This morning the University of Kansas released details of their finalized contract with Adidas.

It is among the best in college sports and calls for $14 million a year going to KU. That includes $6.5 million in product and $1 million in marketing funds.

Jeff Long also announced Adidas will provide $500,00 per year for an Academic Scholar Award. That is rare with college contracts and something that will not just benefit the academic department, but entire campus.

One thing that stood out about releasing the contract is the transparency Long and Doug Girod showed. They released all pages of both contracts with nothing redacting and put everything out for people to see.

Long also made it clear they did a lot of homework on the finalizing the negotiations with Adidas after the indictments and scandal that has shaken the college basketball industry. After listening to Long talk about the contract it was apparent he believes this is the best deal for the University and there was nothing to hide.

Long held a teleconference with members of the media shortly after the contract was released. Here are a few key topics he discussed:

Question: Is it your understanding this is the richest deal in college athletics?

Long: I don't have any knowledge that it's the richest. I think it is one among the highest current deals. And I think that speaks to the brand of, not only Jayhawk Athletics and Kansas Athletics, but also the University of Kansas as well. As far as whether that entered into it, no, our goal was not to go into this to get one of the highest, but we did expect that our brand and our success and our university would command among the highest.

Question: The base compensation is $11 million for 2020 and 2021, and the second highest is $5.3 million at the end of the contract. Was there any particular reason why the base compensation is so much higher in the upcoming couple years?

Long: I think that was planned into the agreement during the negotiations prior to the Fall of 2017. I think there was some anticipation there of needing some additional cash at the beginning of this agreement, and then spreading it out across the rest of the agreement.

Question: The agreement was announced before you got here. Was there anything that you played a role in, in terms of things that you insisted that weren't there before?

Long: Both Chancellor Girod and I were actually new after the discussions began. So, I think that once I came on, the deal was not finished, so we continued to negotiate with Adidas throughout the Fall of 2018, and really into the Winter months of 2019 here to arrive at an agreement.

So, there were a number that we felt were important. One was, especially the commitment to the campus, we felt like it should be broader than just athletics. So it was important to both the Chancellor and I that there be a commitment to the University. And I think we received that in the Kansas-Adidas leadership program.

Question: Folks that were employees of Adidas at the time that have now been convicted as part of this basketball scandal. What assurances, I mean, how do you know that you're not going to have Adidas that happen again?

Long: I think much of our conversations from the time of indictments in the Fall of 2017, there's been many, many conversations, discussions, meetings to address those things. We have commitments from Adidas to work with us to help change the nature of college basketball. We certainly are aware of the things that were pointing it out in the Condoleezza Rice Commission about what was happening in college basketball.

So we spent months and months discussing those and we have a strong commitment from Adidas to work with us to make that college recruiting environment better.

I think at the end of our conversations and discussions, we felt very confident that Adidas will work with us, and work with NCAA to see that these things do not happen in the future. So, based on those, we were excited to announce and move forward with this new agreement.

Question: It has been brought up over years that Adidas gives more to some of the smaller sports, or supports those more than maybe some of the other brands do. I didn't know if that was true and if that plays into helping the University more as well.

Long: I think it's clear that they are interested in all 18 of our sports, our 11 women and 7 men's program. I think that's why they were very ambitious in this contract and gave us such a substantive contract. I do think, as I said in the release, that they are interested in the overall growth of our program, improvement in our program, and I think that's in the value of this contract.

Certainly, it's the institution's decision about how much they put towards each sport, but I think Kansas has done a great job of providing all the needs in shoes and apparel and equipment that Adidas supplies. We've done a good job of providing that across the gamut of sports that we have and we'll continue to do that with a contract of this nature.

Question: Did you guys pursue other apparel companies and test the market?

Long: Anytime you enter into a contract of this nature, of this length, and obviously with this monetary reward attached to it; at KU, we did our due diligence. We went through all the options that were available to us, explored everything, and arrived at the decision that Adidas was the best option for us moving forward.

As you know, we've has a long-term relationship with them (Adidas) dating back to 2005, and then a subsequent extension I think in the 2013 year. So, it's been a long partnership. But any time you enter into something like this, you do your due diligence. We did check out all of those who were interested in the University of Kansas.

Here is a look at the contracts released by KU:

The KU-Adidas contract for the athletic side KAI-Adidas agreement

The contract for the KU-Adidas Academic Scholars Agreement