When I read this story yesterday it really pissed me off.  I know it shouldn’t.  But it did.

It seems that University of Central Florida player Marcus Jordan aka Michael Jordan’s son wants to wear his father’s named shoe as he suits up for the basketball team.  The problem is that the university has a contract with Adidas. When an apparel company sponsors a program, they give away free shoes, uniforms, sweats, warmups, baseball caps and everything else the company thinks it can slap a logo on so that you can represent their brand.   All the gear a guy ever wants is at his disposal.  Not to mention the school also received a lot of cash from the company to have their players wear their stuff.  According to ESPN that cash for UCF is $3 million per year.

Well Marcus in the spirit of dear old dad doesn’t understand that simply because he can have as much free Air Jordan gear as his heart desires, neither he nor the school is actually a signed to a Nike/Jordan deal. 

As a matter of fact, Marcus Jordan isn’t even a top 200 college player.  If it were not for his father, no one would know his name. 

This reminds me of when his dad famously went ‘cover up’ with the American flag as his weapon of choice during the olympic games in 1992.  Jordan was obviously with Nike and his own label but Team USA had been sponsored by Reebok and thus had Reebok made uniforms and warmups. While the actual uniforms didn’t have a company logo on them, the team warm up jacket did.  Jordan, while standing on the podium, put the large flag over his shoulder as if he were a proud American when in reality he simply wanted to cover the Reebok logo.  On one hand it’s understandable that he was in a competetive shoe business and didn’t want his image associated with a competing company.  Equally true however is that Jordan didn’t have to play in the olympics.  He could have paid more money to Team USA than Reebok did and had his logo on everyone’s gear.  But he didn’t.  Instead he used the opportunity and reaped the benefits while doing something shewed and calculating while masking patriotism.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that young Marcus thinks he’s also better than everyone else on his team, and at his school.

The fact is Marcus can rep his father’s gear everyday of the week in class.  He can wear Jordan’s in practice.  But in the game he represents the University of Central Florida not Air Jordan.  Its a shame the school will bow down to this foolishness based on being scared that this average player will leave and go to some other school where they can say, “Hey, that’s Michael Jordan’s son on our team!”

Shutever!

As for the people at Adidas;  

If Marcus shows up in a game with some Air Jordan’s on… they would be well served to yank that contract right out from under them.  Let Marcus sponsor the team.  Maybe he should coach it too!  Maybe all the fans should be required to wear Jordan gear.

I digress~