LunchTime said:
wifeisafurd said:
LunchTime said:
I really like Under Armor, but they really really did Cal dirty.
Not just with the pandemic money saving contract breaking, but the apparel they put out for fans sucked aside from a few items.
Nevada had better Under Armor apparel, and they were contracted with Adidas at the time. Nevada sells like 15 hats a year, I think.
Regardless, I see Cal as a top tier institution (athletically) with a large fanbase. Whoever we sign with, the contract should include support of gear for fans to buy.
I'd assuming you mean UCLA was done dirty, whose contract was terminated. Cal's contract still is in place, and is being performed by both sides. Funny how these things take on a life all their own. Cal was under pressure from UC "to do something" due to UCLA, but that never really materialized.
Im not sure a see Cal as a top tier athletic institution under present circumstances. One of just a few P5 programs not to make post-season in football or either gender basketball, and its overall standings in the Director's Cup sinking. Poor fan attendance and poor TV ratings. And in a conference that has problems. Don't expect huge dollars from the next contract. Sometime reality hurts.
I feel like you are intentionally misrepresenting what I said.
In 2020 Under Armor claimed Cal was breaching it's contract because we had a few Nike items for sale in our store... we had to fight that. They claimed we broke our side of the contract through those 3 items or whatever, and we had to fight that. That was dirty as ****.
I am not talking about UCLA, I am talking about the contract with Cal and Under Armor and how it impacted Cal. Regardless of their ability to end the contact early, they tried very hard to.
But even when the contract was going smoothly, before the pandemic, I was dissatisfied with the selection and quality of designs Under Armor was providing for us to sell...
Again, Nevada, who is contracted with either Adidas or Nike depending on time frame, had Under Armor making better gear with more variety for fans to buy in Nevada's official store, and outside of their store.
Uniforms are a part of what a company can provide Cal. Exposure is part of what Cal can provide. Merchandise sales is part of what Under Armor came at Cal with... But then they provided a very slim selection of pretty substandard designs,compared to what they produce for midmajor schools, and never expanded. That is ****ty.
Under Armor agreed with us to cleare out some good designs from official stores and replaced them Under Armor... and they didn't make a good effort compared to how they treat non contracted second tier schools, in my opinion.
Finally, Cal is MUCH higher tier in terms of potential sales than, say, Nevada... Tiering is relative. Cal is in a very large market, is in a top tier of sports, and is in a top tier conference of those sports. Cal, also, has a massive network of alumni and fans willing to buy merchandise. There are literally thousands of smaller institutions. Of all potential partnerships, Cal is top tier when it comes to merchandising potential. Not top tier of the big 5 D1 conferences. Not top tier of the Pac12. But compared to the mid majors under armor supports? Absolutely.
If a company and Cal are going to agree to restrict what Cal can sell, providing good stock to sell shouldn't be a difficult ask. Again, Nevada, today, not sponsored, with no "sell our shirts, only" contract, has better selections of Under Armor gear, and their fan base is no where near the market Cal brings.
Is anything I am saying inaccurate? No, I don't feel pantsed. I feel like I am taking crazy pills when people gaslight pretending Cal didn't have merchandise disputes with Under Armor while Under Armor was under developing the merchandising angle of the contract.
Claiming Under Amor wasn't forcing Cal to constantly defend it's side of the contract in their attempt to break it is so asinine I can't possibly take this conversation further.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/18/details-emerge-in-under-armours-legal-dispute-with-cal-and-they-stretch-the-imagination/
I'm struggling to find out what you mean when Cal was done dirty when Cal actually has said publicly that both UA and Cal have lived up the their parts of their agreement. Cal claims no damages, nor does UA.
The problem is you believe what the media had to say initially, which if you want to run with what Wilner and the Mercury News have to say, they had a June 29 statement that UA had said they had terminated their contract. This forced Cal to actually have to publicly say on July 1:
1) there was in fact no signed contract to terminate, and
2) Cal was operating under a term sheet which wad fully in place and that had not been terminated.
Nevertheless you posted Wiliner's desperate attempt to do a partial retraction of his earlier inaccurate article, where he acknowledges that in fact there is no formal contract to terminate, Wilner then says that UA claimed a force majeure provision had been triggered (this is what resulted in an actual termination notice in UCLA's case) and the sale of miscellaneous left over Nike goods. None of that is in the term sheet. Wilner still tries to stick in that termination language, even though it is really clear that no termination notice ever happened in Cal's case. Cal said so.
That a Cal attorney actually had to introduce UA to its agreement may be amusing, but I'm still having problems with your major contention that Cal was "done dirty" even though no one has suggested that UA did not and has not fulfilled its obligations under the agreement.In your exuberance you say: "I am talking about the contract with Cal and Under Armor and how it impacted Cal. Regardless of their ability to end the contact early [sic], they tried very hard to." What actually happened was a Cal lawyer wrote a letter to UA saying nice try guys, but read your agreement. You seem so put out that just is sooo horrible, unthinkable, and rarely happens in today's world that a lawyer says to other party sorry, but your request isn't in the agreement. There is naive, but your comments go so far beyond that. To that extent you end with the following hyperbole: "Claiming Under Amor wasn't forcing Cal to constantly defend it's side of the contract in their attempt to break it is so asinine I can't possibly take this conversation further." As far as I can tell there is just one letter by UA's lawyer and one letter thrown back by Cal's lawyer. Why yes, I'm having problems with anything you said being even remotely accurate.
What probably pisses everyone here is that you called Cal a top tier program and now then compared it to UNLV. Gee, thanks, you said Cal is actually better than UNLV. With Cal fans worried about going from an $86 million agreement to something significantly lower in value, you want Cal to get something better than UNLV money? Well tier this. When the Cal agreement stated in 2016, Cal was 5-7 in football, it's basketball team had finished at no. 23 in the county and in the big dance, and the women's team had finished number 7 in conference. Since then:
1 the football team has basically the same record, but far less attendance and TV ratings, in what is not the worst P5 football conference.
2. the men's basketball program has basically cratered;
3) the women'd BB team is worst in the conference; and
4) want to guess what happened to the Cal Director's Cup ranking?
You may think the guys at Nike are stupid and are going to listen to you tell them about tiers, but they actually look at this stuff, not to mention sales of goods. Here is something to consider: when folks don't go on campus and attend sporting events sales go down - a lot.. Some of this is C-19 related, but the reality of declines in Cal and Pac sports can't come as a total surprise. Ask Jon Wilner. I could care less what you think about UA's clothes, what I, and more importantly the AD, care about is the money he has to replace when the UA contract is over. It won't be anywhere near $86 million over 10 years unless JW's guys start winning a lot more games.
I have seen a lot of Jon Wilner articles. He has such winners as Sandy Barbour had renewed Jeff Tedford's contact (nope he got fired) onward to the latest of Jon's recent winners, about Furd's Haase getting fired, which of course meant he got an extension, and then the other couple hundreds of times that Jon got it wrong in between. He can get it right. He is probably the only guy left who reports on the Pac 12, so take him for better or worse. But he and bunch of other writers got it wrong on the Cal UA contract initially. There was confusion that Cal and UCLA were in the same situation. They were not. UCLA's contract was terminated and they sued. Cal is in a agreement with UA that everyone, but you, seems to agree is being honored.
PS for the non-lawyers, an unsigned term sheet can be an enforceable agreement.