:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/31757455/166240485.0.jpg)
Louisville has signed an enormous five-year, $40 million deal to keep its teams outfitted by adidas, according to a reportby Brett McMurphy of ESPN. U of L is expected to make the announcement official at a 2 p.m. press conference on Thursday.
Since 2001, adidas has dressed all 23 of U of L's varsity sports. With the rise of the program in recent years and a move to the ACC looming, the company was reportedly willing to pay top dollar to keep outfitting the Cards through 2019.
In January, Notre Dame and Under Armour announced a 10-year deal worth $90 million, the nation's most valuable, sources told ESPN.com.
Louisville's $8 million per year deal is slightly below Notre Dame's, but similar to that which adidas signed with Michigan (10 years, $82 million).
Louisville's brand has increased dramatically with the Cardinals' recent on-field success. In the 2012-13 school year, Louisville became the first school to win a BCS bowl game (Sugar), have both its men's and women's basketball teams in the Final Four (the men were NCAA champions) and have its baseball team reach the College World Series in the same season.
This news is bound to be met with repeated "Nike" cries, but if the company that made the uniforms we wore to beat Florida in the Sugar Bowl and win the national championship in basketball wants to offer us one of the nation's most lucrative apparel deals, then I'm pretty okay with it.
I only ask that you make our postseason basketball unis for 2015 gross enough to get us back to the Final Four.
