Nike bet its brand on Colin Kaepernick – the quarterback who refused to stand for the national anthem.
The brand has been paying the price ever since.
Nike ignored Michael Jordan's advice and suffered its biggest financial humiliation ever.
Nike Stock Crashes 80 Percent After 18 Years in the S&P 100
S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Nike will leave the S&P 100 effective September 21, ending an 18-year run as one of America's elite blue-chip companies.
Nike hit a market value of roughly $281 billion in November 2021 – shares closed last week near $38.10, a 12-year low, leaving the company worth approximately $56.5 billion and more than $220 billion in the rearview mirror.
Four tech companies are walking in to replace Nike: Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Arista Networks, and SanDisk.
The sneaker giant just got swapped for servers and silicon.
The S&P 100 itself climbed roughly 83% over the same five years Nike shares collapsed more than 78%.
A JP Morgan analyst who downgraded Nike in June warned that the company's turnaround strategy "will likely drag on earnings through at least fiscal 2028."
Nike CEO Elliott Hill – who inherited this disaster in October 2024 – didn't dispute it. "We still have work to do," he told analysts.
Five years of destruction, and the man in charge says he still has work to do.
The Nike Kaepernick Boycott That Started a Decade of Losses
Here is what Nike chose to do with its brand over the past decade.
2018: Nike made Colin Kaepernick the face of its 30th-anniversary "Just Do It" campaign – the man who refused to stand for the national anthem because he wouldn't show pride in a country that "oppresses Black people and people of color."
Nike put that message on billboards across America.
2019: Nike pulled a Fourth of July Air Max sneaker featuring the Betsy Ross flag because the design could "unintentionally offend."
2020: The company launched a "For Once, Don't Do It" racial-justice campaign and wrapped the brand in Black Lives Matter messaging.
2023: Nike paid Dylan Mulvaney to model women's leggings and sports bras.
That same year, OutKick reported that Nike's name had been attached to a proposed study involving youth athletes who identify as transgender.
A Nike executive later told OutKick the study "was never initialized" and was "not moving forward."
Every one of those decisions told half of America that Nike didn't want their business.
Half of America listened.
Nike Lost China Too After Choosing Beijing Over American Customers
Nike's relationship with China produced the other half of this financial disaster.
When Chinese consumers pushed back on Nike over reports of forced labor in Xinjiang, then-CEO John Donahoe didn't lecture Beijing. He went on an earnings call in 2021 and said, "We're a brand of China and for China."
Donahoe reminded investors the company had been investing in China for 40 years and remained fully committed – words he never applied to the American customers whose flag Nike had spent years treating as an inconvenience.
That loyalty bought nothing.
Greater China revenue was $8.29 billion when Donahoe made that declaration – it stands at $5.85 billion today, nearly 30% gone, including an 11% drop in just the past year.
Nike alienated American customers to protect a Chinese market that shrank anyway, and it has no one to blame but the executives who made the call.
Michael Jordan Said Republicans Buy Sneakers Too and Nike Forgot
The line came from a team bus in 1990, tossed off as a joke among Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Horace Grant.
Jordan's mother had urged him to endorse Harvey Gantt, the Democrat challenging incumbent Republican Jesse Helms in a North Carolina Senate race. Jordan declined the public endorsement, sent Gantt a private check, and when the subject came up with his teammates, he said it: "Republicans buy sneakers, too."
He confirmed the story in The Last Dance documentary 30 years later and didn't walk it back.
"I don't think that statement needs to be corrected," Jordan said. "It was thrown off the cuff."
Barack Obama said he would have liked to see Jordan take a stand. Left-wing athletes who built their reputations on activism criticized him for years. None of them built a $281 billion company.
Jordan knew his shoes belonged to everyone – to the kid in a Chicago housing project and the farmer in rural North Carolina, to people who agreed with his politics and people who didn't.
A brand that decides some customers are wrong about their values or their flag has chosen sides in a fight that costs money.
Nike's executives spent 30 years building on that foundation. Then they threw it away in a decade.
Go Woke Go Broke Applied to Nike and Cost Shareholders Everything
The company that once put its logo on every athlete America loved decided those same Americans were wrong about their country, their flag, and what a woman is.
Bud Light, Target, and Disney all tried it. None of them recovered what they lost.
Nike is leaving the S&P 100, $220 billion lighter, telling shareholders the turnaround won't arrive until 2028 at the earliest.
Every boardroom in America that watched this happen and still thinks left-wing politics is good for business should write four words on a whiteboard and leave them there: Republicans buy sneakers, too.
Jordan figured it out on a team bus in 1990. Corporate America still hasn't.
Sources:
- Dan Zaksheske, "Nike Forgot Republicans Buy Sneakers, Too, and Now It's Getting Booted From the S&P 100," OutKick, September 9, 2026.
- "Nike Exits the S&P 100 Index: 4 Tech Stocks Move In," Yahoo Finance, September 5, 2026.
- "Nike CEO Elliott Hill Warns Full Turnaround Impact Won't Be Seen Until Next Year," Benzinga, June 22, 2026.
- "Michael Jordan Stands Firm on 'Republicans Buy Sneakers, Too' Quote, Says It Was Made in Jest," ESPN, May 4, 2020.