- Five South Carolina Gamecocks, women's basketball stars Chloe Kitts and Joyce Edwards, plus football players LaNorris Sellers, Nyck Harbor and Dylan Stewart, have joined Nike's Blue Ribbon Elite NIL roster.
- The signings coincide with South Carolina Athletics' new 10-year, all-sports apparel deal with Nike, replacing a 19-year partnership with Under Armour.
- Blue Ribbon Elite includes roughly 80 athletes nationwide and offers social media campaigns, appearances, and creative input on future products.
- Head coach Dawn Staley pointed to A'ja Wilson's success with Nike as a blueprint for what's ahead for her program.
South Carolina’s Nike era officially began July 1, and it came with a big NIL announcement. Chloe Kitts and Joyce Edwards, two standouts on Dawn Staley’s women’s basketball team, have signed on to Nike’s Blue Ribbon Elite program, joining football players LaNorris Sellers, Nyck Harbor and Dylan Stewart, who were revealed the week prior.
The move lands alongside South Carolina’s new 10-year apparel agreement with Nike, which now outfits all 21 Gamecock athletic programs.
Blue Ribbon Elite, described as a first-of-its-kind initiative, connects roughly 80 top college athletes nationally with NIL opportunities spanning social campaigns, appearances and product development input.
Staley tied the news to her program’s legacy with the brand, referencing former Gamecock and current WNBA star A’ja Wilson, whose Nike ties have included recent sneaker initiatives like the kids’ Nike A’One launch with Foot Locker.
Nike’s growing footprint in women’s college basketball NIL follows other recent moves, including Raven Johnson’s NIL deal with Aflac.
For Kitts and Edwards, the deal marks their first formal partnership with Nike, though both have built NIL portfolios during their Gamecock careers.
Athletics director Jeremiah Donati called the athletes’ inclusion central to the platform’s launch. At the same time, Nike executive Ann Miller pointed to South Carolina’s championship culture as the reason for going all-in on the Gamecocks.
Takeaways
This isn’t just a shoe deal; it’s Nike betting big on South Carolina as a talent pipeline, banking on the Wilson-to-Staley pipeline of star power to keep producing results.
Will Kitts and Edwards get their own signature campaigns like Wilson did? Could Blue Ribbon Elite become the new standard for how brands recruit college talent?
