With Knight out, Nike moves in

Wearing a Nike sweatshirt and Nike sneakers at his weekly press conference, interim head coach Mike Davis said his men's basketball team wanted to wear Nike. After the program's footwear contract with Converse expired at the end of last season, the Hoosiers were ready for a new shoe. \n"All our guys wanted to wear Nike," Davis said. "Coach (Bob) Knight had a contract with Converse, and when Coach left, the players wanted to wear a different shoe."\nThe team is one of the more recent in the Big Ten to turn to Nike for footwear and apparel. The Hoosiers had a six-year footwear deal with Converse, which ended after the 1999-2000 season and was not renewed because of the company's financial problems, athletics director Clarence Doninger said. \nMichigan State signed a contract with Nike to dress its defending national champion men's basketball team. Other Big Ten schools, including Illinois, Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State, have joined partnerships with the apparel company to outfit all their varsity teams.\nBut Hoosier athletic teams won't don all-Nike anytime soon, Doninger said. Any plan for an all-sports partnership with Nike is "pure speculation," he said.\n"The approach has always been: we have not had a comprehensive deal like the Michigan deal," Doninger said. "There are arguments for and against those arrangements …\n"We've had some programs that have long associations, like soccer with adidas. (An all-sport contract) would probably interfere with that."\nUnlike schools that agree to all-sports deals with Nike, IU coaches determine which companies supply their teams. While men's soccer coach Jerry Yeagley chooses to supply his team with adidas apparel, women's soccer coach Joe Kelley opts for Nike. IU football, women's basketball and the men's and women's track teams also receive Nike equipment. \nDoninger chose Nike apparel for men's basketball after he sent out bids to four or five companies, including Champion and adidas, after Knight was fired in September. Both Converse and Logo Athletic, which had provided the team's logo, were in financial trouble and have since filed for bankruptcy. \n The companies' contracts with IU had ended before the 2000-2001 season, causing the search for a new outfitter.\n "I contacted various companies and asked, with respect to this year, would they make a proposal?" Doninger said. "We had a number of term sheets sent to us. Nike sent us proposals -- and they looked the best."\n Nike provides the team with shoes, game uniforms, shooting shirts and warm-ups. No official contract has been signed, Doninger said. Instead, both sides work from a term sheet that will be reviewed a year after the terms were agreed upon. Ripon Athletics, who manufactured the uniforms under Knight, continues to do so, but Nike provides the logo instead of Logo Athletic.\n Logo Athletic, like Converse, felt unable to renew its contract with the program. The decision was not unique to IU, as Logo Athletic chose to not renew contracts that ended during the company's past 15 months of fiscal instability.\n"The deal ran out at the end of last season," said Eddie White, vice president of team properties at Logo Athletic, an Indianapolis-based business. "We did not pursue an extension or addition because of the financial situation of our company … A lot of our contracts with our companies we just let run out."\nContract or not, the men's basketball team does not get money from Nike. The Hoosiers partnership with Nike is different from IU's agreements with Nike Team Sports, which is one of about 580 IU licensees.\nIU has two-year contracts with one-year renewal options with licensees who use the IU logo on "anything from apparel to pasta," said Jenny McDaniel, IU director of licensing and trademarks. Nike Team Sports pays 8 percent of royalties for slapping its logo, along with IU's logo, on products, she said.\nBut the athletic department does not control licensing, Doninger said.\n"No royalties are paid to the athletic department," he said. "It's paid to IU's licensing department, then the athletic department gets a percentage of that."\nAt IU, coaches make original contacts with companies for apparel, but partnerships are finally approved by IU President Myles Brand, Doninger said. In the case of the men's basketball program, Doninger contacted companies for an apparel partnership because of the coaching change.\nA coach's discretion in determining what company will outfit his team is common with the category partnership Nike provides. \n"Every agreement we have with each university is unique," said Eric Oberman, communications manager for Nike basketball. "No two schools are parallel. Length of contract, terms of contract, all of that is unique."\nAnd hopefully special enough to draw more talented players to IU, Davis said.\n"I think it will help bring in players from any camp," Davis said. "I think kids want to wear a certain shoe. When you want really good players, you want to have something that will attract them.\n"We haven't won, so I'm pretty sure no one knows what shoes they're wearing. I'm not getting any money from Nike. I'm just wearing the merchandise"