Pitino Surfaces To Talk About Adidas & Langford

If you missed it, former Louisville coach Rick Pitino caused a bit of a stir Thursday when he suggested that Adidas did everything it could to keep Romeo Langford at an Adidas school.

As he correctly notes, it’s not surprising. It’s only surprising that Adidas, involved in a federal case with employees indicted and facing jail time over fraud charges related to recruiting, was so indiscreet.

In a sense though, what choice do they have? That’s what the game is played. You have to get people to endorse your shoes in order to sell them. Adidas’s business is not the same as the NCAA’s.

We heard this recently and found it hard to believe but apparently it’s quite true. Remember a while back that former Blue Devil Dahntay Jones lost his extensive sneaker collection? They were auctioned off when payment wasn’t made to a storage facility.

According to the Business Wars podcast which focused on Adidas vs. Nike, there’s essentially a sneaker exchange very similar to the stock market. We had no idea.

So there’s a lot more to the Shoe Wars than meets the eye.

It is pretty fascinating that Pitino, who a few weeks ago was supposedly pitching himself for the Siena job, would come out to the Washington Post and discuss this as openly as he has. It certainly can’t help his job prospects.

• From Pitino, more detail on Louisville, adidas and recruiting