When he arrived here just under a year before negotiations would begin, then-new Auburn Athletic Director John Cohen was acutely aware of the apparel contracts awaiting him after he got through his first major task of hiring a football coach.

On Sept. 1, 2023, before Cohen wrapped a full year at Auburn, he had a fully open negotiating period with any possible apparel provider. Cohen, coming to Auburn from Mississippi State, already had a relationship with Adidas which serves as the apparel sponsor for the Bulldogs.

Yet it was clear from Auburn fans online they wanted to move on from Under Armour which had been partnered with Auburn since 2006. They wanted a move to Nike.

Ultimately, Auburn wound up picking Nike. But details of the deal are scarce — and may remain so. Auburn will stay with Under Armour until the new contract begins in July 2025.

“I think Nike has set a certain standard on the American collegiate scene that we wanted to be a part of,” Cohen said.

Cohen sat down with AL.com in mid-May to discuss what went into this process.

How did Auburn reach this decision?

Staying with a previous apparel company is a much simpler choice. Nothing has to change other than signing a new piece of paper.

But Cohen said his process was open to each of the three major brands: sticking with Under Armour or a move to Nike or Adidas.

During August 2023, before Auburn was open to negotiating with other apparel providers, Under Armour executive and founder Kevin Plank made trips to visit Auburn. Before Auburn wound up on a final decision, Plank was controversially put back into the role of Under Armour CEO.

Throughout Cohen’s term as athletic director at Auburn, he has often broken his decisions down to the term “functionality” and how something might fit the “stakeholders.”

Cohen said he led several panels talking to student-athletes about what they liked about Under Armour, what they didn’t and what they wanted to see in a new apparel deal whether it be with Under Armour or a new company.

“Student-athletes are like everybody else, they all have preferences,” Cohen said. “Many of them did talk about how certain shoes, certain equipment fit them personally. And we listen to that as well. I will tell you that if we brought 100 of our athletes in this room, you’re not going to get a consensus. Our student-athletes gave us great information about the product on both sides. We listened.”

Athletes at other schools that are no longer with Under Armour, namely UCLA, have voiced concerns over the provided footwear. Cohen spoke with athletic directors at other schools wearing different apparel brands, too, for insight.

And while not a consensus, the prevailing opinion preferred Nike. That came even from many athletes who won’t be at Auburn to experience the change, anyway.

“I think Nike is unbelievable and I think Under Armour is unbelievable, but obviously for recruiting purposes, I think a lot of kids when they grow up, all they see is Nike,” Auburn shortstop Cooper Weiss — a graduate student — said. “They relate a lot of great athletes to Nike and I think it’s just moving forward to the future, a lot of athletes have been very excited for that.”

Does this deal make sense?

Nike is the safe choice.

There’s a certain “cool factor” to Nike apparel, the top brand on the market that college kids want to wear. The 2010 Auburn football team is the last school to win a football national championship not wearing Nike or a subset of Nike like Michigan winning in Jordan brand.

Dr. Jonathan A. Jensen — a University of North Carolina associate professor whose nationally recognized research in sports marketing includes a paper published in November in the Journal of Sport Management heavily focusing on apparel sponsorships — said this is not a good time for the apparel sponsorship marketplace.

He said the five-year, $47 million contract Adidas signed with Texas A&M in 2022 may be one of the last for a while to approach the $10 million-per-year value. Jensen could only speculate about Auburn’s situation given that no copy of the contract has been made publicly available.

“If you’re going to take a lot less money then you might as well be with Nike,” Jensen said. “And you know, not get flack about the fact that, say, Alabama’s with Nike and you’re with Adidas, right?”

And in turn, Jensen posited a return to Under Armour may not have been possible. As Under Armour’s market value plummets, Jensen said his research showed the company trying to get out of deals it already had. In 2022, Under Armour paid UCLA more than $67 million as a settlement after UCLA sued the company for abruptly ending a record-setting 15-year, $280 million contract.

“Assuming that Under Armour was out, they were leaving, if you’re between Nike and Adidas, Nike is going to be the safe choice,” Jensen said. “None of your coaches are going to complain about the equipment. You’re not going to hear about it on the recruiting trail. So to me, it’s going with the market leader, industry leader is just a safe choice.”

How the apparel might impact recruiting has come up frequently in this process. Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze said it isn’t something many recruits talk to him about. Jensen agrees, saying the apparel deal doesn’t matter much for football.

But it does matter, Jensen said, for basketball. He said Auburn is experiencing its best years of basketball in program history despite Under Armour. There is still data to be collected on how much the modern world of Name, Image and Likeness deals in recruiting juxtaposes with the apparel a basketball team might wear, Jensen said. But he said basketball recruits have shown a much stronger affinity for Nike or Adidas clothing, which have generally pumped more money into the sport than Under Armour.

Yet all of that is still conjecture because it isn’t clear exactly how much money Nike is paying Auburn.

Why is there no copy of the contract available?

Auburn utilized its athletics foundation, Tigers Unlimited, for part of the negotiating process. The contract, Cohen said, is explicitly between Nike and Tigers Unlimited.

As such, the contract is not subject to public records. AL.com has previously requested a copy of the contract through Auburn’s records office.

Auburn’s previous deal with Under Armour was obtained via public records requests. That contract, signed in 2015 and expired in June 2025, paid Auburn $78.2 million dollars. The deal included stock in Under Armour which saw its value plummet over the course of the deal.

Cohen said the depreciating market value of Under Armour was not a strong consideration in this process. When asked, he again emphasized which brand best suited the “functionality” Auburn was searching for.

Tigers Unlimited is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that is best described as the fundraising arm of Auburn’s athletics department. That’s why its business dealings are not public record.

“Foundations at most universities are already involved in contractual negotiations or connections to an athletic department,” Cohen said. “Tigers Unlimited supplies scholarship aid. Tigers Unlimited supplied equipment in some cases. They help with coaching and personnel salaries. There’s already that connection, and it’s certainly not a reach for them to be involved in many aspects of an athletic department.”

But several large Nike deals are publicly available. Texas and Nike agreed to a 15-year, $250 million deal in 2015. Michigan and Nike agreed to an 11-year deal worth $127.12 million in 2016, the same year Nike also made a massive 15-year, $252 million deal with Ohio State — the value of which was publicly posted in an Ohio State press release.

Auburn’s arch-rival Alabama is a fellow Nike school, but signed a much smaller, quieter deal worth $63 million which is set to expire in 2025.

Many of the major apparel deal’s values are publicly available. Auburn’s isn’t — and it’s a small example of a trend to keep information out of the “public eye,” Jensen said.

An article published in Sportico details author Daniel Libit filing lawsuits after being denied public records requests for various contracts agreed upon with, in this case, Wisconsin’s athletics foundation. Using the courts, Libit ultimately got the contract he initially requested.

Auburn has not publicly discussed an explicit reason why the contract is not made available. Jensen has theories based on his research.

“I have Nike’s largest agreements with Texas and Ohio State and Michigan,” Jensen said. “And we know for a fact that Auburn’s agreement is not in line with those. So to me, it’s more probably more about Auburn not wanting to get grief because their contract does not match up with the largest and probably is less than Alabama’s, and Alabama’s is not even close to one of the largest.”

“We’re not going to make decisions based on what others around us are doing,” Cohen said. “Under Armour worked for us for a long time. And again, we won championships in Under Armour. This was an internal decision, not necessarily a decision influenced by anybody around us.”

What happens between now and the start of the Nike contract?

The same day Auburn announced the deal with Nike, it began thinking about placing orders.

“I can tell you, it’s not an easy transition to go from one company to the next,” Cohen said. “You look at your closet, and everything is something different. And that’s something that has to be accounted for in a decision as well.”

Regardless of what the outcome would be, Cohen emphasized his appreciation for the partnership with Under Armour, and especially so throughout the breakup.

“We had a long-standing contractual agreement with Under Armour, they were great partners,” Cohen said. “A lot of historical Auburn events happened including a national championship, several national championships in Under Armour gear.”

Cohen said it can take up to 14 months to get all the new gear ordered for an apparel sponsor change and get everything in place for the start of an upcoming contract. Auburn announced the deal in April, giving it exactly 14 full months before the Nike deal takes effect.

“We’re not gonna sprint around campus and make sure that Auburn people are all wearing Nike gear.” Cohen said. “It’s going to be a transitional time.”

Auburn immediately sent Nike some of its own Under Armour gear so it could begin drafting plans for future uniforms and apparel and begin placing orders. Auburn football is simple given the historic nature of the uniform. But this is about every sport, not just football.

Cohen said Auburn does not plan on straying from traditional uniforms with a new provider.

“There’s a lot of ordering and a lot of education,” Cohen said of steps between now and the start of the new deal. “Nike guys just came to see us to make sure that we understood how the ordering process works. Things that we may or may not know about their product. And again, our coaches and our staff, our equipment people are gonna have to make decisions quickly to have them ready for the fall of 2025.”

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]