Colin Kaepernick, Nike, and the Myth of Good and Bad Companies
The brand’s alignment with the embattled NFL star is nothing more than smart business.
After Phil Knight first launched the Nike brand in 1971, he claimed that he could persuade the whole world to buy his shoes if he could first get them on the feet of “five cool guys.” In truth, it took only two cool guys to transform Nike into what Knight would later call a “total brand”: the Oregon distance runner Steve Prefontaine, whose spectacular rise and early death rooted his legend, and his unrealized potential, firmly in the soil of
