Penn State & Nike: An Immortal Partnership is About More Than Just the Shoes

Today marks the end of a long partnership between Nike and Penn State. On Monday, Penn State’s athletic social media featured some pictures of Penn State athletes and the swoosh thanking Nike for 33 years.

Since the University is expressing its appreciation, it seemed a good time to echo that sentiment and do so with more detail. The partnership ran much deeper than just a business relationship and stretches back much farther than 33 years.

The partnership between Nike and Penn State began in the late 1970s. In 1978 Penn State hired basketball coach Dick Harter from Oregon. He had a relationship with the co-founders of Nike, former Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight.

Harter brought his Nike connections to Joe Paterno who was both the football coach and the athletic director at Penn State in the early 1980s.

First of all, if you don’t know the name Bill Bowerman, you should. His professional accomplishments as a coach and more importantly as a molder of the men he coached are incredible.

The motto by which Bill Bowerman lived was “Do right and fear no man.”

Over the years, Penn State and Nike grew increasingly intertwined. Penn State’s black shoes with the white swoosh became iconic. That status was cemented in the Fiesta Bowl on January 2, 1987. Penn State upset Miami for that National Title in a game that remains the highest-rated college football broadcast of all time.

When Nike launched sideline apparel and “fan gear” in the early 1990s, Penn State was one of just four launch schools.

While the on-field presence was obvious, behind the scenes there was a research partnership. Penn State athletes were given test models to use and provided feedback to Nike as to how the shoes and equipment performed.

When Nike developed footballs, we tested them and gave them feedback. One proposal even tested “air-conditioned” helmets. They brought them out for a demo, but it proved prohibitive because it required a very large air compressor on the sideline. In the Orange Bowl following the 2005 season, Michael Robinson was playing in a future Michael Vick model that Vick himself hadn’t even tried. Penn State was always ahead of the curve with Nike.

After Joe Paterno's 400th win Nike looked for a way to recognize that milestone. That recognition came in the form of a $400,000 gift to the Paterno Library Endowment at Penn State.

On a personal note, there were life lessons I learned over the years.

Phil Knight and Nike went through an era where they were singled out for labor practices and wages in factories in Asia. While Nike did not own the factories, and while other shoes companies were doing the same things, the media focused on Nike.

Around that time, Phil Knight was in town. And as we sat at a picnic table in Sunset Park, Phil Knight and Joe Paterno were talking about the issue. Phil asked Joe about his take on the situation. A great discussion ensued among two visionary men.

The discussion wasn’t about how to spin the PR angle of the issue. It was about solutions that would genuinely improve the way that Nikes were made in a way that made work and life better for those employees.

Sitting at a humble picnic table, in a small park miles away from boardrooms and office buildings, Phil said, “Every other shoe company in the world is over there having the same problems. We’re the only ones being singled out. But what I care about is how we respond, how we fix the issue and what it says about our company.”

While some pressure mounted from student groups on campus, Penn State stood by Nike because they trusted the company and knew that company leadership needed time to move forward in a meaningfully significant way.

Ultimately Nike's response led to more transparency, new labor standards and accountability in a way that was imitated by other apparel companies.

That loyalty was not a one-way street.

The 2005 season was a make-or-break year for Joe Paterno. Public pressure was at an all-time high.

At that spring football game Phil Knight was on the sidelines dressed in Penn State gear from head to toe, including cuffed khakis, white socks and black Nikes. His appearance on the sidelines was a vote of confidence for a man who had become a close family friend. But it went further than that. Following the 1999 death of Knight’s coach, co-founder and personal hero, Bill Bowerman, Knight had informed Joe Paterno that he would be his new hero.

Years later, after the fallout of the events of November 2011 and Joe Paterno’s death in January 2012 we asked Phil Knight to speak at his memorial service.

He did not hesitate for one second. His remarks, for those who witnessed them, remain among the most powerful testimonials about Joe’s life. Additionally, Michael Robinson had been asked to speak but was at the NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii. To get to Penn State and then back to Hawaii in time to play in the game, Phil gave Mike a ride back to the west coast after the service.

Nike’s loyalty to Penn State went beyond personal relationships.

Just two years removed from the fallout of November 2011 Penn State’s contract with Nike was up for renewal. Penn State wanted to go out on the open market for a new contract. But given the damage to the Penn State name done by the Freeh Report and the administration’s surrender to the NCAA, the University found itself without serious suitors.

Nike could have taken advantage of the situation. But they stuck by Penn State and despite the damage done, they renewed at the same contract rate from before all the chaos that had occurred. They valued the relationship that much. The kind of loyalty that emerges in your darkest days is the truest you will ever find.

Over a decade later, the recent decision to change providers was an administration decision. To be clear, reported actual dollar amounts for those who understand the structure of these deals are far different than reality.

These deals typically are made up of ¼ cash and ¾ equipment at wholesale. When companies boast of the value of the deals, they place a 3x value on the wholesale equipment making a figure like $90 million in equipment over ten years, look like $270 million.

Personal loyalties aside, the decision for Penn State was made and, for better or worse, the train rolls on.

But I was glad to see Penn State acknowledge in even some small way, the years of partnership.

And so, on this day, when a loyal partnership between two of the most respected brands in athletics comes to a close, it is only fitting to say thank you for decades of loyalty and research. Through heartbreak, triumph and championships we walked together.

But before ending, I want to turn the clock back one last time….

On the Nike Campus in Beaverton, Oregon they name buildings after famous athletes and coaches. Years earlier, in recognition of Joe’s commitment to education, Nike named the daycare/ child development center after Joe Paterno.

A few months after Phil Knight’s impassioned defense of Joe Paterno, it got complicated. In July 2012, Louis Freeh issued an opinion report that was both flawed and factually incorrect as it related to Joe Paterno. But the media narrative took off.

In the immediate wake of that report, Phil Knight made the decision to take down Joe’s name. He’d read Freeh’s executive summary. For many Penn Staters, it was disappointing, but the story didn’t end there……

Knight then read the full report and saw the executive summary’s conclusions were not backed up at all. So, a few weeks later, he called to ask me if my mom would be in town in early September. He was flying to the east coast and wanted to land in State College to see her and apologize.

When he got to the house, before he even saw my mom, I said to him “If Joe were here, he would’ve told you to take it down. You’re the head of a publicly traded company and Joe would’ve told you to honor the responsibilities you have.”

It wasn’t a throwaway line. It wasn’t a line said to him to make him feel better. It was simply a statement of fact.

A year later, when I asked Phil to write the foreword to my book “Paterno Legacy”, he did not hesitate. What he wrote contained an admission that showed the depth of his character.

He wrote in response to what I’d said on that late summer day in 2012 “But after thinking about it I conclude he is right. Joe would have said that. But I believe if the situation had been reversed, Joe Paterno would have left my name up, lynch mob be damned.”

“Today we are in that period between current events and history….history will contradict earlier current events.”

“In the meantime, look around at State College. He is there. Immortality is just timeless ubiquity. So they—and sadly I---through our actions have narrowed the scope and degree of this immortality. But nobody can make him go away.”

Now all these years later, the business of college sports may have changed. And for the time being Nike may not adorn the uniforms of our favorite team.

But look around State College. Nike will be there. In the images of moments of timeless immortality, they will be there. And for those that know, it carries a meaning that no passage of time can fade.