Inside Penn State’s ‘organized chaos’ of switching from Nike to Adidas after 30 years

 

Penn State's iconic football uniform will be sporting the three stripes of Adidas this year.

Courtesy Penn State Athletics

State College, Pennsylvania —  

The FedEx driver rolled up to campus and realized he had a problem, a delivery man’s version of Chief Brody realizing he was going to need a bigger boat in “Jaws.”

He called Ben Herman, the Penn State assistant athletic director for equipment operations, and shared his lament.

“Uh, we’ve got truckloads of stuff here,’’ the driver told Herman. “We can’t really get around. Where should we take it?”

After four years in his position at Penn State and a career in equipment management dating back decades, Herman is no stranger to unloading large hauls of stuff. But the delivery that arrived in State College, Pennsylvania, back in June was different. This was some 50 pallets containing more than 150,000 pieces of athletic gear – 6,500 pairs of shoes alone – all of which had to be sorted by team and distributed across campus in less than a month.