tagged: dog fighting, Endorsements, Football, Michael Vick, Nike, Philadelphia Eagles

Vick endorsement deal? Not yet.

Posted by Emmett Jones in Football

Beleaguered Philadelphia Eagles QB, Michael Vick, has an endorsement deal once again.  You may have heard of his suitor.  A company by the name of Nike.  Details at Yahoo!,

“Mike has a long-standing, great relationship with Nike, and he looks forward to continuing that relationship,” his agent, Joel Segal, said Wednesday.

Segal would not reveal terms of the agreement. Nike declined a request for comment.

The deal was announced during a panel discussion at the Sports Sponsorship Symposium by Michael Principe, the managing director of BEST, the agency that represents Vick.

Nike, which signed Vick as a rookie in 2001, terminated his contract in August 2007 after the Atlanta Falcons star filed a plea agreement admitting his involvement in the dogfighting ring. At the time, Nike called cruelty to animals “inhumane, abhorrent and unacceptable” and halted release of his fifth signature shoe, the Air Zoom Vick V.

Back when Vick first signed with the Eagles, Carter had said he was “too toxic for most companies to even consider taking a chance on him.” What’s changed? As Carter noted Wednesday, there has been little backlash to the quarterback’s return to the NFL.

But Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at University of Oregon, isn’t surprised that Nike re-established its relationship with Vick.

“Nike has a history of supporting athletes. I think they are supporting an athlete who still garners attention,” Swangard said. “This is about Michael Vick as the athlete not Michael Vick the prisoner. … When he is inside the lines of the field he is an exciting football player and that’s what a brand like Nike can tap into.”

We’ve seen the reconstruction of professional athletes before.  Kobe Bryant, for example, had the whole Veil, Colorado incident, only to seemingly come back as strong as ever, with a string of endorsement deals, video game covers, and the NBA’s most popular selling jersey.

There has been seemingly little resistance to the Vick-experience, his jersey is even selling well, even without being sold in Pittsburgh-based Dicks Sporting Goods stores…but that doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been any resistance.  When this deal was first announced by main stream media last night, twitter was full of messages like this,

#boycottNike RT @BreakingNews: SportsBusiness Journal: Michael Vick signs endorsement deal with Nike, spokesman says.

Nike, we’re through. RT @BreakingNews SportsBusiness Journal: Michael Vick signs endorsement deal with Nike, spokesman says.

Gross. No more Nikes for us. RT @BreakingNews SportsBusiness Journal: Michael Vick signs endorsement deal with Nike, spokesman says.

No more Nike in this house! @BreakingNews: SportsBusiness Journal: Michael Vick signs endorsement deal with Nike, spokesman says.

Apparently, over the last 12 hours, Nike listened.  Today, they’ve announced that Vick has no endorsement deal with the company.

Nike says it does not have a “contractual relationship” with Michael Vick(notes), a day after the quarterback’s agent announced a deal with the manufacturer.

In a statement released Thursday morning, Nike says it has “agreed to supply product to Michael Vick as we do a number of athletes who are not under contract with Nike.”

So apparently, Nike is providing Vick with equipment, but hasn’t formally endorsed him.

Vick is definitely one of the more intriguing stories in sports history.  Maybe the story itself is still too novel, but at times it seems that the American public is unwilling to ever forgive Vick (of course most have, but the small pockets we see that aren’t forgiving Vick seem a lot larger than what you’ll see with other athletes).  Sports history has had its share of murders, gamblers, cheaters, racists, sexual offenders, adulterers…America has usually not only been quick to forgive these people, but some of them were vigorously defended from the onset (Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger is a recent example that comes to mind).  But Vick, with his dog fighting ring, is arguably the figure that has been and will be the hardest to redeem in sports history.

No one was vowing to boycott Under Armor when Ray Lewis became a spokesperson (or SOBE life water, for that matter).  There weren’t throngs of people outside of Steeler games, looking to protest the fact that Ben Roethlisberger was on the field.  Fans cheered for Kobe Bryant a few years ago, even if sponsors weren’t beating down his door.

Simply put, what is it about dogs, that we don’t see with people?  Are dogs more highly valued in our society than someone claiming rape? or people involved in a double homocide?  Are people able to intrinsically connect all dogs together (dogs that died are like my dog!) and not people? Or like I said, maybe the situation with Vick is still too fresh?

I’m still not sure.  Maybe we’ll get a better understanding about where we’re at with the Vick experience once he officially gets an endorsement deal.