Today, Darren Rovell broke the news that Northwestern is switching its apparel deal from Adidas to Under Armour. Which is kinda awesome.
It's awesome on several fronts. First off, I hate Adidas. Always have, most likely always will. It stems from the fact that in high school I paid more attention than I really should to basketball sneakers, and Adidas' are always miles uglier than NIke's, and while Nike programs have players rocking Jordans in games, Northwestern was stuck with those ugly white-on-purple-striped Adidas things that I would honestly protest wearing if I was on the team. I genuinely dislike the concept that every damn item of Adidas clothing has to have three stripes hidden on it somewhere - look at the side of Northwestern's basketball uniforms, guh - and am glad to be rid of it.
Under Armour, on the other hand, is awesome. People like wearing it. They have kickass ad campaigns and allow us to yell "WE MUST PROTECT THIS HOUSE" without the inherent sarcasm. Although the kicks aren't the prettiest, it's a boost, in marketing and recruiting. Also, as NUHighlights points out, they know how to do Northwestern striping - as you can see from the attached Cam Newton photo.
Adidas tried in the past few years. They gave Northwestern pretty new football uniforms, revamped basketball a bit each year without anything really cool coming out of it, and thought it would be an awesome idea to give Northwestern those neon purple cat scratch uniforms against Penn State. (It wasn't.) But I'm still pretty pumped with the move to Under Armour. Pumped enough to post about it, in fact.