Columnist Dean Juipe: Outrageous shoe deals about to end

Dean Juipe

Monday, June 8, 1998 | 9:03 a.m.

IT ISN'T every day a decision that costs hundreds of people millions of dollars is worth an exclamation of glee.

Yet here's a big whoopie! for the athletic-apparel industry which, after needlessly losing millions and millions of dollars for the past decade, has come to the realization it may be a waste of money to sign every professional athlete it can find to some sort of product-endorsement deal.

The cash that companies like Nike and Reebok have been laying out is extravagant to an extreme.

It's as if they were brain dead, splashing a fortune here on the Golden State Warriors' 12th man and a fortune there on the Cleveland Indians' bullpen catcher.

How could they ever justify the "investment"? There's no way the average consumer even notices what shoes the typical athlete is wearing, let alone be prompted to buy that same pair in a feeble attempt to mimic the athlete.

The same holds true at the collegiate level. Do you know what brand the UNLV basketball team wears? Do you care? More importantly, will you go out of your way and buy a pair of shoes you don't like simply because that's the type worn by the Rebels?

If so, you really need to re-evaluate your life.

Which is what the athletic-apparel industry has, at long last, decided to do. The introspection is the result of seeing its shoe sales drop 50 percent from the late 1980s.

Finally, it is questioning the need for not only mass signings but for superstar deals.

Take Reebok for instance, given that it has announced it will pare its roster of NBA players under contract from 130 to 20 by 1999. It will also drop its NFL roster from 550 to 100, and its baseball roster from 280 to 140.

It's as if a light suddenly went on in a back room at Reebok and someone did the math. "Hey," that person may have concluded, "how did this ever get started? We're losing our shirts on these endorsement deals."

Pity poor Shaquille O'Neal, the towering center of the Los Angeles Lakers. Five years ago he signed with Reebok for a tidy $15 million, guaranteeing nothing on his end aside from the fact he would wear Reebok shoes. In an effort to recoup its investment, Reebok manufactured a shoe with O'Neal's name on it and has been marketing it at about $90 (as of Sunday at Just For Feet in the Caesars Forum mall).

Add it up: Reebok had to sell 166,666 pairs of O'Neal shoes simply to cover the nut it gave the player. When its contract with him expires June 30, Reebok will likely say goodbye to O'Neal just as it recently did to another high-priced gladiator, running back Emmitt Smith of the Dallas Cowboys.

Dozens of players from every major sport will be affected not only by Reebok's cost-cutting move but by Nike going to performance-based endorsement deals.

That's "free money" the athlete will lose, but so what? It was always undeserved.

More to the point, by trimming this financial burden the apparel companies could actually lower the price of their goods. They might even take the novel approach of charging a price that fairly reflects the material, time and effort that went into the product and bringing it to your shelf.

Hey, isn't that the way it used to be in the old days? Well, hurray! once again.