Auburn’s Relationship With Under Armour: AN UPDATE

On December 7, I blew the lid off the story about how Under Armour might actually hate Auburn. Through statements from unnamed sources to off-the-record comments from people who actually live in Auburn to just downright good journalism, I was able to uncover the story of the century. The shockwaves of that story were felt all across the sportswear universe and I am here to report back on an important update.

It seems our friends in Baltimore might have gotten the message.

We did it! On December 7th, I called out Under Armour for its misguided marketing and for ignoring the love Cam Newton and Auburn have for one another and now on December 15 there are new Cam Newton Auburn cleats that someone other than Cam will actually wear. Maybe.

At least they are wearing them in practice.

If Auburn were to wear these cleats in the Peach Bowl, it would break the trend of wearing boring white cleats that Auburn has had going all season. If you remember back to last season, Auburn debuted orange, blue, and white cleats and wore all three in various games. For whatever reason, that was scrapped and this season the Tigers wore the same white cleats in every contest. Zero of the tigers wore C1N cleats for the second straight season. Unlike Pat Mahomes, who wore C1N cleats last season while QB at Texas Tech.

Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

Seriously Under Armour? Anyway, this is exciting news, and it is obviously due to the grassroots campaign started by yours truly and picked up on by so many of you on twitter dot com. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean the dream has been fully realized.

So here I am, Under Armour, just a guy telling a multi-billion dollar company he is willing to give it more money just to wear a piece of “performance cotton” or whatever with C1N and an Auburn logo on it. It’s really not that big of a deal. Oh, and those C1N Auburn sneakers in an 11.5. Those are my two requests, and I am willing to pay for them.

I still have a sneaking suspicion that these cleats represent a one-off and won’t translate to any merchandise actually being available for purchase by Auburn fans. Call me jaded, call me calloused, but at least I understand I can’t always get what I want.

For the record, I actually really like Under Armour’s products. I run in their shoes and gear almost every day and am ecstatic that they are Auburn’s supplier and not Adidas. They have done cool stuff with the basketball uniforms and have not screwed with the football uniforms much at all. I have very few complaints about what they have done for Auburn and I would wear their gear either way. I just want some dang orange Cam Newton sneakers. Auburn has the most athletes with a signature shoe in history (other than UNC), and I just want to capitalize on how cool that is.

Look at all this Auburn-related heat from the greatest Auburn athletes of all time.

Bo:

Sneakernews.com

Sir Charles:

kixify

The Big Hurt:

ebay

And now Cam.

Please, Under Armour, sell those orange ones to me.