The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

September 17, 2006

No shoestrings budget; $13 million from Nike pays for UGA sports gear and some of Richt's Compensation

BYLINE: Carter Strickland

...So what is in all this for Nike? Well, mainly exposure.

Take January's Nokia Sugar Bowl, played at the Georgia Dome. On one side: Georgia. On the other: West Virginia, another Nike school.The product placement, on the front of every jersey and the side of every shoe --- the swoosh displayed prominently in countless video replays and newspaper and magazine photographs --- more than pays for Nike's nominal investment, according to Joyce Julius and Associates, which documents broadcast product exposure.

During the Sugar Bowl, the Nike logo had 21 minutes, 26 seconds of on-screen time, said Eric Wright, vice president for research and development for Joyce Julius. That's equal to $22.5 million of comparable exposure value, he said.

College football's national championship game --- a one-for-the-ages Rose Bowl showdown between two Nike schools, Southern Cal and Texas --- garnered the company $31.9 million of comparable exposure value.

"As you can see, they obviously know what they are doing," Wright said.

It's been this way since the mid-1990s, when Nike, taking a hint from what was happening with corporate branding in NASCAR, aligned itself with top teams...