We’ve lived through the East Coast-West Coast rivalry, the Cola Wars, a couple of battles for Late Night and now it appears in 2016 we’re in the early stages of The Sneaker Wars: adidas vs Nike. Which for the most part has been a cold war:

“Nike – which owns a whopping 48% of the USA’s footwear market, while adidas’s 9% share has declined every year since 2011.” (Just recently adidas’ market share was around 5% tied with Skechers…yeah Mom shoes).

adidas has been making battle-ready moves: new designers in Brooklyn, new stars (like Pharrell Williams, Pusha T and Damian Lillard, James Harden) and Kanye (a star and a designer).

He kicked off 2016 with Facts offering throwing down the gauntlet lyrics like: “Yeezy, Yeezy, Yeezy just jumped over Jumpman.” Which is of course is not entirely true but fully acceptable if you could jump that high–you can imagine how thin the air is and what that does to the mind.

adidas’ next attempt at impressing the American Buying Public and wooing fickle stylish youth is by giving Snoop Dogg his own football talk show Turf’d Up: 8 episodes leading up to Super Bowl 50 on February 7, 2016.

Behold Episode 1:

Beginning with Terrell Owens upcoming guests include Antonio Pierce, John Salley, Tony Gonzalez, George Lopez, Rich Eisen, Robert Horry (so in for Big Shot Rob!), Willie McGinest and YouTube personalities iJustine and Jesse from PrankvsPrank.

Cue the media release quote:
“We have a long-standing relationship with Coach Snoop, which includes everything from working with him to design signature footwear, apparel and uniforms, to the sponsoring the SYFL—his grassroots football program,” said Mark Daniels, vp of team sports for adidas

Dude’s right: Snoop (is he still Lion?) is a passionate football fan; he is adidas’ Director of Football Recruiting. He’s appeared in 2 of ESPN’s 30 for 30s: Straight Outta L.A. (a meditation on The Oakland Raiders directed by Ice Cube) and most recently Trojan War released this past fall. (Do check out Trojan War…superb doc).

Coach Snoop has the credentials to affably host this show; think it’ll be engaging enough but is this enough for adidas? Nike focuses on athletes to sling their shoes, adidas reaching out to creatives plus athletes…yo, lots of possibilities and potential. We’ll see: it begins with Turf’d Up.

Ever sing Gin & Juice (on Death Row Records no less) Snoop (I’m going with Dogg not sure about Loin, thankfully he’s not as bad Puffy) has taken us on a fascinating and unexpected ride. Here we go again…

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Ziggy Was Here January 8, 1947 – January 10, 2016

Also published on Medium.