I love the sidestep of the issue of you not being able to read the article this entire discussion is predicated on to figure out that she was getting 70% haircut, not a 30% one.
We have no idea about the terms of the contract, but I'd sure be upset to be getting 30% of what I was getting before and still make the Worlds or Olympic teams for a company that clearly doesn't value me. Which would be...doing the same work and not getting the same results, actually. And yeah, athletics contracts are performance-based, but Nike's been lauded up, down, and sideways for how smart they are at marketing and still couldn't figure out how to make their sprinting superstar make them money as a pregnant sprinting superstar. That's just dumb. That's dumb business from a gigantic company that should be smart enough to know better, which doesn't make sense and likely belies a desire to just get out of the contract altogether. Which, again, is a normal way that contract negotiations can go, but one that I personally think was not a beneficial decision for Nike in the long term.
Never said they were. You're restating what I've already said. It was a business decision, I think it was a bad one and shows very short-sighted thinking on Nike's part.
Yeah, totally. Those guys suck. We need fewer fans. The fans are the problem. The fans, who root for basically anyone who isn't a known doper. Nike doesn't sell the bulk of their shoes based on what's going on the track. They're not selling Frees to people who are even aware that there's a national championship going on right now. They're selling those, and 4%s and NEXT%s and basketball shoes and training shoes to the people who think shoes matter more than running consistently and follow Darren Rovell on Twitter for reasons other than roasting him.
I'm not concerned for her specifically, although I find her situation specifically absurd. I'm concerned for the sport. I'm concerned at the fact that you're licking Nike's laces as they show repeatedly through revealed contracts that they don't care at all about their athletes—young (Brazier) or old (Felix)—unless they're at the very top of their field at that very moment (Semenya, Shalane). And they've got a 20 year contract with USATF. They're in bed with USATF, an organization which has already repeatedly shown itself to have atrocious judgement at the helm of domestic athletics, and want to use the lack of viewership as a way to write stingy contracts that almost always have them come out with egg on their faces whenever an athlete reveals what they're up against. But they don't seem to be working particularly hard to grow the sport either, which is weird given the market opportunity they have created for themselves in the marathon. The thinking when it comes to athlete contracts seems so very short-sighted on every case that ends up public.
You're welcome to white knight for Nike here. I'm sure they really appreciate your support and loyalty. But it's always good to try to critique even the institutions we like and call them out for lame behavior when they exhibit it. I don't feel comfortable with the way Nike writes its contracts with many of its athletes. You prefer to view athletes as only the sum of their efforts on the track or road or trail or field. That's an outdated mindset that doesn't line up with the brand's strategy of spending massive amounts of money on marketing campaigns focused on individual athletes, and prominently featuring an athlete that literally does not play a sport anymore. But you're free to think what you want. I think athletes can be valuable for brands in more than the sum of their athletic achievements, and so does Nike, just not when it comes to Allyson Felix, who is quite possibly the most well-known American sprinter by Americans.