College apparel contracts are often a hot topic in the college sports world. We thought it would be interesting to dive into this: Who does each school, from the most recent March Madness, partner with? With the ultimate goal of finding the sports apparel brand with the best teams. Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour are today’s contenders. Who will win?
Important Information:
- We used every single team involved with March Madness 2025. 136 teams, half women, half men.
- The contract data was pulled by observing what each team was branded with on their jerseys.
- The win-loss data is straight from the NCAA official website.
- If a college appeared twice, men and women, the liberty was taken to assume they shared an apparel supplier.
- If a college only appeared in one of the brackets, the ‘gender’ of the team is implied. If they appeared in both brackets, it will be noted.
Framework:
We took four numerical stats from every single team, as well as the apparel supplier, in a separate column.
- Win: The number of wins the team has in total
- Loss: The number of losses the team has in total
- Ratio: The ratio of wins to losses, the greater the number, the better.
- Placement: This number refers to each team’s placement within the NCAA tournament. A range from 0-7, 0 knocked during the First Four, 1 knocked out during the first round, 2 knocked out during the second round, 3 knocked out during the Sweet Sixteen, 4 knocked out during the Elite Eight, 5 knocked out during the Final Four, 6 lost the finals, 7 won the finals.
- Contract: The sports apparel supplier of choice for each team is there to separate each team into groups based on their supplier.
While these aren’t all the relevant stats that point towards a team being ‘good’, these are generally the agreed-upon markers. The more or less ‘cookie-cutter’ March Madness helps make this data as accurate and truthful as possible about a team’s strength. The only team it’s likely to distort is Arkansas from the men’s bracket due to its low seed and good relative performance.
Sports Apparel Analysis
| 1. Nike | 2. Under Armour | 3. Adidas | |
| Teams Contracted | 83 | 28 | 25 |
| Teams Avg Wins | 25.87 | 25.71 | 23.56 |
| Teams Avg Loses | 8.92 | 9 | 10.64 |
| Teams Avg Win-Loss Ratio | 3.62 | 3.69 | 2.63 |
| Teams Avg Placement | 2.11 | 1.64 | 1.32 |
Unsurprising to pretty much no one, Nike has pretty much the best teams. Not only does Nike win nearly every single category, but they also have the most teams by a substantial amount. Even if you take away their ‘dual’ colleges, which they happen to own most of, they still win this category. This also gives a point to Nike for having the most accurate averages of the three due to their large sample size.
Our second-place team, Under Armour, is not only second place in teams contracted but also in every other stat. Frankly, they generally don’t trail that far behind and actually beat Nike in the ratio stat slightly.
Adidas is bringing up the rear, falling relatively far behind the other two. All the wins and losses stats are the main place where Adidas falls behind. The one number difference is Adidas’s ratio when compared to Nike’s is the best example of this great difference.
Each Apparel Brand’s ‘Golden Geese’
Generally speaking, each brand had a few shining stars. And if you’re Nike, you had a lot of shining stars.
Adidas:
Starting with the most disappointing sports apparel brand, we have Adidas. They have two stars: Texas Tech and NC State. While neither team has the greatest record or win-loss ratio, they were the highest-placing teams under Adidas, reaching the Elite Eight and Sweet Sixteen, respectively. Adidas picks up a single ‘bonus’ point for being the sports apparel brand with the least amount of 0 placement teams. Out of the eight ‘up for grabs’, Adidas is only contracted with two of them. Nike and Under Armour split the remaining six.
Under Armour:
Under Armour is blessed to have a little bit better teams in this ‘golden goose’ slot. They also have two stars: South Carolina and Auburn. Both these teams did very well in their respective NCAA tournaments. South Carolina earned the convented 6 placement score for losing the championship round. While Auburn lost in the Final Four, giving them a placement score of 5. About the only thing that sours this part of the analysis for Under Armour is their loss of Auburn going into the 25-26 season. Losing them, too none other than:
Nike:
Nike supplies so many teams, including a significant number of great teams as well. UConn (W), Florida, Houston, UCLA (W), Duke, and Texas (W). All of these teams have a placement score of at least five, and all have very good win-loss ratios. They also supply both winners of each tournament, speaking even more to Nike’s overwhelming presence among the top D1 colleges in the country.
Takeaway’s
Nike swept up this win almost unanimously. Nearly winning every stat point and easily having the best gaggle of ‘golden geese’. Under Armour, however, made a surprisingly close 2nd place appearance, having some stat points beating or extremely close to Nike’s. It’s very possible that a greater number of contracted teams would have given a more accurate average, but the finite number of spots available in March Madness and Nike’s very large budget make this a tall task for Under Armour.
What do you think? Please reach out and let us know. If you’re at all interested in our spreadsheet used for this data, reach out at thefastbreakstats@gmail.com or leave a comment down below.
-The FastBreakStats Blog
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