Big Ten teams are bringing in truckloads of new television revenue nowadays but that hasn’t stopped many of the schools from signing ever more lucrative apparel deals to stuff the coffers even more.
The latest move on that front appears to be at Nebraska, which the Lincoln Journal Star reports is set to approve an 11-year extension on the Cornhuskers’ deal with adidas worth a whopping $129 million. The new contract is already in front of the school’s Board of Regents and is expected to get the thumbs up at their next meeting on August 11.
Nebraska has had an extremely long and productive relationship with the apparel company dating all the way back to the glory days of Big Red in 1995. The new contract will apparently start this season (retroactive to this past July) and see the school triple the amount of money they receive from adidas to the tune of $64 million in cold hard cash and a similar amount of apparel and equipment over the life of the deal through 2028.
The news of the Cornhuskers’ extension is part of a run of new deals by adidas’ college athletics division in recent months, which also included a new contract with fellow Big Ten school Rutgers. Nebraska’s figure of $129 million over 11 years is not quite industry-leading in the wake of Under Armor’s $280 million deal with UCLA, but it does keep the school in the same relative ballpark as conference powers Michigan ($174 million over 15 years) and Ohio State (15 years, $252 million).