Now that the 2011-2012 bowl season is over does anyone have a scorecard on the results?

Who gives a crap

Nike > Adidas > Under Armour

End of study

Nike>>>>>Under Armour>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>adidas

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

quote:

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Who gives a crap

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+1

Who gives a crap?

People who have played the game and people who don't shop for clothes at Wal Mart.

With all of the uniform threads that have been on this board I would say quite a few. I really don't, but wanted to see if someone kept score.

All of the top 5 teams are Nike

NIKE NOW!

Nike is dildoes.

UnderArmour makes garbage equipment

Nike has a bit more popularity with the athletes, but our contract is with Adidas (and they actually make some pretty nice stuff).

It is what it is... until our contract is up.

lululemon>Nike

Nike is still my fav. It was painful when both my teams (Ags and Michigan) switched to Adidas the same year. One thing Adidas does do better is the retro gear. Their old school logo is so much cooler than the modern one.

I really don't give a rat's ass

I prefer UA for personal workout clothing/athletic wear/casual wear but their jerseys, except for Auburn's are just ok....

If Nike can present a fair contract and get the maroon color right, add larger numbers like LSU or Ohio State then let's go with them

Uniforms affect the outcome of the game. I think it's safe to say that with UA we would have won 8 games this year, and 10 with Nike.

^ fail. we would have been undefeated with nike...and a good coach, and good recruits and a good defense. duh dude.

The Nike uniforms would have been lighter and the proper shade of maroon, thereby allowing our players to stay fresh in the 2nd half and feel confident wearing the same colored jersey from the years that we were actually a good program (the 20th Century).

Long story short, we would not have collapsed in the 2nd half during all those games if we had been wearing Nike.

Not so fast my friend.

Under Armor uses a compression fabric technology to keep muscle fatigue to a minimum and an unparalled ability to wick moisture away from the body, keeping our guys' bodies cool even under the most pressure situations.

Plus we get to chant, "WE MUST PROTECT THIS HOUSE!"

I rest my case.

From a technology stand point, Nike drifit is much better than UA or Adidas.

While Nike is very popular with the crop of kids now, UA is more popular with the younger kids. Is sub quality stuff but they are good at marketing

Amazing that folks actually think Nike/UA or even Adidas have some secret laboratories where they are hard at work developing all this incredible fabric technology and what not. Not to mention some super QC set up where they endlessly test their garments for performance and such.

Not one of those companies owns a fabric mill, dye house, or sewing plant.

They get whoever will make the cheapest thing that comes closest to what they are looking for to sell to them. Lots of facilities that actually do all the real work in the garment, make product for all three of them.

With 20 years of apparel manufacturing experience, and having run facilities that made all of those labels I will tell you all this, UA is the most over hyped and over priced label out there. On a personal level I would rather put on a wooden bill and go make scratch with the chickens than either wear UA stuff or do business with them or for them again.

The best part about switching would be all the A&M shirts would be made by nike

Adidas>>>>>>>UA>Puma>>>>Nike

What a great topic that has never been discussed ...


But seriously nike

appreciate the sentiments RGV, but all of the sports apparel companies test field (or court) worn fabrics. They might not test their t-shirts, etc., but performance apparel is tested. Look it up. I've got some apparel manufacturing experience as well (on the casual side), but have friends that work for Nike and other smaller sports apparel companies. Again, they don't test 90% of what they make, but they test the shite out of their performance apparel.

zmurda:

You are right and I agree. Of course it is "tested", every fabric dye lot is tested. It is supposedly tested before it leaves the dye house and yet again before it goes into sewing.

The companies do test their fabrics, even the smaller ones that I have worked for test their fabrics quite bit.

But all those companies work with fabric mills to "develop" fabrics. Which means the fabric mills bring stuff to them so they choose it to incorporate it or the private label supplier does that and then presents those companies with a good that they buy, usually after some minor tweaking that they call design and development. Nike really does do quite a bit of design and development and Adidas does to a degree. UA, not so much they depend on outside suppliers much more so.

In terms of "performance fabric" that stuff has been around forever. I sewed "performance fabric" for Russell Athletic before it was ever called that. All this hyped stuff is basically a variation in thread counts, knit procedures, dyeing and finishing (hand), and elatic(elastaine) content on what we used to call Lycra in the 80's.

Now, in terms of wicking/moisture mangement and antimicrobial stuff it gets interesting. Most of this fabric is polyester, well how many germs really can find a home in polyester that is derived from oil? Not many. Add some chemicals that stay fast for a while to the finish and waalaa you have anti-microbial. Moisture management is something that has been explained to me like 25 times, and I work in this industry, and I still don't get it.

The company I used to work for, Badger Sportswear was the largest vendor to Adidas for years in this hemisphere and did a roaring business with UA, unfortunantely, also. At the same time it/we developed our own products to compete with those companies, and eventually the owner of the company "fired" both of them as they were too hard and cheap to deal with. He is now much, much more succesful than before. You can buy Badger Sportswear's version of a performance shirt for 40% less than UA, and it is made the same with fabric that comes out of many of the same mills that UA uses.

The supplier that got UA into the big volume business got dropped eventually, but switched their experience and ability to supplying Wal-Mart in performance stuff and they still do.

All that dry fit stuff that people wear nowadays. Go back and compare it to a liesure suit from the 70's. At the base level it is the same, with just different knitting, some of it Warp, techniques and different finished and colors.

All those companies test their garments for durability and such. The "flatlock" stitching that UA made so popular has been around since christ was a corporal and was most commonly used on thermal underwear and some other applications where you did not want a seam, either covered or not. It is not any stronger or any better than a serged seam with coverstiching or a mock safety stitch.

In essence what I am trying to say is that there is very little innovation in the garment business, aside from in marketing. What does exist is lots of "re-inventing" of tried and true techniques and re-naming of things.

Just an FYI, we would test fabric we would get from Asian mills religiously. Lots of it failed. One of the things the Asians do, some not all, is find a roll of fabric of a selected color and always use that in the pre-production testing that is done. It was amazing that we would get the exact same results from a fabric time and time again. Lots of interesting stuff goes on in this, my, business. But it is not nearly as high tech and innovative as companies like UA or even Nike want folks to believe.

Fabrics are basically commodities, the more and better it is, the more expensive it is.

If I ever buy workout or athletic stuff I always buy Russell as they do quite a bit of their own manufacturing and are very dilligent in their QC and other methods. You get way more bang for your buck with Russell and some other less known labels.

Just my $0.02 about something I do know about. I am now out of that end of the business and glad to be so. It is not that interesting to me anymore and way too many personalities in it.

^ good to know RGV...definitely more than I knew. I knew that behind the scenes the mills and such were pretty incestual and even shady. I misunderstood you on the original "testing" thing, but see what you're getting at now. I've actually heard similar things about UA, and am not a fan because of what I've heard and what you just reiterated. Thanks for the input...

>>Who gives a crap<<

>>I really don't give a rat's ass<<

Then why are you posting on this thread?

>>Under Armor uses a compression fabric technology to keep muscle fatigue to a minimum and an unparalled ability to wick moisture away from the body<<

I can't speak to the game uniforms, but I've worn all the workout/running/technical stuff from virtually all companies. UA makes a good product, but their compression stuff isn't up to par with Nike and even some other stuff. Nike stuff by and large feels better and technically works better in terms of moisture management. As far as the latter goes, it isn't a huge difference but UA is in the middle, not the top.

I like some of the UA loose fit stuff, particularly the shorts. They've taken a product that was decent several years ago and made it real good. The green line is very good, almost as good as Nike's best shirt.

UA also makes some good shoes, which is very surprising. They are competitive with Nike in this area, believe it or not.

I won't say Adidas' workout stuff is trash, but I've got tons of Nike, UA, Brooks, NB, Asics, and several lesser known brands but nothing in Adidas. Their casual wear IS trash -- their t-shirts are awful.

>>Go back and compare it to a liesure suit from the 70's. At the base level it is the same<<

You obviously know more about the back end of the business than I do, but I don't really agree with this. The leisure suit you speak of is a double-knit poly while the new poly stuff is a microfiber fabric. Technical definition of each? Beats me, but I know there is a difference. The old poly is heavier and doesn't wick as well -- in fact, the old stuff is little better than cotton. There are also quality differences in fabrics now that really weren't there in the '70s. Russell's moisture management isn't as good as other brands though their fabric is comfortable and their fit is better.

91:

I hear you. I have worked in the rag business a while now, sadly enough, and I get all confused with the textile end of things. What I was alluding/referring to was how the fabric was made at the base level. If I am not mistaken, quite a few performance fabrics are double knits, that is just a knitting method. Some are interlock, which is basically jersey.

Your right in the sense that the yarn type, i.e. the fibers and microfibers, have changed over the years. Obviously there has been modernization and innovation at the textile/chemical level in terms of base product. But in the actual fabric development, say upstream from the yarns, there really has not been that much. Even the "Polar Fleece" process had been known for years, just not ever really marketed in a direct way.

Spandex has been around since the early 60's, yet it was never incorporated into mainstream in terms of athletics for a long time. Why? I have no idea. Bike Athletic, out of Knoxville, Tenn. did in their jockstraps. Best compression shorts I have ever seen were the old Bike ones from when they still existed and produced goods. Excellent shorts. They even had a gusset in them.

Many of the performance loose fit fabrics are very similar to ladies wear fabrics that have been in use for years.

I guess what I am trying to say is that most of this stuff has been around for years. The big difference is that folks today will pay $39.99 for a shirt to work out in, whereas in the past they were going to wear an old P.E. shirt with a property of logo on it. That is why this is all developing, they are taking fabrics, techniques, and other processes that could not be used for cost reasons and putting into athletic wear and calling it new, which I guess it is in a sense, but really only to the user.

UA makes terrible shoes. This is why no teams wear them.

I guess no one did an outfitter scorecard.

I'm no expert, but personally I prefer the Nike compression gear over the UA gear. I dont notice a difference in perormane, but they seem to fit better. Also, I have more Nike gear so they match more of my athletic clothes such as shoes, shorts, socks, Nike Aggie caps and most importantly my Nike A&M football jerseys.

Why did we make the switch from Nike to addidas? Nike o way up on the pricing? Addidas give us a sweetheart deal?

PF flyers

What a bunch of children. Stupid thread, just like the other 50.