In the last couple of days, Big 12 fans have responded disappointingly to a very dumb thing.
The Utah Utes will become an Adidas school beginning in 2027, which means Under Armor will be without yet another Big 12 brand following Texas Tech’s jump to the former just a couple of years ago. The change also opens new NIL opportunities for Utah student-athletes, according to the school’s release.
Yes, Utah is committing the grave sin of switching up their garment supplier after 18 years with Under Armor. The new Adidas deal adds the Utes to a growing list of the Big 12 schools – Arizona State, Kansas and Texas Tech – in the three stripe club.
Why does this matter? Adidas has designed uniforms across the ACC, Big Ten and SEC, and no, not all of them are good but it’s not like the schools themselves don’t get a say in the matter. Uniforms are expensive, too, and with how much loot is coming Utah’s way via its private equity deal, it’d be a pretty surprising if they screwed up the uniforms.
Let’s also consider the fact that big business is coming for our beloved uniforms, too, with schools like Arkansas debuting corporate partnership patches (Tyson Foods) on uniforms across its entire athletic department. That, frankly, is worth far more uproar than who’s printing the uniforms. This isn’t a fanatics situation where they’re just falling apart in the mail.
The Arkansas deal sends 90% of earnings to student-athletes, while sticking a massive logo above the Arkansas wordmark and SEC emblem on every uniform. It might seem like a small change, but it’s a legitimate design flaw when you consider just how long college sports as gone without such changes.
College sports have always felt like hollowed ground, and the idea that one day Alabama, an institution when it comes to football legacy, look and feel, might put a bank logo or something on their uniform just makes me nauseous. I’m still upset that Allen Fieldhouse has a bank’s green logo on James Naismith Court.
Yuck.
It’s clothes, folks. And if a school deliberately messes up its own closet – blame the school. There’s enough money moving through Power Four football programs nowadays to look appropriate on Saturday. One has to think mockups and concepts are handed to a school like Utah before any deal is signed, so they must like what they’ve seen and shopped some options around campus before inking their new deal.
But the internet isn’t home to much logic these days, and fans have responded with heavy criticism of the move:
