recession. And if you want to be honest, the "guaranteed" amounts were never actually paid in full. We (and the other co-owner) stopped throwing money into a black hole. Thank goodness for legal entities and their legal protections.
But even then, I don't expect you to sign off JUST BECAUSE people like
@Rellyrell and I have industry knowledge and experience. EVEN THEN, I can give you a half-credit for the fact that I understand you are attracted to bright/shiny things like "guaranteed money". What is less appreciated is the arrogance and dismissiveness that you display towards people who have more knowledge, and how you gloss over relevant facts that don't fit your narrative.
Or even your irrelevant examples. For instance, you want to compare the Nike/adidas deal offers to...contracts for football players...which is just ridiculous. Look, the reason why football players can't do deals like a Nike royalty-heavy deal is (a) risk of injury, and (b) the fact that the money does not become real each year until a player is on the roster on a certain date. Now, I know you're going to try to seize on the "non-guaranteed" nature of point (b), but the reality is that in baseball and basketball, players CAN accept more performance-based and incentive-based clauses BECAUSE the entirety of the contract is guaranteed on Day 1 AND there is a much lower risk of injury cutting short those contracts.
As for your question on whether "athletic success" equates to merch sales...good lord, I could write a book on that, but I won't. Miami is a top collegiate brand. With some creativity, you can sell a ton of UM merch regardless of W-L records...although winning more games would INCREASE those sales. The easiest comparison to make from my own background is to point out that Dale Earnhardt Jr. was the MOST popular driver and the NUMBER ONE seller of merchandise throughout his career, including the 9-year period from 2005-2013 when he only won THREE races. Out of 322 races.
Finally, I'll conclude on your nonsense about Nike "letting our AD be an idiot". Clearly, you have no experience in the sports industry. That is beyond obvious. Look, there are valid reasons to ALLOW a school to convert SOME of its equipment and gear into money...if they don't need brand new equipment and gear multiple times a year. If you take good care of helmets and pads and practice jerseys, you might not need brand new stuff immediately. BUT MULTIPLE TIMES IN A ROW? And you act as if the things that YOU CITED (waaaaah, waaaaah, the players had broken equipment, ripped jerseys, and not enough shoes) would somehow be things that Nike wouldn't notice, and should have had to just suck up and deal with, because Beta Blake.
The reality is that I've read many sports industry contracts which contain "quality" requirements, particularly when it comes to safety. NASCAR races can be pulled from racetracks if they don't maintain safety standards (almost happened to Pocono). NASCAR drivers can refuse to race if they are not provided with quality equipment, from the car itself to the safety equipment inside. And WITHOUT A DOUBT, drivers (individually), teams, and NASCAR itself can reject and prohibit the sale of any merchandise that they believe to be sub-standard. Outside of the TV contract, the NEXT-LARGEST revenue source for NASCAR was...ROYALTIES...they had a whole wing of the accounting department that did nothing but tracking royalties payments.
Ultimately, you can choose to snidely dismiss Nike's concerns in 2015. But they **** well knew that Beta Blake was routinely converting equipment into cash AND putting a shoddy product on the field (both in W-L terms AND in craptastic practice equipment/jerseys). WHY DO YOU THINK that Nike introduced a brand-new jersey with one year left on our contract? Do you think they did it for fun? Or maybe because of what they were seeing with Beta Blake's "equipment conversions" and the leaked rumors that he was spreading about "Nike quality"?
Finally, you can't escape the ultimate ending to this storyline. That Beta Blake was fired PRIMARILY for his mishandling of the Nike/adidas deals as soon as a Deloitte shark (Joe Echevarria) and a political shark (Rudy Fernandez) spent TWO WEEKS reviewing what Beta Blake had been allowed to do, unchecked, FOR YEARS. So, please, for the love of God, stop acting like there was some sort of effective oversight by UM at the time when Beta Blake dumped Nike and made the adidas deal. And DEFINITELY please stop acting like the primary enforcement of contractual rights should come from ATTORNEYS LITIGATING, rather than a contracting party living up to its own promises.
I don't care whether you agree with me or not, or whether you like me or not. I just tell the truth. I'm not saying any of this to win an argument with you, I can do that in my sleep. I'm telling the truth on what really happened because I want my alma mater to succeed, and I'm not happy that a carpetbagger piece of **** like Beta Blake burned a relationship with the #1 apparel provider IN THE WORLD so that he could create a fake "legacy accomplishment" for himself. A "legacy accomplishment" that fell apart under two weeks of audit.
Cut the crap.
