I’m just going to throw this out there:
I’m jealous.
I wish UCLA was a Nike school.
Yes, my wish is trite and unimportant.
It is admittedly a whim revolving around apparel preference.
The topic probably doesn’t deserve 12 inches in a newspaper, and I definitely spent some time contemplating that before I sat down to write.
I wasn’t going to discuss swooshes and tri-cut triangles until I got this weird feeling that I’m probably not alone.
I apologize profusely if I’m wrong, but I just think that as a whole, people prefer stuff made by Phil Knight.
I’m far from a fashion expert, but the Nike stuff just plain looks better.
Throw the design of the Nike coach’s polo up against the one Adidas makes.
While both companies use their breathable, sweat-absorbing material, be it named “Dry-Fit” or “Clima Cool,” Nike weaves a nice set of two stripes in the school’s secondary color down the shoulders to the arms.
It stitches the name of the school spelled out on the back of the shirt just below the collar.
It accents the football polo with little stitches that look like the laces of a football, unobtrusively under the buttons.
And of course all this is in addition to putting the legendary swoosh opposite the school’s logo.
As for Adidas, they added a thin line down the shoulder to this year’s model, to go with, well, the unattractive three-line symbol that has become their secondary logo.
It’s an improvement, I’ll give them that. But aside from the embroidered “UCLA,” the triangle logo and the lines down the arms, the shirt I spent $55 on looks pretty plain.
Appearance aside, as I really have no right to judge if something looks good, Nike makes more stuff. When I was out at UNC visiting my friend this summer, the racks were filled with countless different T-shirts, both generic UNC and multiple shirts for each sport. They had dry-fit shirts to go with standard cotton and long-sleeved shirts to accompany short sleeve.
Adidas does a good job coming up with every possible color combination, but they manufacture very few shirts with fundamentally different styles.
If you check out Ackerman, you’ll find all the polos look the same with the exception of color, and almost all the T-shirts are identical minus the name of the sport printed in the middle.
And I guess I also just hate being in the minority.
According to the Boston Globe, Nike controls around half of all shoes, jerseys and clothing in all sports, not just the NCAA.
But Nike more or less owns college sports anyway, just like Reebok holds a monopoly over the NFL and Adidas controls all NBA jerseys.
If you watch a lot of college football on Saturdays, it seems like just about every athletic program has been lured by the swoosh. Every other team in the Pac-10 is a Nike school, and with a handful of exceptions like Notre Dame and Tennessee, so is the rest of the nation.
So why does the school with the most national championships get slighted while San Diego State gets the swoosh? It’s a petty complaint ““ but don’t Bruins deserve the best?
If the swoosh is calling your name, e-mail Stevens at mstevens@mail.media.ucla.edu