2020 Michigan State Offseason Thread

[Anonymous Coward]

Nike has no personal interest in changing for the sake of changing.  Hell, it would cheaper for them to have fewer jerseys.  They do this to sell new jerseys, new shoes, new gloves, and if people didn't like them, they wouldn't sell, and Nike would stop.

Then you and I have different ideas of the economic driving forces for a company like Nike. My guess goes something like this:

Nike's stuff is dirt cheap to make. Their entire factory system is built on modularity. Almost every jersey has the same cut. And generally the same fabric. They differ in the colors for each shape of fabric and how they are combined. This means there's perhaps never a scenario where an alternate jersey flops so badly in sales that Nike loses money or comes out in the negative in terms of opportunity costs and wasted factory space. With that kind of streamlined manufacturing it behooves Nike -- to perhaps no reasonable limit -- to put out a maximal number of products. This both grows Nike's base of patrons and, for the patrons Nike already has, grows the likelihood the average patron will purchase more than they would have otherwise. This is especially true for items like jerseys that, once purchased, can survive in a closet for a couple of decades. The guy with the plain home and the plain away jersey is unlikely to buy another jersey unless (a) the homes/aways substantially change or (b) the team and Nike put out alternates.

[Anonymous Coward]

One could also point out -- as a secondary or tertiary driving force -- that most Nike athletic department contracts these days are written to include some ratio of cash to Nike equipment. That means the schools don't get their stuff for free. They either use part of their "stuff allotment" to order it, or they pay for it (because they don't have an allotment or have gone over). So this means that even in the theoretical world where literally zero fans buy a new alternate jersey, at least ~300 of them will be sold, if you assume that each Big Ten team will order its game jerseys in triplicate. Which is at least a guaranteed $30,000 in revenue.

That's extra revenue that can only come from new products and, again, comes with massive profit margins. And all of this is without insisting that at least 100-1000 fans are buying any jersey Nike puts out, no matter how ugly. Seriously. I think it's true: Literally no jersey can monetarily fail for Nike. Even the ones that you never see on the back of a fan.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, as I mentioned for the recruits, I think it would be safe for Nike to count on fans buying an alternate jersey for their school, even if they would have deemed it ugly if it belonged to another school. Just because team loyalty has a blinding effect.

None of this is to explain why the jerseys are so ugly. Alternate jerseys don't have any theoretical limits in terms of how attractive they might be. One of them *could* be beautiful. And I don't think anyone thinks Nike is pumping out bad looks on purpose. But bad looks do feel like an inevitable outcome for X% of new products when you combine "deviating from an old style that everyone loves" and "pushing the limits."

[betarhoalphadelta]

Also, as I mentioned for the recruits, I think it would be safe for Nike to count on fans buying an alternate jersey for their school, even if they would have deemed it ugly if it belonged to another school. Just because team loyalty has a blinding effect.

I dunno... Purdue wore some weird gray things recently. I find them atrocious. I wouldn't buy one. 

Purdue for a while had italicized numbers on their uniforms. I find that to be absolutely an affront to the basic proportions of humanity (we're a vertical species, not slanted). Why would they put the numbers on in a way that it always looked like players were leaning to their left??? No way would I have bought that uniform, and it wasn't even a one-off alternate. 

There have been some things Purdue does that I like. The chromed gold helmets are cool IMHO, as are the matte black helmets. So I'm not against the idea of alternates. But I'm not going to blindly love (or buy) whatever they make just because it's Purdue.

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno... Purdue wore some weird gray things recently. I find them atrocious. I wouldn't buy one.

Purdue for a while had italicized numbers on their uniforms. I find that to be absolutely an affront to the basic proportions of humanity (we're a vertical species, not slanted). Why would they put the numbers on in a way that it always looked like players were leaning to their left??? No way would I have bought that uniform, and it wasn't even a one-off alternate.

There have been some things Purdue does that I like. The chromed gold helmets are cool IMHO, as are the matte black helmets. So I'm not against the idea of alternates. But I'm not going to blindly love (or buy) whatever they make just because it's Purdue.

Just to be clear, that's one of my quaternary points. I'd rather keep the focus on the economic driving forces I mentioned**. But to play along: I'm talking about finding at least 100 fans in a massive fanbase to buy an ugly jersey on top of that alternate jersey's sales to the football team. The Nike business model looks efficient enough to call that a money win. And when the worst case scenario is some kind of win, a company has every incentive to reproduce variations on it as often as possible.

**(Nike's brutal efficiency, jersey modularity, profit margins, opportunity costs/factory space, and then the fact that these schools don't get their Nike gear for "free")

[CWSooner]

Also, as I mentioned for the recruits, I think it would be safe for Nike to count on fans buying an alternate jersey for their school, even if they would have deemed it ugly if it belonged to another school. Just because team loyalty has a blinding effect.

None of this is to explain why the jerseys are so ugly. Alternate jerseys don't have any theoretical limits in terms of how attractive they might be. One of them *could* be beautiful. And I don't think anyone thinks Nike is pumping out bad looks on purpose. But bad looks do feel like an inevitable outcome for X% of new products when you combine "deviating from an old style that everyone loves" and "pushing the limits."

I don't think that Nike's decision-makers consciously decide to make ugly uniforms.
But American culture--hell, Western culture--is esthetically challenged right now, so the default of any new/alternate uniforms is going to be in the direction of ugliness.

[msufan23]

I will say, when they unveiled these via Twitter back in April, a lot of the likes and retweets came from MSU recruiting targets.

I do think they by and large like them.

I personally wonder long term what this is doing for brand identity, or if anyone has even studied that?  Trading short term jersey sales, for long term brand awareness hits.

And who knows, MSU wore those terrible basketball jerseys against Maryland a few years ago, everyone hated them, and we never saw them again.  I've seen fans in every alternate jersey MSU has ever worn...except those.  So whether there is a recruiting bump or not, Nike doesn't care if the jersey doesn't sell.  My guess is that the reason the neon green jerseys never returned, wasn't because a bunch of 35+ year old fans didn't like them, but because they didn't sell.  If these don't sell, I'm guessing they go away too.

I mean I tried to buy that jersey and didnt have much luck finding it anywhere for a decent price. The full neon green looks nice IMO. its mixed with the regular green Im not a fan of.

[ELA]

None of this is to explain why the jerseys are so ugly. Alternate jerseys don't have any theoretical limits in terms of how attractive they might be. One of them *could* be beautiful. And I don't think anyone thinks Nike is pumping out bad looks on purpose. But bad looks do feel like an inevitable outcome for X% of new products when you combine "deviating from an old style that everyone loves" and "pushing the limits."

This is more what I'm getting at.  They have an incentive to make jerseys that will sell.  If these weren't selling, they wouldn't be trending in this direction.

[ELA]

I mean I tried to buy that jersey and didnt have much luck finding it anywhere for a decent price. The full neon green looks nice IMO. its mixed with the regular green Im not a fan of.

You tried to use money to purchase this?  For wearing?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is more what I'm getting at.  They have an incentive to make jerseys that will sell.  If these weren't selling, they wouldn't be trending in this direction.

I'm wishing I hadn't made that comment then because it's distracting from what I think is my stronger point: 

Nike profits when people buy stuff. And that is well facilitated by new stuff to open the wallets of *anyone* satisfied with their old stuff. And, yes: My main bet here is that you'd be shocked by how few purchases it takes for them to consider an alternate jersey "worth it" in terms of producing suffient revenue relative to time/dollars invested in design, manufacture, whatever.

Even then, what matters isn't the success of a single alternate but the average success. Because as we've noted, some of them sell well. And perhaps those are harder to predict for Nike than we expect. Again upping the incentive to push out as many as possible.

[msufan23]

Yup I think they look nice. It's just a lighter green. It's really pretty similar to the standard jersey. I also happen to own a pair of shoes that it would look really with.

[msufan23]

The shorts with the jersey I can't say I'm a fan of

[ELA]

I knew it was bad, hadn't fully realized it was this bad.


https://twitter.com/chrissolari/status/1162030149145104386

Led Arizona State 13-3 going into the 4th, lost 16-13
Led Northwestern 19-14 with 15 seconds left in the 3rd, lost 29-19
Tied with Michigan 7-7, with 2 minutes left in the 3rd, lost 21-7
Trailed Ohio State 9-6 going into the 4th, lost 26-6
Led Nebraska 6-0 midway through the 4th, lost 9-6
Led Oregon 6-0 going into the 4th, lost 7-6

We were even outscored in a couple wins, against CMU (granted against our backups) and Indiana

[MrNubbz]

That's a rough way to go - maddening is the word