When news broke on Tuesday about the NBA banning a new pair of basketball shoes produced by Athletic Propulsion Labs, like most college basketball fans, we asked the obvious question: What will the NCAA do?
First, a little background on the shoes:
- The obvious question for every weekend warrior: How much do they cost? $300. At the present time you can only get them at APL’s official site or at Modell’s in Times Square at the corner of West 42nd Street and Broadway Avenue.
- The company’s co-founders, Adam and Ryan Goldston, walked on at USC for both basketball (Adam’s profile and Ryan’s profile) and football although we can’t find any reliable statistics for either of them while at USC.
- They claim that their product makes people jump higher through “a revolutionary patent-pending propulsion device” (the Load ‘N Launch) that can increase an athlete’s vertical by up to 3.5 inches.
- Although they don’t have any official endorsements the brothers claim that many NBA players expressed interest in the shoes, but they can’t name names because those players have shoe contracts. [Ed. Note: We are not sure what they mean by “expressed interest” because we are sort of interested in the shoes, but that doesn’t mean we would wear them. Ok, maybe we would. If APL sponsors us.]
- From a recent interview: Their father worked at Reebok, LA Gear, and Converse and they claim that they were involved in testing the first L.A. Gear Lights. [Ed. Note: RTC’s editorial staff did not return calls questioning whether they ever owned a pair of L.A. Gear Lights.]
This is hardly the first time that the use of performance-enhancing shoes has come into question as it happened most notably with Spira’s WaveSpring technology that Spira claimed the USATF, track and field’s national governing body, banned from competition although events as prestigious as the Boston Marathon did not disqualify athletes who won while wearing the “banned” shoes and there is some controversy if the shoes ever were actually banned. In this case, however, it does not appear to be only an act of self-promotion as the NBA as has its own press release on the issue.
The question as to what the NCAA would do cannot be clearly answered by looking at historical precedents. The two most pertinent examples are the NCAA’s policies on performance-enhancing drugs and the use of a performance-enhancing piece of equipment.
While the NCAA does test athletes for performance-enhancing drugs and the testing policy is year-round, the actual policy is pretty lenient in terms of giving athletes notification prior to the testing although the NCAA has been taking measures to make the effort more cost-effective. This is not a condemnation of the NCAA, as it is unrealistic for them to test at the level of the World Anti-Doping Agency, given the sheer volume of athletes within its purview, but their relatively lax testing standards are worth noting.
The issue of performance-enhancing equipment can be a tricky one as you could argue that anything from cleats with spikes to sticky gloves for a wide receiver could fall under this heading. However, the best example where the NCAA has taken a different stance than the professional leagues is with the use of aluminum bats (or whatever crazy metal compound they use now). Although MLB and most major high-level baseball associations have banned their use given the dangers associated with the increased velocity of a baseball hit off of them, the NCAA has stood fast in its position that they were permissible at the college level even though the debate about their use is ongoing.
Given the uncertainty of the issue, we contacted the NCAA to find out what their policy was on the new shoes. We contacted them on Tuesday afternoon right after the news came out about the NBA’s ban and it appears that the news caught them off-guard as they told us that they would get back to us, but as of midnight the following day we have not heard a response from them.
We are guessing that the issue is working its way up the NCAA Basketball food chain at this moment and it seems like the obvious answer would be for the NCAA to follow the NBA’s lead on this and ban the shoes, but given the fact that the NCAA (and apparently the USATF) has not banned the aforementioned Spira “spring” shoes it would appear unlikely that the NCAA would come out firmly against these shoes and ban them. If that is the case, then the question will be whether a college basketball team would wear them. It would appear that most of the big programs would be out because of the large shoe contracts they have with Nike, Reebok, or Adidas, but it seems plausible that we could see a small college program wearing the shoes if APL provides them with free shoes and enough financial incentive. So now the question is which program is going to step up and provide us with a real-life experiment of whether or not these shoes actually work?