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Rick Pitino thinks that Nike has too much influence with recruiting of amateur athletes.
Louisville, an adidas school, has had trouble recruiting the top prospects on the Nike EYBL circuit. Most recently, Antonio Blakeney, who plays for Nike-sponsored E1T1, rescinded a verbal commitment to Louisville just 11 days after committing. Sources close to the situation insist Nike was behind Blakeney’s shocking de-commitment. Blakeney is now considering Kentucky, Missouri and LSU — all Nike-sponsored schools.
“What I personally don’t like is I can’t recruit a kid because he wears Nike on the AAU circuit. I’ve never heard of such a thing but it’s happening in our world. I never thought that shoes would be the reason that you recruit players but it’s a factor,” said Pitino.
“I think we need to get the shoe companies out of the lives of the athletes. I think we need to get it back to where parents and coaches have more of a say than peripheral people, but that’s easier said than done.”
Shoe companies like Nike and adidas line the pockets of universities and the coaches at those universities, which makes significant reform all but impossible to happen overnight.
“In the past five years I’ve seen a tremendous change on this,” said Pitino. “It’s a very competitive thing between these shoe companies. They are competing like we do for recruits. But it’s very tough to address because our pockets are lined with their money.”
But Pitino has a solution.
“I wish the NCAA would run the camps in the summer,” Pitino said. “So that everybody gets explained the NCAA rules, and they run the camps, when we can watch, and legislate that. That would be a great way to spend that war-chest they have. But I don’t think they want to do that.”
Currently, Nike controls a healthy majority of the top recruits through their AAU programs, which compete on the EYBL, whose semifinals and finals were televised on ESPN this summer. Nike supports AAU programs across the country and for that support expects those programs to direct their top players to colleges also sponsored by Nike.
While Pitinos problems can be echoed in the chambers of college basketball, similar angst has been shared in the football realm by coaches as well – especially those competing with the University of Oregon for recruits.
The ongoing debate on influence of brands and sponsorships on recruiting will not end soon, and as brands have more ties in with the programs, the problems and conflict will only get worse.
It is time for the NCAA to step in.
