Is an NIL deal really all that interesting at this point? I guess it might be mildly interesting that an Oregon athlete took a Diadora deal, but whatever.
I suppose it is to guys from my era. We were a consistent top 3 D1 and team went from Adidas to Reebok to Nike in the span of 5 years. Getting kit was like a revelation to us each season. The point is, there certainly wasn't any money involved. We stashed half of our meal per diem envelope given to us for race weekends to have as extra cash during the week.
Good on them for getting something for themselves. The NCAA product is the athletes, but they never gave a damn thing to the athletes and still don't. But they required athletes to refuse any compensation from ANY source. Slave labor force. The ideal of any big corporation.
My XC team was top 5 NCAA one year. We got one pair of free training shoes. We reused our sweats for 4 years and only got a singlet and shorts every 2 years. I'm glad things have changed. Still have that heavy cotton hoodie warmup.
So they clearly care a lot about the sport and are willing to set up support systems for young athletes. but do we know anything about how good the shoes actually are?
Knight is 87 yrs old and worth $32 Billion. I'm pretty sure nothing bothers him at this point. He's certainly not going to care if a guy like Birnbaum runs in Diadora gear.