I was a sprinter on my high school track team for all three years. That was so long ago; the track was cinder, and races were measured in yards. I did the 220, 440, and the 880 and mile relays. I tried the 100, but I didn’t pass the shorter guys with short legs until just before the finish line, which made the coaches nervous, so it was back to longer distances.
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Those were good days, except I suffered from brutal shin splints every track season. My coaches thought I was malingering, but I persevered and only figured it out years later when I bought my first pair of Nike Waffle Trainers. Magically, the shin splints disappeared and never reappeared.
It was my shoes. All we had available back in the 1400s were various forms of Keds. They were comparatively Stone Age shoes, and didn’t do a thing to prevent shin splints or all the other orthopedic maladies from which we all suffered. Orthotics and every other athletic aid either didn’t exist or were in experimental stages, and available only where those few experiments were being conducted. Sports medicine and treatment consisted largely of “walk it off,” which we did until the compound fractures became too bloody to ignore.
Nike really enabled me to continue running most of my life and revolutionized athletics, until that is, they became too successful and arrogant, and went woke:
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“Nikewomen.” “Feelyourall.” It’s laughable now, and for Normal Americans, it always was. That’s why Budweiser so badly damaged itself by imagining using Dylan Mulvaney, a bizarrely androgynous trans, to sell its beer. Did Budweiser imagine Mulvaney would inspire trans to drink Bud? If so, they grossly overestimated the number of trans, to say nothing of trans beer drinkers. Or perhaps they understood so little about Normal Americans that they really believed Mulvaney’s frantically smiling visage and faux-female affectation would appeal to Normal American men.
It’s history. Men were disgusted and repelled and responded by boycotting Budweiser in every way possible. For a very long time, Budweiser couldn’t even give away its beer. Budweiser quickly backpedaled and said, “Hey, we never meant that,” and “Dylan Mulvaney who?” But the damage was done, and they haven’t recovered since.
Not so for Nike, who latched onto every woke personality and cause they could, like Colin Kaepernick, who they paid at least $25 million:
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Kaepernick, others like him, and the short-sightedness of the NFL eventually cost the league around 25% of its yearly revenues, and they, and Nike, should have known better, because this was one of the more restrained of the innumerable responses to the infamous Nike ad:
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And the tweet was optimistic. Nike’s stock was down 68% not long ago. Circa September, 2026, it was 78%:
Nike (NYSE: NKE) stock is down 78% from its 2021 all-time high — the steepest drop in the company’s history. Sales remain under pressure, and there’s no clear catalyst for a near-term rebound.
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But margins are stabilizing — a sign that things are moving in Nike’s favor as it continues its turnaround. If profitability continues to firm up and sales eventually recover, this could set up a rare chance to buy the world’s leading footwear and sports apparel brand at a value price.
Note the “could.” Nike is also no longer in the S&P 100.
Nike’s financials are messy. In fiscal 2026 (which ended in May), sales fell 1% year over year. A company with $46 billion in annual revenue isn’t going to flip back to strong growth overnight. That’s why investors should focus on early signals that the turnaround is working, such as gross margin performance.
In its latest reporting period (the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2026), Nike’s cost of sales fell 16% year over year. That supported the gross margin, which improved to 49.2% from 40.3% in the year-ago quarter. It further drove a 21% increase in gross profit despite the decline in sales.
OK, but is Nike on the road to recovery? Not so much:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nike wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
I’ve long had a soft spot for Nike, though Adidas shoes tend to fit my narrow feet better. But these are Heinlein’s Crazy Years, and for-profit companies have not yet entirely weaned themselves off lunatic virtue signaling in favor of making profits worthy of their shareholder’s investments.
That’s not an encouraging trend for an America so deeply in debt and so riven by political schism. But at least Dylan Mulvaney and Colin Kaepernick aren’t likely to be thrust into Americans’ faces quite so much anymore.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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