Inside Penn State’s ‘organized chaos’ of switching from Nike to Adidas after 30 years

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

State College, Pennsylvania (CNN) — The FedEx driver rolled up to campus and realized he had a problem, a delivery man’s version of Chief Brody realizing he was going to need a bigger boat in “Jaws.”

He called Ben Herman, the Penn State assistant athletic director for equipment operations, and shared his lament.

“Uh, we’ve got truckloads of stuff here,’’ the driver told Herman. “We can’t really get around. Where should we take it?”

After four years in his position at Penn State and a career in equipment management dating back decades, Herman is no stranger to unloading large hauls of stuff. But the delivery that arrived in State College, Pennsylvania, back in June was different. This was some 50 pallets containing more than 150,000 pieces of athletic gear – 6,500 pairs of shoes alone – all of which had to be sorted by team and distributed across campus in less than a month.

On July 1, Penn State officially ended its 33-year partnership with Nike and embarked on a new one with adidas. The simple transaction came with a hefty price tag – a reported $300 million offer across 10 years – but also triggered a massive shakeup on the State College campus. Each of the 31 teams needed to be reoutfitted, along with every member of the athletic department staff, and the old stuff discarded.

Bookstores needed a similar rehaul and every bit of Nike branding – on office, arena and stadium walls and hallways – had to be swapped in a no-swoosh left behind conversion to three stripes.

Herman and others on campus spent 43 weeks preparing for the switch. All told the school estimates more than 250 staffers spent some 11,000 hours in meetings, photo shoots and sessions with internal groups, individual teams, adidas partners and campus stakeholders to pull off the switcheroo.

“It has been organized,’’ Herman said of the past year. “But organized chaos.’’

Even now, as fall sports get ready to begin, you get the feeling that some poor sap of a staffer will find an errant swoosh somewhere – like a Christmas present purchased and stowed in a since forgotten hiding spot.

“It’s impossible,’’ said athletic director Pat Kraft. “We can double check and triple check but if we miss a swoosh in a building somewhere, we’re going to have to be OK with it for a while.’’

A historic switch, decades in the making

Back before such things were de rigueur, Penn State’s football players exclusively wore Nike cleats – albeit boring all-black ones. Former head coach Joe Paterno had met Nike founder Phil Knight via the many shoe-company junkets held around the country. The two hit it off – so well, in fact, Knight donated $400,000 to the on-campus Paterno libraries and would speak at the coach’s 2012 funeral.

The coach doubled down on the shoes as far back as the early ‘80s and in 1993, Penn State joined Nike as an official apparel partner, the two agreeing to a deal worth $2.6 million over three years.

That number grew exponentially over the years as the swoosh became near omnipresent in State College, even daring to grace the famously plain football jerseys.

But business models change. Miami, which in 1987 became the first school to officially partner with Nike, left for adidas in 2015 and some reports claimed Penn State felt less prioritized by Nike, as schools including Ohio State and Michigan were rewarded for their on-field excellence.

Meanwhile adidas has been making a big push in the college space, signing deals with Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Tennessee. Along with lucrative offers for the universities, the shoe company creates critical Name, Image and Likeness opportunities for individual athletes via its ambassador program.

Nike had the option to match the adidas offer and declined, making way for the three-stripe era.

“This is about giving our student-athletes every possible advantage,’’ Kraft said.

Everything must go

But what do you do with decades worth of gear created to service 31 sports?

Herman sheepishly admits he is something of a pack rat, not necessarily an awful trait for a guy who works in equipment. His willingness to hoard things for a rainy day can come in handy when, for example, an oversized offensive lineman is looking for a certain kind of shoe and Herman just so happens to have a version from years earlier when a similar player was in the same quandary.

Were it to stop at a few pair of shoes, well, that wouldn’t be complicated. But there is always something worth holding onto.

“It was like looking at your life’s work a little bit,’’ Herman said. “I’m not going to lie. It was a little emotional.’’

Mix in that every year every team gets new uniforms, practice gear and cleats. Staffers receive golf shirts and pants. There are socks – so many socks – and sneakers and basketballs. Yet as quickly as it takes to flip a calendar, all of it was suddenly rendered useless despite still being very, very useful.

The university opted for the equivalent of a yard sale, hosting two surplus sales, one around the mega outdoor hockey game against Michigan State in January and another the spring before the Blue-White football game. Staffers filled the bubble near Beaver Stadium in the winter and Pegula Ice Rink in the spring with an everything-must-go Nike clean out.

Fans could choose from rows upon rows of cleats, stacks of polos, piles of official football jerseys, bins of socks and racks of helmets. One table housed hockey sticks and sparkly leotards dangled from a nearby rack.

What didn’t go got boxed up and stowed away at the Lion Surplus store, to be sold at a later date.

Downtown and on-campus bookstores did similar clean outs, offering up to 70% discounts on Nike wares before pivoting quickly with pop-up adidas shops in July.

Maybe the trickiest thing of all was identifying all of the signage that needed to be redone. Inside the Lasch Football Building, for example, there’s barely a wall not covered in some sort of a mural featuring a uniformed player, Nike swoosh proudly displayed.

Just recently a staffer, attending a function inside Beaver Stadium, happened upon a mannequin dressed head to toe in Nike gear.

“It’s gotta go,’’ he said.

Playing catch-up

As messy as ushering out the old was, the in-with-the-new wasn’t exactly a picnic.

“People were so worried about our football uniforms,’’ Kraft said. “Are you kidding me? That was the easiest part.’’

Typically, adidas and its school partners plan marketing campaigns and consider orders for upcoming seasons a good 18 months out. Penn State only finalized its deal in June 2025, putting the Nittany Lions behind the curve.

“We had to learn all their products, their product line and associate that one for one for what athletes and coaches would expect,’’ Herman said.

Think: fonts for lettering and uniform designs made, tweaked and finalized for 31 teams, home and away, plus practice gear, all done within the confines of a budget for each sport.

“On top of that, everyone has like a favorite hoodie,’’ Herman said, “and we had to convince them that it was going to be OK. adidas would have something similar.’’

Except it’s a lot of stuff. Home uniforms, away uniforms. Practice gear. Hang out gear. Golf shirts and golf pants and golf shorts. Hockey helmets and football helmets and baseball helmets and softball helmets. Wrestling singlets and swimsuits (competition and practice). Gymnastics leotards and dance team sparkles. Tennis skirts and lacrosse skirts and cheerleading skirts.

And shoes, shoes, shoes and shoes.

Founded by a German in his mother’s laundry room, adidas initially outfitted track athletes. In 1965, the company launched its first basketball shoes: the Supergrip or its high-top partner, the Pro Model.

Now you can buy the Sophie Cunningham Crazy Energy sneakers, or the James Harden Volumes or Damian Lillard’s Dames or Donovan Mitchell’s D.O.N’s or hoops mid or hoops classic or jump hooks or break starts. Similarly, soccer cleats are available in elite firm, pro firm, laceless, foldover tongue or turf or ground.

With so many (too many?) options and the particularness of athletes, the courts and field around Penn State turned into test labs as the flip date neared. Fall sports understandably got the early jump. Football and soccer players, for example, tried all sorts of cleats on, considering the various sorts of bottoms (molded, detached or screw-in for grass) while track athletes went through their spike options.

But seasons come at you fast and orders don’t happen overnight. So, before summer ended, Herman and his staff were working with the basketball teams, too. The catch is, one size not only does not fit all, but sizes don’t always translate. One company’s 12 might, in fact, be another’s 13.

“We had them test them during their runs and agility work,’’ Herman said. “It’s all brand new and it’s a lot but the last thing we wanted was someone to be worried about their shoes when the season started. We need our athletes to be comfortable in what they’re competing in.’’

‘A little chaotic’

When the trucks finally arrived in June, Herman directed them over to the far side of campus, over by the mail center.

He and his staff took it from there, going through the arduous process of sorting and divvying. First, they separated the gear by which building it was headed to – what had to go to the Bryce Jordan Center, or Rec Hall or the Pegula Ice Arena – and then divided it by sport.

By the time they finished, they’d overseen some 350 delivery runs.

“If I’m being candid, it’s probably going to be a little chaotic through at least one full cycle,’’ Herman said. “But I think we’re in good shape.’’

If anecdotal evidence counts, it would appear Herman is at least headed in the right direction. In early July, Kraft popped onto a Zoom call wearing a completely logo-less polo shirt.

“My wife keeps laughing at me,’’ the AD said. “My closet is empty.’’

A few weeks later, the athletic director was mingling around a ballroom at the Hilton in downtown Chicago. Penn State was in town for Big Ten football media days and as Kraft worked the room, he did so wearing a blue-and-white-striped polo with a big Nittany Lion logo.

“Look,’’ he said, “it’s Adidas.’’

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