adidas, Mike White and ...

A lot of the changes have been prompted by the split of Michael T. White from his longtime sponsor, adidas. However, some changes also are being prompted by the huge growth in girl's basketball and up the ladder to women's college basketball and the WNBA.

Right now, it difficult to forecast how the lines will be drawn. The first skirmish is between White and adidas. After White sent his "invitation" (71 coaches were named whose attendance was deemed "mandatory"), Phillips followed up with a "Coaches Letter on Loyalty" that essentially said that all were invited to continue with adidas, but the offer is withdrawn from those who attended White's conference.

Phillips explained in the letter that the adidas program wanted to ensure "100 (percent)" loyalty to the brand. He also said the priority in his program will go to 1. players, 2. brand and 3. coaches.

This all is not to say that the battle for teams will be confined to the adidas-White arena. Several programs tied to Nike have told HoopGurlz.com that they have been approached by adidas or White about jumping. Some coaches say that money figures beyond the current threshhold have been discussed.

It's premature to comment on all of this because nothing concrete has happened yet. Since I was involved on the boy's side through my experience at Rivals and Scout, I can see some red flags flying, however.

If the money escalates, there will be questions about to whom that money will be flowing. Everyone says "it's all about the kids," then at some point it is discovered that, in some programs, it's all been about the director's wallet. I'm not saying this is going to happen, just that it has happened before.

My biggest concern is the impact on the ability of HoopGurlz.com to cover and help expose girl's basketball players, no matter the sneaker affiliation. If we nominally are the "fifth" entity in the sport because of our reach and traffic, plus our tie to ESPN, then we so far are the only one that isn't making money off it, plus the only one that tries to remain in the middle of it all.

What would impair us is if some of the entities shut us out, or made it difficult for us to cover their events. What also would hurt is if they started scheduling competitively (ie., at the same time, in different places). This, of course, is what has happened on the boy's side, but boy's basketball is big business and girl's basketball, though the participation is there, is not big business.

In other words, when I was the editor at Scout, I took six others with me as a photographer, to Las Vegas the week when there were three major tournaments happening simultaneously. Our efforts would be bolstered variously by team-website publishers, giving us a group that vacilated between 10 and 15. And this was the case all summer long. At HoopGurlz, we obviously don't have those kind of resources yet.

In closing, you'll notice that I've posted this in my blog, rather than as a news story. Our news mission is to cover the girls. These developments do effect the girls, but is more insider-ish. Our stories are set up like blog entries to receive comments underneath, but blogs are really the format that invites the give and take. I urge you to post your comments or information below and, together, maybe we can figure some of this out.