The University of Louisville is getting the most attention amidst the wide-ranging FBI investigation that includes several adidas sponsored universities.
Perhaps it’s because of the eye-popping dollar amounts that have been reported or the swift decision to terminate basketball coach Rick Pitino, but the Cardinals are center stage for all the wrong reasons.
On Tuesday, ESPN reported that Louisville is reconsidering their 10-year, $160 million sponsorship agreement with adidas.
The university announced the agreement only recently and it wasn’t scheduled to go into effect until 2018. However, considering the three stripe brand’s involvement in the scandal, interim-President Greg Postel faces a difficult moral and contractual conundrum.
Postel hasn’t definitively decided that the agreement will be vetoed, though he hasn’t taken the possibility off the table either.
“It would have been nice to know more about the [adidas] agreement,” Postel said. He also said talks of cancelling the contract with Adidas is “premature” at this point.
Adidas executive Jim Gatto allegedly supplied a Louisville coach with $100,000 to pay the family of five-star recruit Brian Bowen so that he would commit to the school.
This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the FBI investigation.
Adidas is a major apparel supplier in the NCAA, and more university’s will inevitably become implicated.
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