Nike President Talks NFL, Tiger & LeBron

Nike blew away analysts at its headquarters today, providing a more detailed breakout of its fourth quarter earnings that brought costs more in line and reflected continued big growth in China.

Since much has been covered out in the open, we talked to Nike Brand President Charlie Denson exclusively on other topics.

Denson revealed that Nike's NFL contract begins next April and that's when Nike will start pumping out products for retail.

So I asked Denson the all-important question: How much will you change it up?

"We're going to be aggressive," Denson said. "Some teams are willing to go further than others."

Wow. If that doesn't get the NFL fan base hurting for good product excited, I don't know what does.

I was expecting Nike to have some negative LeBron news, but that's definitely not what went down. Nike said that the company had sold more than 500,000 pairs of LeBron 8's.

"LeBron is under such scrutiny, such a spotlight," Denson said. "But he has put the 'B' back in basketball. The game is better than ever, ratings are higher and you can attribute a lot of that to LeBron. We’re still very excited about the future for him."

Denson also addressed the drop in Nike Golf revenues, which fell 4 percent to $623 million this year.

"The devastation in Japan had a big effect, especially in the spring, the most important time," Denson said.

As for Tiger, who hasn't won since September 2009, Denson said Nike took more of a hit last year.

"With Tiger, what we want from Tiger is to get healthy, get back on the course," he said. "Some of the things that happened while he's off the course are going to make his return even more compelling."

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