I used to cut up Sports Illustrated with an X-Acto knife.
Not the articles. The ads.
Those double-page Nike and Jordan Brand spreads from the '90s. Slam Magazine, Street & Smith's, SI. I'd extract them as if I were performing surgery. Clean cuts along the spine. Scotch tape on the back to hold the spread together. Then into a Nike shoebox with the rest of them.
I wasn't collecting. I was documenting. Archiving. This was my PhD in ABCs: Art, Ball & Culture.
My first job at 14 was a sports camp counsellor at the YMCA. Half the summer teaching basketball, the other half at arts camp. I got that job so I could buy Nikes, magazines, movie tickets and CDs.
I'd play rep ball, all-star, travel, and AAU. Then hit the gallery. Life drawing classes. Film festivals. Then I'd record NCAA and NBA games on VHS. Not for the games, but for the commercial breaks. Studying what Wieden+Kennedy was building for Nike.
The red thread was always there.
How they used negative space. How they let the jersey do the talking. How the copy ran vertical in the margins like a whisper you had to lean in to hear. How they made you feel something before they sold you anything.
The Fab Five era taught the world that amateur athletes carry cultural weight. Nike understood that before anyone else did. Brodie knows athletes don't have expiration dates, and amplifying these voices isn't what's next, it's what's now.
Nike elevated college players before they went pro. We're elevating the players who never stopped playing. The ones who kept their game sharp, kept their communities tight, kept showing up.
Same respect. Different chapter. Both deserve the craft.
March Madness has always been more than a tournament. It's the moment where every story starts, where underdogs become legends, where one shot changes everything. That cultural tension, that built-in passion, that's what we're channelling.
That's what we're building at Brodie®, and if you understand why these images matter, why that visual language still moves people thirty years later, then you already know where this is going.
Become a Brodie Athlete & Join The Madness.