Oct. 20, 2005

By Andy Elrick

Special to CSTV.com

To Arkansas State guard Jerry Nichols, as the kids are saying these days, I feel you.

Nichols, his team's leading returning scorer, has refused to wear the Adidas shoes that are distributed to the team per the school's contract with the shoe maker because he suffered a knee injury wearing the brand four years ago. It was the first of two injuries for Nichols. The second happened last season, when the school was under contract to Nike.

This may seem odd coming from a less than athletic 5-11 guy, but I can understand where the junior guard is coming from. For as long as I can remember, I've had problems with my shoes. Several months ago, I visited a local sporting goods store and actually slipped my foot into one of those silver contraptions meant to measure your shoe size. The length was a nine and a half, and the width was a 6E. In other words, my best bet would be to throw out the shoes and wear the boxes.

About a month later, I was up early on a Saturday doing some ironing when the morning news did a piece on the Adidas Store in lower Manhattan and something called Mi Adidas, which is essentially like a tailoring service for your shoes. They take your foot, measure it to within millimeters, make you run over a pad to see if you under- or over-pronate, relieve you of $150 and send you on your way with a small folder containing a picture of your new shoes, which they hope will arrive in three to six weeks.

I'm still waiting for my Adidas...I mean Mi Adidas... so it would be hard to give them my wholehearted recommendation, but when they arrive Jerry will be the first one I fill in.

In the meantime, the folks at Arkansas State have a problem. Not only would one of their best players rather sit then wear a pair of school-mandated shoes, but they're running out of options. I assume that since Nichols also suffered a knee injury wearing Nikes, they're out as well, which leaves the Indians with limited options. Personally, I would love to see them sign a deal with LA Gear, a brand that you might think has gone the way of the Edsel, but in actual fact appears to be alive and well at www.lagear.com. Their main marketing push comes in the form of two L.A. Gear branded buses known as Flash I and Flash II, which appear at events all over the country. The website includes pictures of the buses, whose red and black interior would appeal to few people outside of Rick Springfield.

The Indians could also go with another struggling brand in Converse. A lot was made of them going out of business a few years ago, but as far as I can tell they're still around, and they aren't just making Chuck Taylors either. New Balance has been serving the wide-footed community for years, but have yet to break into the college hoops market. Arkansas State could be their in.

Worst case scenario, Nichols makes the trip to New York and yours truly personally takes him to the Adidas store to see my guy Sean at the Mi Adidas counter, who is sure to get him over his fear of German basketball sneakers. Six weeks later, he'll be all set.

The Huge East

I'm in favor of a name change for the Big East.

On October 26^th CSTV will air Big East Media Slam, a two hour show all about Year One in college basketball's new power conference. Every coach will be there, along with a majority of the top players, which is why we need two hours. Actually, we probably could have done three.

In fact it may be time to consider changing the conference's name because, really, big doesn't describe it. Here are some options thanks to our friends at Thesaurus.com.

The Really Big East

The Ginormous East

The Burly East

The Spacious East

The Mammoth East

And my personal favorite The Humungo East

Okay so ginormous and humungo aren't even real words but the Big East is going to be unreal this year anyway so it sort of fits.

Andy Elrick is the Senior Editor for CSTV: College Sports Television and covers college basketball for CSTV.com. Got a comment? Write Andy and let him know.