By Bret Bechis

Columnist

“Getting ink done” has to be the most permanent and self-expressive act possible. The tattoo is an extension to the world of one’s soul, one’s imagination and one’s spirit. The location tells the persona — on the arm, where’s the party? On the face, slowly back away. On the lower back, quickly approach.Last Tuesday, I pulled up next to a Lance Armstrong figure at a stop sign on Campus Drive. After taking a good look at his Cannondale racer, my gaze fell upon the black Nike Swoosh ingrained into his left calf. A black Nike Swoosh. Now I’d seen everything from Mickey Mouse to flaming skulls inked onto the human body, but this was a first.

Was it some sort of sick corporate joke, that all Nike employees were branded with the corporate logo, their work hours logged by a scanning of the swoosh like a barcode at each entrance and exit of a Nike factory? The cyclist couldn’t have been one of the company’s latest laboratory creations . . . .

But then again, it wouldn’t be out of the Nike realm. They’ve swooshed sneakers, backpacks, swimsuits, ski jackets, notebooks, sunglasses and mp3 players. You name it, it’s been swooshed. Nike designs the shoes for the U.S. Bobsled Team. Nike manufactures shoes for the skydivers who strap snowboards on their feet. Nike hosts basketball tournaments, baseball showcases, golf tours, swim meets and football camps.

The swoosh rules our lives. It’s slapped itself on everything. Count the swooshes you see today. Be diligent. It’s no mistake spotting 40 or 50 in an afternoon.

A company which started out making road shoes for Forrest Gump-esque die hard runners has turned into a multi-billion dollar global industry. But passing on the merger habits of big business, Nike has instead focused on the buyout and has subsequently spread its logo across the sporting world. In 1998, Nike bought Bauer hockey equipment, and though the New Hampshire-based company still remains Bauer, most of the products are inked with the swoosh. Nike’s buyout of Cole Haan casual wear spurred the majority of its golf line.

Nike approaches the sports world as scientists and engineers, critically researching, developing and testing the materials that go into its products. The most recent company breakthrough, Nike Shox, was a project 16 years in the making, inspired by the 1980s innovation of springy rubber running tracks. The original Shox featured 27 patents, retailed for $149.99 and couldn’t be kept on the shelves.

About the same time, Nike’s main competitor, Adidas, came out with a new line of shoes featuring the Climax foot cooling system. Both the Nike and Adidas lines sold with great success, as the “newest big thing” always seems to sell.

When Nike came out with watches and sunglasses, Adidas came out with cologne. When Adidas took golf by storm, Nike had just signed Tiger Woods onto its team. Nike made Jordan in the 1980s. When Adidas began to do the same with Tracy McGrady, Nike signed Lebron James, outbidding Adidas and Reebok and handing $90 million to a player who had yet to score an NBA free throw. Of course, the swoosh and triple stripe donned every company product.

It’s not like there’s a financial need for all this. Both companies pull in billions of dollars per year. Nike currently has a little over 500 employees. Really. All the clothes, the shoe soles, the watches, come to the United States from sub-contracted companies overseas, get swooshed and then hit stores. But in branding herds of products Nike has claimed an increasingly greater part of the sportsman’s world.

Why? Because it’s all in the logo. There’s a lifestyle, a level of excellence, a personification that the swoosh has taken on. We’re not buying a pair of shoes or gym shorts but a standard. Michael Jordan, Barry Sanders, Derek Jeter, Agassi, Lebron. When we buy Nike we’re buying the winner, the class, the life, the superhuman. When our team is swooshed out, it means something. And for the thousands of college and high school teams Nike now sponsors, the swoosh means something.

But it now means more for Nike than it does for the sportsman. For every shoe it turns out or team it sponsors, the logo further covers the globe. The separate entities of the good and the person have converged into a single resulting product: the branded athlete. The swoosh on notebooks, underwear, casual wear and athletic wear: It encompasses the entire being. The cyclist with the branded calf was merely a display of this encompassment. The logo athletes once helped Nike manufacture globally now globally manufactures the athlete.

Bret Bechis is a junior economics major. He doesn’t boast a swoosh on his calf but he does occasionally wear the undies. You can e-mail him at bbechisstanford.edu