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Rutgers sports no longer under contract with Adidas; is Nike deal next?

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Rutgers sports no longer under contract with Adidas; is Nike deal next?

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Since they joined the Rutgers basketball program in the summer, star freshmen Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper have been wearing Nike sneakers even though the rest of the athletic department was bedecked in Adidas gear.

The rest of the department is going to be changing apparel soon.

Rutgers is no longer under contract with Adidas, a school official said Tuesday, and has not been since the end of the 2022-2023 school year – a fact confirmed by an Asbury Park Press open-records request. Since that time, Adidas has been outfitting the Scarlet Knights at a discounted price but without a contract.

Though then-athletics director Pat Hobbs said last March that “we have extended our partnership with Adidas” and “the contract is being finalized,” a contract extension never happened.

What’s next? The logical move from here is for Rutgers to partner with Nike, but right now the athletic department is in the process of exploring options with multiple outfitters, as one might expect in any undertaking that involves negotiations. There is no strict timeline for a deal, but the 25th-ranked basketball team’s season opener against Wagner Nov. 6 seems like an obvious goal date.

Bailey and Harper, who were McDonald’s All-Americans last spring and project as NBA Draft lottery picks in June, wore Nike sneakers during Rutgers’ public intra-squad scrimmage Sept. 28 and then again in last week’s 91-85 exhibition loss to St. John’s, which was televised on the Big Ten Network. This even as their uniforms bore the Adidas logo (and their teammates and coaches were decked out in Adidas gear).

Rutgers is no stranger to Nike, having spent five years donning the swoosh before switching to Adidas in July of 2017.

An open records request of Rutgers’ contract with Adidas revealed that Rutgers received $12,944,666.20 in value from Adidas and paid the company $16,257,918.46 over the six-year deal; the net result was that the university paid Adidas $3,313,252 over the duration of the agreement.

That deal ranked near the bottom of the Big Ten membership at the time; only Minnesota’s agreement with Nike was less valuable (Penn State and Northwestern do not disclose details of their apparel contracts).

For a frame of reference: Big Ten schools currently under contract with Nike include Illinois (a reported 10 years valued at $45 million), Michigan (11 years, $173 million), Ohio State (15 years, $252 million) and Oregon (11 years, $88 million). Those are gross reported figures, without expenditures.

Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.

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