Random question. Are runners at schools with a shoe sponsor expected to wear that shoe for training?

It may depend on the school. Both my sons ran for a school sponsored by Under Armour and I don't believe anyone on their teams actually ran in UA. I also believe the same was largely true at Wisconsin, also a UA school. I think it's the highly visible teams, football and basketball where athletes are required to use the sponsors shoe but this is the sort of thing one might ask a coach about.

Notre dame? Their football overshadows everything else

I ran for a New Balance school and we weren't expected to train in them but if you were at a meet or anywhere you'd be photographed you had to wear NB gear. We all threw on the NB stuff for practice when flotrack came to do the work out wednesday, but a lot of guys trained in different stuff regularly.

If you - not AD, coach, or university president, but literally, exactly you - didn't sign anything, you have no obligation in this area. Feel free to wear anything, even in races, and don't feel you need to hide it. And yes, I got an A in Contract Law.

Interesting. And with that A in contract law would you opine you can’t be held to team rules or be cut from the team for ignoring the coach?

But it’s good to know your expert opinion that Nike or Adidas won’t be suing a kid.

Nobody stopped Nico from wearing Nike for 2 seasons - 1 XC, 1 track - at NAU. I don't know whether it was peer pressure, shoes from high school finally wearing out/parents not paying for more, coach hassling him, or what.... but he did switch to adidas eventually. Did anyone try to stop him from running in a non-school shoe very visibly and in front of cameras (remember the pic in a thread on this Board)? Probably. But he still wore orange Dragonflies. Nothing happened.

This is not speculation. It happened. He was very high-profile. He was frequently photographed. A photographer actually caught him carrying shoes before or after a race (you may remember the pic in the thread - the shoes were in his hand). And he ignored the school's official sponsorship contract. He had no contract nor any obligation to any shoe brand. If his collegiate career since then is what you call 'cut from the team' then wear whatever you want. Nico did.

to be fair, nico did "attempt" to hide that he was wearing a school sponsored shoe. same was at my school as we were asics sponsored. most teammates loved victorys so we would paint the nike logo white or tape over it on race day - and was instructed to do so by our coach. coaches all knew and were okay with us racing in non team issue spikes but had to be covered up (socks too).

True, he had taken the swoosh off just like Josette Norris used to. If you remember that thread referenced above, posters thought the drawn on stripes to make them look adidas-like was comical. It was obvious to posters they were Nike. It was most certainly obvious to the coaches and everybody at NAU, too. Thing is, he got away with it. He violated no contract (as pointed out above, he didn't have one although he may now - just like Tuohy does) or law or, apparently, school rule since they knew and didn't stop him.

You can wear whatever you want, you just have to pay for it out of pocket. Although I do know some schools where if you are one of the top athletes the coach will buy you shoes (assuming this is probably technically not allowed). In highly visible races (conference meets, regionals, nationals) you will typically be expected to tape over the logos if you aren't running in your school's sponsored shoes

I’ve run for both a Nike and UA school. For Nike we were issued only those and required to wear them unless you had a written medical exemption for another shoe brand. If you got the doctor’s note, the school would order the other shoe brand “under the table.” At the UA school, no one runs in those and the gear dept purchases trainers in other non-competitor brands. (Anything but Nike or Adidas). Hoka, brooks, new balance etc. are fair game. You can also race in anything, including Nike, but have to buy them out of pocket. Only rule is to wear either UA or socks on the podium.

My youngest a D1 AA. Can train in anything but has to race in the sponsoring brand. Trains and races in the sponsoring brand. Only time foot problems arose was when other shoe brands explored.

Same thing here. My sons ran for a school that was adidas when they started, and then switched to UA. The adidas rep gave the athletes a significant discount on training shoes, and they got free spikes and XC shoes from the school. I don't think any of the distance runners ran in UA shoes in the year they were the sponsor.

Except the runner Norris wasn’t smart enough to realize that the bottom of the shoes had Nike in it so photos picked it up anyway. 😂. Not the brightest lightbulb in the room in general

Exactly! I remember the camera, when it was behind the pack, showing the bottoms of the shoes. One particular meet prompted posts on some thread about it. I had watched it and thought it was funny we all knew....but didn't Reebok notice this too? Unlike the collegiate runners discussed, she actually DID have a contract that any court would gladly enforce. If she got away with it, I wouldn't worry a whole lot about schools that say you 'have to' wear UA or whatever.

I ran at a school that had a contract with Nike. We were all given Nike spikes and a couple of trainers. No one said that we had to wear them but everyone did. I know being pretty broke I was going to wear the shoe that was free. Had the very first Pegasus model that came out as well as some Columbias if anyone remembers those.

All the reebok athletes did this because they don't have super shoe. I saw Justyn knight ,Josette Norris, Amy Eloise, Paige Stoner all wearing Nikes. But saw in a statement from brooks and reeboks that the athletes could wear competitor shoes until they released their own, so they had permission. Probably just removed side logo to not give free promotion to nike.

I ran for an adidas school. We were expected to run in adidas shoes for practice and anytime we wore athletic shoes on athletic department property. We had an athlete who was given a waiver to wear New Balance instead. That was several years ago though.