Miami played like dogsh!te for 10 years. That's a fact. Miami's merchandise sales had plummeted from what they were 10 years earlier. That's a fact. Miami's offer from Nike was sales/incentive laden and COULD HAVE resulted in a higher payout than the adidas deal IF WE HAD STARTED TO WIN GAMES AGAIN. That's a fact.
I don't know what business world you live in that requires a company to offer an exceedingly high contract to a partner that has underperformed for 10 years. But, sure.
The truth is, adidas made an offer based on what they HOPED Miami would become, which also has not come to pass. So let's not act like adidas is celebrating the Miami deal in every shareholder meeting.
There is an inherent and intangible value to maintaining a "first-ever-all-apparel-deal" relationship with the market leader. On a purely mathematical basis, Miami did not merit or deserve the dollar amounts in the adidas contract. We were being paid in order to steal away a high-profile Nike school, in the hopes we would return to having a top football and/or basketball team. If Miami had NOT signed the LONGEST EVER apparel/shoe deal with adidas, we would be up for renegotiation right about now, and neither Nike nor adidas would offer us what adidas offered us 7 years ago.
And I'm fine with that. Miami has ****e the bed for the better part of 17 years in a row. We SHOULD be getting paid less by our shoe/apparel company.
But, yeah, some dipsh!tes are going to argue that we should desperately hang onto an over-priced contract for the next 5 years, while ignoring the fact that we will be getting below-average bids in 5 years if we don't start winning immediately.
Not to mention that certain people are acting as if Nike forced all the weird designs and colorways on us. Funny thing, good ADs at Ped State and Michigan and Alabama and Clemson don't get pushed around by Nike, they don't get forced to wear bra-straps and off-colors. Both Eichorst and James were TERRIBLE ADs who didn't stand up for better uniforms. ****, as soon as we hired Richt, we were MYSTERIOUSLY able to ditch the weird crap that adidas was pushing on us.
Maybe the shoe companies are not to blame, and the weak-a$$ ADs are...