Oregon Athletic Department Quietly Extends Nike Contract

It’s great news for the Ducks, who will continue to receive Nike uniforms and gear for all their varsity sports, in addition to annual cash payments. The deal adds eight years to the previous agreement, and doubles Nike's payments to the athletic department.

But even as other schools have trumpeted the money and allure of such deals, Oregon is keeping current and future terms of its agreement private.

The contract, released to The Oregonian after a request under Oregon’s public-records law, shows the athletic department receiving a cash payment from Nike of $500,000 in 2008-09. Nike also was to provide Oregon teams with $1,950,000 in gear that year, and up to $150,000 in extra gear as requested by athletic-department officials.
 
The new agreement supersedes a seven-year deal with Nike that ran from 2003-2010, and shows significant increases in each category in 2008-09: up $250,000 in cash, $550,000 in team gear and $50,000 in extra gear.
 
But the value of the nine final years of the contract isn’t known, as UO officials blacked out the dollar amounts on the contract.

It was not clear Friday why Oregon would release to The Oregonian a full copy of the previous deal, as general counsel Melinda Grier did in Year 4 of the seven-year agreement, and a redacted copy of this one. But in recent years, Oregon has argued that its marketing and endorsement deals with private companies are trade secrets.
 
Grier was out of the office Friday afternoon and unavailable to comment...

...Multi-year sports-apparel deals benefit schools by presenting a uniform, slick look to recruits, and the companies by providing an ongoing marketing platform.

“The college bowl games and the BCS games, those are a tremendous showcase for those manufacturers,” said Eric Wright, a vice president at Joyce Julius & Associates, Inc., an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based sports-sponsorship evaluation company. “The logos are so dominating during those telecasts. Typically the apparel manufacturer is going to be in the top two or three most-seen brand during that four or five hours.
 
“It’s a tremendous amount of quality TV time. When you compare it to advertising, that’s some pretty expensive time that they’re enjoying.”

And at Oregon, the Nike deal helps cover the cost of something that has skyrocketed in importance over the past decade: its ever-changing football uniforms.