Why Is Ernie Davis Wearing A Nike Swoosh?

Occasionally, we'll steal a FirstCuts post and re-purpose it here on TSB. This is one such occasion. Words by Vince Grzegorek.

The story of Ernie Davis deserves to be told. If you don't know, now's a good time to learn. He followed Jim Brown at tailback at Syracuse, absolutely dominated, was the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy, got his wish and joined the Cleveland Browns via trade to play with his idol and friend Jimmy, and then was diagnosed with leukemia and died before ever having played a down of professional football.

He's getting his due these days -- a movie about his life, The Express (stay tuned for a full review tomorrow), and ceremonies held by both the Browns and Orangemen this past weekend, including a new statue of Davis on the Syracuse campus. It's nice to see that we can all step back and honor a man that by all accounts was as good a person as he was a football player, and he was one helluva football player. No need to step in and make this a big commercial deal. We keep things tactful, right? Right?

(Huge high fives to Campus Watch for a great image.)

See, there's something strange about that statue though. Apparently Ernie Davis is not shown in a historically correct uniform. It's easy to tell because there's a big giant Nike swoosh across the jersey (no good photos yet), as well as more swooshitude on the cleats. This Syracuse blog has been all over the story and displays exactly the right amount of outrage, which, if you're curious, is total outrage.

They seem to think that the updated uni and Nike branding was a conscious choice given this article, which indicates that Bruno Lecchesi, the artist, was working off an actually photo of Ernie for the sculpture. (I've tried to get in touch with the artist, but to no avail yet).

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.