I didn’t buy the Nike Terminator ‘Morehouse’ shoes. I think this is a new stage of maturity in my sneaker journey.
OPINION: The limited edition high-tops were created via Nike’s Yardrunners campaign and were highly coveted by the Morehouse College alumni community — except for me.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I graduated from Morehouse College in May 2001. It was a different time then; there was no social media and everybody didn’t have a cell phone. And if you did have a cell phone, you had to buy a plan that had a certain number of minutes that you had to use judiciously until T-Mobile (or was it Sprint?) dropped that “free after 9 p.m.” plan that had the streets going crazy. Again it was a different time. During that time in the Atlanta University Center (AUC), the consortium of schools that, at the time, included Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, Morris Brown College and the Interdenominational Theological Center, there was a school paraphernalia store at the corner of Lee Street and West End Avenue called Collegiate.
Collegiate was, for the AUC, what the SNKRS app is for Nike nowadays: It was the place to get all of the latest school apparel drops. And I mean that in the truest sense of the word; there would be some new shirt that came out and word would spread through the AUC, and folks would dash to Collegiate as fast as they could, hope they hadn’t sold out AND that they had your size, and once the goods were gone, they were gone. Rereleases? I mean, sure, I guess. But once you missed that drop, you knew it was a wrap.
Word to the Morehouse “The Apology” T-shirt. As the kids say, if you know, you know.
Our bookstore, back then, barely had any apparel worthy of copping. I remember this vividly because the only item I truly remember coveting from our bookstore was this leather messenger bag that had a red “M” stitched on it and Morehouse written in white letters underneath. I still have this bag, by the way. The point of sharing this information is that I come from a time when getting the latest and greatest Morehouse apparel was a bloodsport. I imagine it was the same for all of us who came up in the AUC back in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Nowadays, you can go online and get all of the apparel you want from a variety of sites, official and unofficial. There are jackets and ties and shirts and hoodies and, even Nike has a line of items you can cop from Morehouse. For the younger folks, getting things immediately that have Morehouse on them isn’t what it was for those of us back in the day.
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Right before homecoming in October, images of Spelman College and Morehouse College (along with Alabama A&M University, Tennessee State University, and Tuskegee University) Nike Terminators started to surface. Nike has an HBCU campaign called Yardrunners that taps HBCU students and alumni and works with them to collaborate on things with Nike. They also tapped alumni from several institutions and gave them the opportunity, using the Nike Terminator silhouette, to create a school inspired by their alma mater. Brandon “Jinx” Jenkins, a Morehouse Man who is well-known in media spaces for podcasting, writing, etc. was given the opportunity to design the Morehouse College shoe.
Every person who knows me and knows how into shoes I am, hit me up. I have texts and emails and group chats full of folks like, “Yooooo P, a Morehouse shoe is coming out!! I know you’re going to get it!” But I didn’t. I didn’t get the shoe (though it is still available from several outlets; everybody thought if it sold out on Nike, it was gone but shoe stores like DTLR still have full-size runs of them).
I didn’t get the shoe because I don’t like the Nike Terminator. I have never liked the silhouette and I would merely be buying the shoe because it was a Morehouse shoe, just like I would have done at Collegiate where having the thing was essential because you might literally never see it again. But here’s the thing, I know there will be more Morehouse shoes, eventually. Shoot, this isn’t even the only shoe that Nike sells that is tagged with Morehouse. I’m super proud of Jinx and the design he came up with. I watched a video of him explaining his inspirations, and it was deeply personal and frankly, if I had the opportunity to do something like that, I’d take it as seriously as he did. I just don’t like the shoe itself and for that reason, I decided not to buy it.
This represents a departure for me. During the pandemic, I feel like I bought every single shoe on the market that I was even remotely interested in. I have so many shoes that I’m annoyed with them at this point. There was a time when a shoe that said Morehouse on it would be a must-cop simply for saying Morehouse. But now, I know that if something is created once, it can be created again in different versions, and you don’t have to get the thing just because you’re afraid it won’t come out again; NEWSFLASH: They always come back out again.
It was similar to the Morehouse College (and Spelman College) x Polo Ralph Lauren collection. When that first drop happened, there was a mad dash to buy all the stuff, and it sold out, and folks thought it was over. But it wasn’t. Over time, Ralph Lauren re-upped items and if you kept checking, the most coveted items would show up a few times over and over.
I’m happy for all of the people who just had to have the shoe and managed to get a pair. There’s a universe where I might actually see them in person (I have yet to actually see a pair) and have all of the FOMO and go buy them. But for me, a sneakerhead who wants all of the Morehouse College-related items, to decide not to buy a pair of shoes because I don’t love the silhouette is a sign of my maturity and growth as a sneakerhead. I don’t need every shoe.
I think I’m growing up. Now if you’ll excuse me, this raffle for the Joe Freshgoods New Balance 990v4 “1998” collection based on the film “Belly” is closing soon and I think I want every shoe.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest), but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said: “Unknown” (Blackest).
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