Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Under Armour Seeks to Do for Maryland What Nike Did for Oregon

Under Armour uses Coach Randy Edsall's football players as part of its research and development department, when it tests new products on campus.Credit...Katherine Frey/The Washington Post, via Getty Images

Within a few years, the midcentury red-brick field house in the center of the University of Maryland campus will be a glassy, sunlit home of medical facilities and classrooms, as well as an athletic conditioning center, a locker room and three football fields — two outdoors and one inside.

The transformation of historic Cole Field House, the university’s former basketball arena, signifies a grander plan being carried out in College Park: Maryland is trying to emulate the University of Oregon, riding the largess of a multibillion-dollar apparel company to athletic prominence.

Athletic departments throughout the country watched with envy in recent years as Phil Knight, a founder of Nike and an Oregon alumnus, donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help propel the Ducks from relative obscurity to the upper echelon of college sports.

“We are the University of Nike,” Oregon declared unapologetically. Now, 2,800 miles east, Maryland is positioning itself as the University of Under Armour, thanks to the founder and chief executive of Nike’s ascendant rival.

As the Terrapins begin their second year in the Big Ten Conference next week, the university is striving to establish a nationally relevant program in football, the sport around which all others financially revolve in big-time college athletics. Central to that goal is Kevin Plank, a 43-year-old Maryland graduate and former Terrapins football player. Mr. Plank is the founder and chief executive of Under Armour, which expects to bring in nearly $4 billion in gross revenue this year and has soared past Adidas to become the second-largest sports-apparel company in the country.

“I saw the beginnings of what Nike did with Oregon,” said Maryland’s athletic director, Kevin Anderson, who grew up on the West Coast and previously worked at Stanford, Cal and Oregon State. “And that’s been our conversation from Day 1 — that we can and do have that kind of relationship.”

“Before Nike got involved with the University of Oregon,” Mr. Anderson added, “nobody knew where Eugene was.”

Under Armour is trying to similarly put College Park on the map.

“Our brand, and at some level, our business, has really grown up with Maryland — in Maryland, and with the university around the corner,” said Adam Peake, Under Armour’s executive vice president for global marketing. “We’ve helped each other grow.”

Image
Kevin Plank, founder and chief executive of Under  Armour, is also a former Maryland football player and has pledged a $25 million gift to the university.Credit...G Fiume/Maryland Terrapins, via Getty Images

(Mr. Plank declined to discuss his company’s partnership with Maryland.)

Though still much smaller than Nike, Under Armour has secured beachheads that no other would-be Nike rival has, and it may pose a threat to the Oregon-based company over the long haul. David Weiner, a senior research analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities, said there were indications that Nike and Under Armour could engage in “much more of a cage match in the coming years.”

Under Armour and Maryland signed a 10-year contract extension last year that will pay the university nearly $33 million in cash and gear. Under Armour already tests new products on campus, including a new so-called ungrabbable fabric, using athletes as part of its research-and-design process. Randy Edsall, the Maryland football coach, said players were sometimes “the first to put everything on — uniforms, shoes, gloves, you name it.”

After all, as Mr. Peake explained, “The faster you can be, the better you can be as a brand.”

The playbook for such an arrangement was written by Nike. Oregon’s $95 million Football Performance Center was completed two years ago, courtesy of a gift from Phil and Penny Knight. It features rugs woven by hand in Nepal, furniture sourced from Italy and floors made of Brazilian wood. Nike stirred a revolution in team uniforms by outfitting the Ducks loudly and proudly — in verdant green, neon yellow and charcoal.

Maryland, and Under Armour, followed with their Maryland Pride uniforms, which feature an almost Cubist deconstruction of the Maryland state flag’s taxicab yellow, wavy checkers and clover-capped crosses. Under Armour’s investment in the summer basketball scene — long dominated by Nike — also seems to be paying dividends for the Terrapins. Maryland’s top recruit last year, the sophomore point guard Melo Trimble, played for a team sponsored by Under Armour before college. So did the freshman Diamond Stone, considered by many the class of 2015’s best center.

If all goes to plan, the renovations at Cole Field House — including the football facilities, to be called the Terrapin Performance Center — will be ready for the 2018 season, spurred by a $25 million lead gift from Mr. Plank.

These facilities, according to promotional material, will be “unmatched in Division I sports.”

The university president, Wallace D. Loh, who since arriving in 2010 has encouraged more entrepreneurship among Maryland’s 37,000 students, said of Mr. Plank’s desire to converge business strategy and athletics: “There is truly a meeting of the minds. We are soul mates on this.”

Mr. Plank’s influence at Maryland does not extend to the hiring and firing of coaches, according to Maryland and Under Armour officials. But he is not a passive check-writing machine. Mr. Anderson said his interview process, which culminated with his hiring as the athletic director in 2010, included an interview with Mr. Plank. He said that he and Mr. Plank were involved with the brainstorming session at Under Armour’s waterfront headquarters in Baltimore that spawned the first edition of the Maryland Pride uniforms.

“From the very beginning, he’s set some very clear boundaries and told me he was here to support the school, me and the athletic department,” Mr. Anderson said. “He knows our mission, and he wants to prepare all students for success.”

Recalling his interview with Mr. Plank during the hiring process, Mr. Anderson added: “He asked me what my vision was with Maryland. I said we’re a top-10 program and win national championships.”

Image
Under Armour and Maryland signed a 10-year contract extension last year that will pay the university nearly $33 million in cash and gear.Credit...Rob Carr/Getty Images

Under Armour’s founding mythology is interwoven with Maryland. As the special-teams captain of the Terrapins’ football team, Mr. Plank, who grew up in Kensington, Md., came to loathe his sweat-stained cotton T-shirts. An inveterate entrepreneur — one story has him selling roses on campus on Valentine’s Day — Mr. Plank started a business selling sweatproofed exercise clothes out of his trunk after graduating in 1996.

Mr. Plank went on to fortify his company’s connections to his home state. The first Under Armour television commercial featured the former Maryland defensive end Eric Ogbogu. Maryland was the first college Under Armour signed to an all-school deal. An early endorser was the former Baltimore Ravens star linebacker Ray Lewis, and Under Armour’s website touts its relationship with the “Baltimore native Michael Phelps.”

“Maryland is one of the greatest schools that we have in this country,” Mr. Plank said last year at a ceremony announcing the winner of Cupid’s Cup, an entrepreneurial competition he sponsors at Maryland’s business school (named for that long ago Valentine’s Day endeavor), “and it’s our job to show people why.”

Maryland, whose football program has rarely been nationally competitive, is under increased pressure to improve. State financing for Maryland’s flagship university has declined recently, forcing the institution to find money elsewhere. The university joined the Big Ten last year, a financially-driven decision that tested the loyalty of a fan base that cherished longstanding rivalries with Atlantic Coast Conference teams like North Carolina and Duke.

After the move was announced, Mr. Loh said he required a security detail, but he added, “In this era of fiscal constraints — meaning, there’s less state funding, and so much federal research funding is uncertain — my model is, partner or perish.”

In November, Maryland announced its plan for Cole, which has not hosted Terps basketball since it was replaced by the Xfinity Center for the 2002-3 season.

The renovated facility is expected to house a new headquarters for the campus’s Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which encourages students to develop original products and start their own businesses (including, occasionally, with Under Armour’s aid, as with a new kind of sticky football glove).

It is also expected to include the university’s sports medicine center, which will conduct research around hot-button issues like brain trauma.

But the new Cole’s signature feature will be the Terrapin Performance Center.

Last year, Maryland said it would raise $105 million, mostly from private donors, and that a $25 million lead gift had been pledged — by Mr. Plank.

According to Francis Kelly, a former state senator who is on the university’s Board of Regents, Mr. Anderson had long sought a closer link between Maryland’s sports medicine program — which is based in Baltimore, where the University of Maryland medical school is — and the teams in College Park. Mr. Plank, Mr. Kelly said, vocally supported Mr. Anderson’s wish.

“He was the linchpin, no question about it,” Barry Gossett, the vice chairman of the Board of Regents, said of Mr. Plank. The board approved the project with only one dissenting vote, from the student representative. According to Mr. Gossett, $45 million in private funds has been pledged, and a university spokesman said another $39 million is in “active discussion” and solicitations on another $34.5 million have been scheduled.

According to the plan, $25 million will come from the athletic department, which now has a much larger annual windfall thanks to its membership in the Big Ten, and the final $25 million will come from the state.

Three former student leaders wrote an op-ed article in The Baltimore Sun arguing that the $50 million in athletic and state funds should instead be spent on academic buildings and need-based financial aid.

“We understand that there are wealthy donors and powerful alumni who brought this proposal forward,” they wrote. “But the university must ultimately be accountable to the people of Maryland over merely those who write big checks.”

Tom McMillen, a former Maryland congressman and star basketball player for the Terrapins who was the sole member of the Board of Regents to vote against joining the Big Ten, said the Cole plan was worthwhile.

“The tremendous sports-medicine complex, the iconic facility in the middle of campus and the entrepreneurial incubation center make this a tremendous facility for the campus,” he said.

Athletes and coaches seem to support Under Armour’s pronounced presence on campus. William Likely, a cornerback on the football team, called Maryland “the school that you want to play for” because of its uniforms and facilities. Mr. Edsall, the coach, said he regarded his relationship with Mr. Plank and Under Armour as “a great partnership.”

“They’re helping us to get better,” he said, “and we’re helping them.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Nike Got Ducks. Under Armour Gets Terrapins. . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT