Apparel partnerships in college sports are no small thing. There’s the recruiting piece—that always gets mentioned—but they’re also just a significant source of revenue. Notre Dame’s contract with Under Armour, which will expire next summer, was worth a reported $9 million a year. That’s not as much as a TV deal—Notre Dame’s reportedly seeking $75 million a year from NBC—but accounting for the growth of college sports and standard and nonstandard inflation and even the UCLA/Under Armour debacle (Under Armour backed out of a deal paying the Bruins almost $19M per year), you’d guess it’ll have the same number of digits. Whether Notre Dame signs with Adidas or Nike (or Nike’s Jordan Brand), Notre Dame will likely be receiving upwards of five percent of its athletic revenue from the deal. It’s not TV, but it gets its own slice on the pie chart.
What if it didn’t?
Last Thursday, Andy Staples suggested something novel for Notre Dame athletics: Don’t sign a shoe deal. Sign a deal for all the other parts of apparel—socks, jerseys, shorts, pants, Irish-branded dago tees on sale at the bookstore—but leave the shoes out of it. Let the athletes pick their shoes. Let the athletes of substantial value sign their own shoe deals.
It’s unclear to speculating bloggers like me what the financial implication of this would be. It’s possible the shoes are a big part of the $12 million or whatever it ends up being. It’s also possible they’re insignificant. Even if it’s half, though, it may be worth it, and that’s even if less than a handful of Notre Dame athletes are capable each year of supporting shoe deals of their own.
Notre Dame could use an NIL advantage. It’s rife with disadvantages, namely that its athletic director and university president are both sour on college students being paid to play sports and are using what might only be a blustery, soft-handed nonprofit collective run by a folk hero to obscure the damage that might do. Grabbing some sort of advantage, even briefly (until other schools catch up, if this really is a beneficial path), could be key. As Staples points out, it wouldn’t make a big difference for the football program, but in basketball it could be massive, effectively doubling Notre Dame’s chances at one-and-done talents by removing any Nike vs. Adidas self-selection (and as Staples also points out, this goes for women’s basketball as well, where college stars are closer to their professional counterparts in brand value).
It wouldn’t be an advantage forever, and it wouldn’t transform Notre Dame. But those are all the more reasons to give it a shot. It’s a free play for a decade. In the meantime, NIL would settle into a more static state amidst which Notre Dame could determine its ultimate philosophical position on the matter. I know Notre Dame doesn’t want boosters funneling recruits seven figures. Jaloni Cambridge signing a six-figure deal with Adidas seems like a fair compromise.
Good idea, Andy.
The Transfer Portal Taketh
Logan Diggs is off to LSU, and Micah Shrewsberry did not land RJ Sunahara.
There are two sports at play here, so let’s separate the pair.
In football news this past week(-ish, apologies for the late post), Logan Diggs committed to reunite with Brian Kelly in his home state of Louisiana while Notre Dame brought in Antonio Carter, a cornerback from URI with two years of eligibility remaining. He’s expected to reinforce the safety position, and quiet possibly start there. Three scholarships remain available.
In men’s basketball news, D-II Player of the Year RJ Sunahara committed to Georgia, choosing the Bulldogs over Notre Dame and West Virginia. Still no news on Ven-Allen Lubin’s destination, but there’s been no speculation that he might return. The roster, as it stands, has only nine of thirteen possible scholarships filled.
It’s possible each sport is done adding for this cycle, and if they are, that’s fine. There are ripples associated with coaching changes, and we’re only entering Marcus Freeman’s second year and Shrewsberry’s first. Similarly, Diggs is a loss, but you could lose worse than part of your running back platoon. This too, is fine. Overall, the situation is, well, fine. Is Notre Dame at something of a disadvantage because of the difficulty of transferring in as an undergraduate athlete? Probably, to some extent. But the same things which create this disadvantage create advantages elsewhere. They craft the identity. They craft the brand. Looking at the apparel deal, looking at Sam Hartman: The brand is strong.
Quick(er) Hitters
There’s been some Notre Dame-adjacent activity on the NBA coaching carousel, with Monty Williams fired by the Suns (but not unlikely to land with the Sixers or somewhere else) and Chris Quinn interviewing for the Bucks job. In the high school world, Tory Jackson has moved from Grand Blanc to Detroit Central Catholic. I couldn’t find any recruiting implications there, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be any, especially down the line.
On the football side, Marcus Freeman picked up a pair of three-star linebackers this past week(-ish) in the form of Bodie Kahoun and Teddy Rezac. As we’ve said: Notre Dame’s currently fourth-ranked class should be expected to drop, with 16 of its commits committed against only 8 at Clemson and 6 at Alabama. A better measure might be the composition of the class so far. Notre Dame has two five-stars, nine four-stars, and five three-stars. That’s a weighted average of 3.81 stars. Clemson is at 3.75. Alabama is at 4.50. Georgia—who has 12 commits—is at 4.25. Michigan and Ohio State are at 3.71 and 4.00. LSU is at 3.73. Florida and Florida State are at 4.38 and 3.82. Oregon and Penn State are at 3.73 and 3.69. South Carolina is at 3.90. Among those twelve schools, Notre Dame ranks seventh. That’s going to be tough to hang onto as well, but it’s a more realistic target than fourth.
This Week
The men’s and women’s lacrosse teams are both still kicking, the men’s team smoking Utah on Saturday while the women’s team beat up Mercer on Friday and then took down Regional host Florida on Sunday when Kasey Choma scored with 10.1 seconds on the clock. The men’s team meets Johns Hopkins in the quarterfinals this Sunday in Annapolis. The women’s team meets Boston College at Boston College tomorrow afternoon in its own quarterfinals. Both those games will be on ESPNU.
The softball team lost its ACC Tournament opener to Georgia Tech but still grabbed an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, matching up with Oregon in the Fayetteville Regional across the bracket from Arkansas and Harvard. The Oregon game is Friday in the late afternoon on ESPN2. The other one to four games will be Saturday and Sunday on some combination of ESPN channels and ESPN+.
The baseball team swept Akron this past weekend at home, then lost last night to Northwestern at Wrigley Field. They’ll close out the regular season against Boston College this weekend on the road, with Saturday’s game at Fenway Park and broadcast on ACC Network. Cool week for the baseball team.
Sebastian Dominko and Connor Fu will be in action next week for the tennis team down in Orlando as the NCAA Tournament’s singles and doubles portions take place. Nothing until then for that sport.
Lauren Beaudreau tied for 26th at the 66-golfer Westfield Regional last week, ending her season. The third round of the Bath Regional is underway on the men’s side, with Palmer Jackson tied for eleventh at the moment and Nate Stevens two strokes back, tied for 20th. I’m not sure how many individuals advance, but I’d imagine the cut line depends on where the advancing teams’ golfers fall, not unlike how it works in Illinois high school cross country, a reference which lands with all of us.
The track & field teams finished seventh (women) and ninth (men) at the ACC Championships, with Olivia Markezich (3K steeplechase), Carter Solomon (10K), and Michael Shoaf (shot put) winning their events. The teams will go to Jacksonville next weekend for the NCAA Regional.
The rowing team finished fourth in what I believe were the nine-team ACC Championships, with Natalie Hoefer named first team all-conference and Maggie Newell named second team. The team was not selected for the NCAA Championship, so its season is over.
