Universities Celebrate Jordan-Nike Anniversary?

Three college basketball teams are wearing special silver uniforms and shoes this week to commemorate the 25 years of the Air Jordan franchise from sportswear behemoth Nike.

Silver uniforms for the Cal Bears and Georgetown Hoyas.

Why basketball shoes need windows is beyond me.

Unsurprisingly, Michael Jordan's alma mater, the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, was the first of the three - California-Berkeley and Georgetown are the two others - to wear the outfit in game competition.  In the case of UNC, the introduction of the silver outfit kept one of college basketball's best uniforms (and uniform colors) in the locker room.  It's not called "Carolina Blue" by accident.

In any case, the Tar Heels debuted the silver uniforms last night against Florida State.  And like most games UNC has featured in this year, the Tar Heels lost to Florida State by a score of 77-67, dropping their record to 14-14 on the season.

Let the 25-year countdown to the gold jerseys begin.

And while this is just another case of an apparel company or corporate brand controlling athletics - and amateur athletics at that - it's not even close to the title for the ugliest uniform for the sake of advertising.  That distinction is held by the IHL's Kalamazoo K-Wings in a McDonald's-themed game from a couple of years ago.  And, not only were the uniforms yellow, but so was the ice.

Um.  Yeah.

Nothing pretty about yellow ice.

So, there is clearly no line that isn't able to be crossed.  I suppose that it just seems a bit more uncomfortable when that line is so easily crossed in college athletics.  It also seems that people care less and less.

Occasionally, however, there are people who fight back.  A recent example - which went down in late January - was the movement to stop Nike's redesign of the Michigan State University Spartan logo.  When news broke that Nike and the University were moving to rollout a new brand identity campaign, the public got hold of the potential logo change below and made their voices heard.

The old logo on the left, the proposed logo on the right.

Students mobilized on Facebook and created groups designed to reach the administration and stop the new logo rollout.  Almost 20,000 fans on Facebook joined the group, which mass e-mailed University coaches and administrators.  And even though head basketball coach Tom Izzo was in favor of the proposed logo changes, the fans eventually got their way.  MSU Athletic Director Mark Ellis, in a statement from earlier this month:

"The recent disclosure of an updated Spartan logo...has resulted in a flurry of concern and discontent among some of our students, alumni, and fans...After careful consideration, we will use the current Spartan logo design, first used in the late 1970s, to build our visual brand identity."

Good to know that opposition still exists out there and that people still think that some things, like Spartan helmets, are perfect just the way they are.