Big Deal You’re Sponsored by Nike…
The jerseys, the pants and the cleats I have seen plenty of teammates get pumped up over those things. Me myself I think the only cosmetic thing that really made say Oh s… was when we got custom fitted mouth pieces. So what it doesn’t take much to make me happy, but after all I’m here to be a student athlete. A few years ago you could catch me and some of my College Football teammates saying “I’m here just for football.” I changed my mindset, and found the true reason I was on a college campus.
The mindset I developed allowed me to say “I am here to get a degree, and do everything in my power to help our football team.” That is the correct mindset and that is something that I don’t see a lot of college football players realizing. The ones that don’t realize it, they usually end up taking an extra semester or two when its time for them to graduate.
When it comes to recruiting new football players, the appearance of the stadium, locker room and campus is a major selling point. Some coaches put a lot of emphasis on the locker room. The locker room wasn’t a selling point for me because, the locker room wasn’t even completed at the time when I was on my visit and gave my commitment. The selling point for me was “loyalty.” When I say that I mean which school truthfully wanted me there. I will touch on this later in this blog when I discuss -choosing the right school for you to play for.
During my last year I noticed that when we had recruits the coaches would always make announcements for the team to clean the locker room for the recruits. Now granted I could see how that might have a tiny bit of influence because our locker room in high school was about the size of the area where the stalls are in my college locker room. Sad but true. But that taught us to appreciate what you have and make the best of it.
Truthfully, I got tired of every other season how we would switch uniforms and everybody would be so happy. The end result -we would still have the same type of season and finish with the same record every year until I graduated. The last uniform I remember wearing was when we were sponsored by adidas, I don’t think it would have helped us if we were sponsored by Under Armor.
One thing I can honestly say about our football apparel is that our program has stepped it up in our travel attire. I remember when I was a freshman and a sophomore, wearing a tight polo shirt with our own khakis and some turf shoes that I think Nike made by a mistake. Then as a junior we got a better than usual quality sweat suit which we were allowed to wear to travel to away games. As a senior the team voted so that we could wear some jeans or khakis with a polo of our choice and boots or sneakers as footwear. Bottom line and I will end on this note, it doesn’t matter what you wear to the game, during the game or after the game because you are still the same player that you were before your team got sponsored by NIKE.