http://www.dailypress.com/sports/teel-blog/dp-teel-time-uva-nike-post.html
Signed April 1 and in effect since July 1, the contract, obtained through an open-records request, is worth a minimum of $35 million, or $3.5 million annually. The Cavaliers' previous deal with Nike, which was set to expire next year, was valued at $11.8 million for eight years, or $1.48 million annually.
No one at LOLUVA will talk about the deal for some reason, ok Whit it's time to get on the phone.
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Why Nike?
stock will drop
Wont talk? Nike told them not to. That don't want that news getting out.
And I'm sure Whit is working on something. Just let it do its thing.
I mean, if you were Nike, would you want anyone to know that you are actually PAYING UVA football to wear your stuff?
Why would Nike not want that known? Makes no sense.
loluva...
It was a joke...but would you want it known that you were paying a terrible program $3.5mil to wear your product, double of what it was before.
Nice of them to save Nike the embarrassment. The only game with anybody watching will be when VT comes to town, so they'll be on top anyway.
Edit: UCLA and Notre Dame are both Adidas. What was Nike thinking?
I thought Notre Dame was with Under Armour now
Maybe they're doing it wrong...google image search "Notre dame football" brings up a whole bunch of Adidas, even Adidas concept photos.
Notre Dame switched to Under Armour last year
They also released this today:
Really makes me hope that Nike does right by Virginia Tech.
Ad campaign featuring classic moments in UVA football history: Just 'Hoo it!
Execution!
.
Emotion!
.
Spirit!
.
Celebration!
.
Victory!

That last one is very compelling.
FTFY.
so clearly on the field performance has nothing to do with compensation. Otherwise these clowns wouldn't be getting handed $1.5 million dollars more than us each year for sucking it up on the gridiron.
Basketball has to be taken into account, why UNC has a higher deal also, but VT should be able to get close to that deal.
agree here. basketball is Nike's saving grace when it comes to brand awareness. UA and Adidas are ruining Nike in football
UA and Adidas would probably drive differentiation across football and other sports
I for one think that stuff like wrestling, girls soccer, our proximity and importance to NOVA WASH BALT markets....
If we make all three vendors compete and we get innovative in our use of the uniforms... these things should be a huge piece of change that has been a long time coming
The NFL wears Nike uniforms tho and the NBA wears Adidas...
NBA will be moving to Nike in the 2017-2018 season. FWIW
Got to give them credit--they want to look their best when playing football at its worst.
They're a lot like UMD in that regard.
Except UMD also has that special "did my eyes just vomit?" quality to their uniforms that's so hard to replicate.
I love my Maryland flag.

But their unis remind me of this
Ooooooooooooooooooonce... there was this schooooooooooooooooooool who... sold their soul to Under Armour because their execs were alumni... and wheeeeeeeeeeeeen they finally signed up...... they... looked... like seizures vomited up blood... they couldn't quite explain it but now they just acceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeept iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm
That song always reminds me of Dumb & Dumber
On an unrelated note, Do any of you vaguely remember a crash test dummy tv show from the mid 90's?
We definitely had some of the toys. Smash up car, baby ejector car seat....
Had some of the toys and the board game.
90s trivia tidbit: The voice of the main crash test dummy was also the voice of Garfield in the animated series.
And also Peter Venkman on The Real Ghostbusters
Oooh, good one. Used to watch that one a lot, too.
Just makes it look so, so, so much worse that Jim Weaver's last act as AD was to extend our contract like he did on his way out the door.
Sorry, no way that UVa should have an apparel deal thats essentially twice as valuable as ours. Fucking pathetic.
I can see them and UNC having a slightly better deal than Tech based of basketball but not that much higher.
Basketball, sure... but that shit ass UVa football program that has finished bottom of the Coastal, for the majority of the past 5-10 years... That has to counterbalance a lot of it. Sure, they have baseball, and lacrosse, but those don't drive revenue sales, and aren't high visibility sports....
I dunno, I just don't get it. The more I see these contracts come out, the worse and worse our extension looks. We literally left millions on the table.
So can't even count baseball in it.
....wow....
So basically, they got $3.5M for a basketball program that has 1 conference title, and peaked out at a, what Sweet 16 berth... yet we have a football program with 4 conference titles in 10 years, 5 BCS bids in 10 years, and an Orange Bowl win, in a higher profile sport, and the best we can manage is $1.8M?
The more we see these other deals, the more it looks like we didn't even try to negotiate, we just rubber stamped Nike's lowball extension when it was offered.
Nike's lowball offer and ECU for the next 12 years.. what's wrong with that?
Weaver signed the extension with Nike
Babcock signed the extension with ECU
Both are bad, but I can't imagine the Nike extension is going over well in Merryman right now, because during a time when Whit is trying to do whatever he can to bring in additional revenue streams, it has to absolutely kill him to see the literally millions per year left on the table with our lowball Nike extension through 2021 that was signed literally a couple weeks (extension was signed in Feb, he was hired in March) before his hiring was announced.
Whit said something in an interview and I'll need to go find it, but it almost sounded like he approved the deal also. Something to the effect, "it came across my desk" he might have just meant he just saw and found out about I guess, but I can't see an outgoing AD signing a deal.
At that same time, Whit also said numerous times last year, when asked about Stick It In that his first act as Athletic Director wasn't going to be to undo anything the old administration did, out of respect for them.
Would not be surprised if that mindset carried into this contract as well. He wasn't going to immediately shop us around to the closest bidder, and he wasn't going to veto a contract already negotiated and agreed upon.
So what you are saying is that he had to make a few moves before he brought Stick It In back so it wasn't in the list of first things done...
Is this documented ANY WHERE?
I've never been able to find a confirmation of it, but I do find it a bit annoying, if true. The time to sign a major extension is after a GOOD season, not a bad one. Or just after your major in state competitor gets a large bump in their deal.
Oh, and contract extension or no contract extension, I'd be having a conversation with them. Nike should do the right thing, and that means an equitable deal.
you'd think a AD on the way out wouldn't even sign something this big without having the next one in line meet with nike ect ect.
I think a "you don't HAVE to change our deal, but if you don't, I wouldn't even bother trying to renew with us when this contract runs out" would go a long way in that conversation. Of course, the contract expires in 7 years so that's still a lot of lost money in the meantime (or saved on Nike's part).
There doesn't need to be a big threat in it, more of a "we'd appreciate it if you did the right thing" quality.
There should be some equity, given the likely success of VT basketball and football in the coming years.
It's underhanded on Nike's part to have that big a discrepancy in the deal, and certainly an opportunity for Under Armour. Not my preference, but if I were Whit I'd be a little pissed at Nike right now.
They can always plus it up and make it a 10 or 12 year deal.
My favorite part of the article is about the performance bonuses
That's pretty optimistic to even put those in the contract considering the state of lolUVA football right now.
We have the same bonus structure.... including performance bonuses for making the Final Four and winning a National Championship in basketball....
touch sir, I do like our chances of reaching the final four a little better once Buzz gets a few recruiting classes into Blacksburg.
Yea, But football will need a huge makeover. Beamer gets 250k for winning ACC and National Championship. Buzz gets 475k for the same.
I'd LOVE for that to become a problem.
Not that money is the great motivator, at sports especially. But it sets the tone in my opinion
Trying to tap into the heavy polo shirt market no doubt...
meanwhile ND is getting hooked up by UA.
When time comes to restructure our deal I hope Whit let's NIKE, UA and ADIDAS have a bidding war for us. We could get paid very handsomely and look fucking awesome while doing it.
an O&M version of this for OSU game would be absolutely awesome!!
Judging from the picture, that would end up being #AllMaroonEverythingExceptTheHelmet
a white helmet with Chrome Maroon VT. one can dream right???
the chrome orange VT was definitely a hit
wonder if the dude at cruhland would be able to make/photoshop that?
When they go to bidding wars, Nike always bids the lowest and ends up winning the majority of the time. The UA offer for Michigan was insane and they picked Nike with the lower number.
from my research UA will only do deals that are 10+ years.. aka Cincy and ND's deals
Correct me if I'm wrong, were we not hyping our deal at the time?
Nope... the extension was signed in secret and wasn't publicized. The only way people knew it did was that the dates on the public documents changed, and there were some casual remarks made last year to various Hokie Club groups that the Nike deal was extended.
If your deal has to be a secret, makes you wonder about it.
LOLUVa's deal was pretty secret and it is a heck of a lot better than ours for a piss-poor football program and a pretty good basketball program. I gotta believe the value of our football team in recovery and basketball team on the rise has got to outweigh the collective value of LOLUVa's programs.
Let's face it, Nike is a business. As a business you try to get the most bang for your buck. If you can spend less for more, you're going to do it unless there is a quantifiable financial downside (bad PR, for instance). Keeping the details secret longer gives you a leg up in other negotiations. In this case, this comes out with 7 years left in our contract. Assuming the states of the programs is comparable then, we've still had 7 years to settle down from the initial outrage and they've minimized backlash while getting a good deal.
Assuming the states of the programs is comparable then, we've still had 7 years to settle down from the initial outrage and they've minimized backlash while getting a good deal.
I don't think anybody is going to overlook a discrepancy of this size even after seven years. I'd be mentioning this with Nike. I wouldn't expect them to redo the deal, but I'd let them know that "I noticed". Should UVa's deal be double that of Virginia Tech? They'd better have a pretty good rationale for that.
When you've got long-term relationships, it's better not to completely take advantage of your partners.
Edit: After reading about this, it's pretty clear that Under Armour was making a play for UVA, and that was likely a big driver for this. But it doesn't really change my feelings about it.
Just more spokes in the wheel on why signing an extension instead of negotiating for a new deal was so stupid. Didn't even try to allow UA or Adidas to bid on our contract. Didn't even try to artificially inflate our value due to a bidding war.
Especially when you realize the LOLUVa Nike contract specifically does not take baseball into consideration because of the already existing deal with Rawlings.
Fwiw, the old UVA deal was supposed to end 6/30/16. They signed a new one early.
It's been rumored that we are templating (yeah, I made that up) our unis across all sports to make them unified in look, color, logo. When this happens, most likely next year, I can imagine there will be a new deal for us. Thusly signing a new deal before our current one expires on 6/30/18.
And while this is in the works, we are operating under the old deal. Nothing has been done to trigger a new deal. So, we are working on a new one, and when it's done, the details will come out. Until then, nobody is going to leak the amounts or length of a new contract.
Here's a link for the contracts as of mid 2014. The box at the bottom provides the searchable stuff.
Nike Adidas UA (Russell)
That's different from what some are saying. They're saying that there is a deal in place until 2022.
the article referenced in the original post says 2022.
That doesn't mean a new one can't be signed...that's my point. UVA signed theirs early. And it seems like the ones that have waited until there's is up have signed with someone different. The rumored "updates" from Nike wouldn't be happening if we are going to switch, and understanding what others are getting, most likely will come with an updated deal.
From the Daily Press article in the OP:
Just saw this collection about to come out. Why is it we can't have nice things?
http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/launch/c/2015-08/nike-week-zero-collection
Those look sick. It helps all of those teams have larger fan bases... That's why I want the UA switch. Immediately we'd be a top 5 brand
Not in SEC--: Check
Not in Pack 12--> check
only ACC team is FSU--> National Championship will get you this.!
How big was Michigan's contract? Because they didn't even get these shoes.
Kinda shocked at MSU and Tennessee (new contract with Nike too though).
Michigan's Nike doesn't start till 2016
I'm surprised UVA doesn't have Lacoste unis.