Paul Johnson points out one good thing about Georgia Tech’s Russell Athletic deal

Georgia Tech’s apparel provider is the least cool, least trendy apparel provider in college sports. The Yellow Jackets are with Russell Athletic, the same company that might’ve made your baseball pants when you were playing Little League in 1998 or so. The company’s 115 years old, and so are most people who wear its products.

Georgia Tech football coach Paul Johnson makes a key point, though:

The Yellow Jackets are leaving Russell for Adidas in 2018. That’s a blessing, because they’ll be able to recruit better and look cooler. But this week’s events lay plain why being extremely uncool is sometimes the safest play, not unlike in high school.

As part of a wide corruption probe into college basketball, the FBI’s accusing Adidas of a bunch of slimy recruiting things. Specifically, the feds believe Adidas funneled money to recruits, with the idea being that those recruits would choose Adidas-sponsored colleges and later sign with the company en route to the NBA. A Nike youth basketball program has also received a subpoena, ESPN reports.

College hoops recruiting can be really gross. So can football recruiting, though a scandal in that sport would look different than this one. If the current hoops probe extends to football, the names involved will be smaller. The grandest NCAA recruiting violations are usually carried out by moneyed, passionate fans.

This is the whole “Men’s Basketball” page on Russell’s website:

Russell famously sponsors the Harlem Globetrotters, who rule, but the company’s only power-conference college team is Georgia Tech, and it doesn’t have high-profile endorsement deals in the NBA. I don’t know a lot about Georgia Tech’s recruiting efforts specifically, but it seems like the Yellow Jackets are going to avoid this pitfall.