Wednesday, September 23, 2015 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, September 23 , 2015 // The Statement
5B
T
he return of the “swoosh” to the Michigan Athlet-
ics apparel is emblematic of much more than a shiny
new contract, but of a revitalized fan base and newly
energized student athletes. But still, according to students,
athletes and alumni, regardless of the changing dynamics
between apparel contracts and the school, the block M will
always belong to fans of Michigan football.
Following the end of the athletic department’s apparel
contract with Adidas, Interim Athletic Director Jim Hackett
announced a new partnership with Nike. The deal, which will
run through 2027, made history as the largest such contract
in the history of college football at $169 million over 15 years.
By comparison, the second largest apparel contract, between
Notre Dame and Under Armour, totals $90 million over 10
years.
“The University of Michigan ranks high among the world’s
great institutions of higher learning and enjoys a rich, tradi-
tion-laden history in college sports,” said Joaquin Hidalgo,
vice president and general manager at Nike North America, in
a press release. “We eagerly look forward to bringing out the
best in each other.”
The deal states the University is to receive $76.8 million in
cash alone, $12 million as a “signing bonus” and $80.2 mil-
lion in apparel. The deal will cover all 31 varsity sports and
includes guaranteed internships for qualified students and
research collaborations for future products.
Additionally, the University will have the first football team
to wear Michael Jordan’s esteemed apparel, previously only
available to basketball teams.
This isn’t the first time the University made history with
a Nike contract — the University first signed an endorsement
contract with Nike in 1994 for $7 million over seven years. Joe
Roberson, athletic director at the time of the deal, said it was
“the largest such deal in the history of collegiate sports.”
Nike gave the University $1 million per year in shoes and
apparel and $75,000 in cash payments to the athletic program
in the earlier deal, Sports Business Daily reported at the time.
The company also provided two scholarships in women’s ath-
letics, funded a yearlong fellowship in sports journalism and
paid $45,000 into scholarships.
The University stayed with Nike for 13 years until signing a
contract with Adidas in 2007.
This first Nike deal was among the first between apparel
brands and universities. Prior to wearing Nike brand apparel,
athletes wore different brands depending on the sport. With
this deal, all 25 athletic teams at the time wore the same
“swoosh” on their jerseys.
Today, however, this kind of apparel contract is standard
practice for non-profit organizations such as the University,
Marketing Prof. Puneet Manchanda said. Though the Uni-
versity is taking the cash, Nike can gain immense visibility
through TV and media surrounding athletics.
“For these kinds of contracts, it is essentially a marketing
investment,” Munchanda said. “The idea is you sponsor a team
and the publicity of the event and the interest of the audience
will expose your brand. In the long run you will build a rela-
tionship with the consumer, the brand and the event you are
sponsoring.”
However, a deal of this magnitude does not come without
sizable risks. For the University, the risk resides in Nike’s cor-
porate image. Michael Jensen, associate professor of strategy
at the Business School, said in the event of a Nike scandal, such
as employing unfair labor practices, the contract’s popularity
among the University’s fan base could diminish, ultimately
diminishing it’s value.
“The big risk for the University of Michigan is if it suddenly
revealed that Nike is a company with a lot of problematic busi-
ness practices,” he said.
Ethical corporate behavior came into question with the
University’s previous athletic contract with Adidas. In 2012,
students held a protest urging the University cut ties with Adi-
das, alleging the company did not compensate workers in their
Indonesian factory. Specifically, students claimed Adidas vio-
lated their contract with the University, which required work-
ers be compensated for the apparel.
Students were not the only ones to express concern for Adi-
das’ company practices. University President Emerita Mary
Sue Coleman wrote two company executives in September
2012 requesting they provide assistance and reparations to
the terminated factory employees in a letter.
“I hope that Adidas will fully appreciate the importance
the University places on ensuring that the workers who have
been involved in manufacturing license products receive the
assistance they require and have earned,” Coleman wrote in
the letter.
In April 2013, Adidas stated it would pay severance to
the fired workers. The severance was given in addition to
NAME OF THE GAME:
A look inside the University’s $169M
Nike contract
By Allana Akhtar, Daily Staff Reporter
Personal Statement: Where the Wild Things Are
by Melina Glusac, Daily Arts Writer
T
o say the curve of a tress is a matter of
debate would be fair. What are we, any-
way, but confused, furry creatures, forced
to wander the world with a little extra fur on
top? Some of our fur is curly; some of our fur is
straight. And in between those crass categories
there’s a little bit of every texture, color, shape
and personality. That’s where things get tangled.
I’m speaking, of course, of hair — as this is a
personal statement, I guess I should say my hair.
As soon as I burst through the womb (sorry,
Mom) on that cold January afternoon in 1996, all
of the nurses gasped, so the legend goes.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“She’s just — she’s got so much hair.”
True, I was born with a completely full head
of silky, dark brown locks. They prompted even
more shock from onlookers as my mom was
wheeled out of the hospital (i.e., “Did you have,
like, major heartburn with all that hair inside
you?”). My grandma stuck a bow on top of me for
good measure, but that effort soon fizzled as “the
Afro” began to set in. Yes, kids, as soon as I start-
ed walking, what was nice baby hair grew into a
frizzy, kinky, incomprehensibly thick, certifiably
untamable mop.
Haircuts, as a little girl, were hell realized.
Crying, thrashing, combing — only these vio-
lent verbs capture the traumatic shards of salon
memories I’m left with. (Sometimes I like to set
them to music from “The Omen,” but only on par-
ticularly low days.) I began to regard my stylist,
Carla, as Satan’s mistress, and with that in mind
she bought me cookies to incentivize and desen-
sitize visits as much as possible. Washing my hair
at home was just as much of a process: my mother,
a “lucky” one bestowed with slightly wavy, most-
ly straight fur, didn’t really know what to do with
mine. I can recall sitting on my bedroom floor,
Mom piling Johnson’s No More Tangles Spray
(probably meant for weaker curls than mine) onto
my mane to absolutely no avail. Combs. Tears.
Heartbreak. Rinse and repeat.
One of my favorite movies growing up was The
Princess Diaries. Just writing that I’m immedi-
ately struck with visions of pre-makeover Mia
Thermopolis — a classic cinematic “nerd,” she
has one defining physical characteristic: dark,
thick, curly, frizzy hair. After the debonair Julie
Andrews swoops in with the eponymous royal
surprise of the film, she decides something must
be done to ameliorate Mia’s appearance. (Queen
Clarice’s granddaughter better look like the
Prin-cess of Genovia, damnit.) So the Cinderella
rigmarole happens and the big whooshing-away-
of-the-metaphorical-curtain reveals what, ulti-
mately? A conventionally more “beautiful” Mia,
with mascara and waxed eyebrows — and nothing
other than bone-straight hair.
I blame that scene. Well, that scene and my
broken hair ties. When middle school hit, I got my
first straightener, and I soon became enthralled
with the idea of tameness, of fur docility. Straight
hair was cool; princesses had straight hair
because curly hair was ugly. Celebrities — most
of them — boasted sleek, kink-free locks (think:
Britney, bitch). Why shouldn’t I have the same?
With each crushing of a hair chunk through those
magmatic irons and their toxic power, I felt pret-
tier. Killing hair to get happy, sweating my life
away during the 30-minute process — hogwash.
Beauty is pain, darling. By the time my whole
head was done, relief would flood me. Now I
won’t stand out. Now I’ll be able to walk into a
room and not worry about people staring at my
Bozo wig. I feel sharp; I feel beautiful. I can walk
through a crowd on the street and feel normal.
So now it’s time for what I call the Nike swish
— the grand twist in the plot where I fall in love
with my natural hair un-conditioner-ally, admit
that I’m four years sober from the straightener,
and tell you about that one time when Colin Firth
ran to my London flat to tell me he loves me, just
as I am.
That hasn’t happened. The aforementioned,
deep-rooted doubts still plague me, and right now
my flat iron is sitting on a shelf in my dorm, ready
for action. Colin Firth is nowhere in sight. If any-
thing, my willpower has changed — and my van-
tage point. If we look at hair from a more “meta”
standpoint, as an extension of the creature it
inhabits and subsequently the creature itself, why
would we change it if there was nothing wrong?
Why would we slaughter our fur, our essence, the
thing that separates us from the other creatures
around town? I’ve been told to “thin it” — flatten
it out, control it, cut it all off. But I can’t. After all,
it is me and I am it: curly, confusing, symphonic,
a little rebellious, a lot unconventional, kind of
intellectual if you stare at it for a while and —
supremely, my most favorite — inimitable.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t get a Brazil-
ian blowout to squash the intrinsic quirks of me,
the extra furry one who hobbles — nay, saunters
through Ann Arbor — with her full personality
and her full hair. My mop is neither beautiful
nor ugly, and I’ve come to realize that’s true of
everyone. It simply is itself: and that’s enough of
an argument to respect it, preserve and convey
its natural state, and let it romp around like the
uninhabited creature it was meant to be.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHERYLL VICTUELLES
$525,000 the company already had given them for aid and
organized job placement programs and food vouchers.
“We are committed to long-term solutions and wanted to
resolve this matter so we could ensure the focus moves to
sustainable solutions for the future,” Katja Schreiber, Adidas
Group spokesperson at the time, wrote in an e-mail to The
Michigan Daily. “This additional assistance will provide addi-
tional relief to workers and their families still impacted from
the unethical factory closure.”
However, the company was in some ways too late — at the
time of this decision, 17 colleges terminated their contracts
with Adidas in the wake of country-wide student protests.
Though he made no reference to this, Hackett’s decision
against Adidas could have been impacted by the lasting
impact of the company’s actions.
Nike’s reputation is not the only one on the line with this
contract. For the value of the contract to be upheld, the Uni-
versity needs to show success on the field.
“(The football team is) the biggest risk for Nike,” Jensen
said. “If the University football team continues to do poorly
and therefore not give the expected value of TV appearances.”
Despite the contract’s immense monetary value, the deci-
sion to sign with Nike was not about the money, Hackett said
in a July interview with the Michigan Daily. Because Nike,
Adidas and Under Armour were all vying for the athletic
department’s apparel, Hackett’s decision went beyond financ-
es.
“I was looking for the future,” Hackett said. “It didn’t mat-
ter that Nike was really successful here in the past, it didn’t
matter that Under Armour had invented a wicking system no
one else had, it didn’t matter that Adidas had this global domi-
nance, we’re signing a new 15-year deal.”
According to Hackett, the decision included looking at not
only market research and performance evaluations, but also
feedback from fans, players and alumni on each of the three
companies.
INFOGRAPHICS BY CHERYLL VICTUELLES
See CONTRACT, Page 7B