Indiana Hoops Team To Wear Nike

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) â€” Converse is out and Nike is in for Indiana's basketball team. <br><br>When Indiana University fired Bob Knight, he took his private contract with Converse with him. The Hoosiers

Monday, October 30th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) â€” Converse is out and Nike is in for Indiana's basketball team.

When Indiana University fired Bob Knight, he took his private contract with Converse with him. The Hoosiers needed shoes, so the university entered into an agreement with Nike.

``We just needed to have equipment,'' interim basketball coach Mike Davis said. ``There's no money in the deal, just equipment. Converse was having problems. Our guys needed shoes. We just got our shoes like two days before we had our first practice. Some guys didn't have shoes then.''

Davis was unsure whether there were plans for entering into a long-term deal with Nike or another company before the end of the year.

Russell Yates, Knight's attorney, did not reveal how much â€” if any â€” of the former coach's outside income came from his shoe deal.

Under Big Ten Conference rules, shoe and apparel contracts between coaches and vendors must include the university. Those rules were enacted after Knight switched his team from Adidas to Converse in the middle of the 1993-94 season. The university was not included as a party in that contract, and later that year the Big Ten put in the new rules.

``Coaches being employees of the universities, using the universities as a base to establish these relationships, it just made good business sense that the universities were involved,'' associate commissioner for the Big Ten Mark Rudner said.