Under Armour’s sleek new global headquarters gleams on the edge of the Baltimore Peninsula, shading the crowd gathering along the building’s west facade from the warmth of the rising sun.

They have ventured out on this chilly morning in December to celebrate the grand opening of Under Armour’s Flagship Brand House, a reimagined retail experience that covers 24,000 square feet. It’s billed as the fusion of athletic innovation, passion, and storytelling—the things Under Armour is leaning into to reconstitute its brand identity.

The temperature has barely inched past 20 degrees.

“I thought it would be colder, so I wouldn’t need to talk long, but I’m wearing Under Armour, so I might take a few minutes,” says a mic-wielding Kevin Plank, who’s layered in a logoed navy blue jacket, black zip-up sweater, and pale blue collared shirt. His presumably off-brand black jeans touch the tops of company-issued purple and gray sneakers.

The throwaway line scores chuckles and cheers from the gaggle of onlookers who blow into their hands and grip paper cups filled with complimentary hot chocolate.

Plank stands next to a podium emblazoned with the crisscrossed “U” and “A” that form his company’s iconic logo and turns to acknowledge the local dignitaries who have shown up to support Baltimore’s hometown brand. Mayor Brandon Scott and Councilwoman Phylicia Porter are there. So is University of Maryland’s head football coach, Mike Locksley. WNBA superstar Kelsey Plum, who is on Under Armour’s roster of athlete ambassadors, adds an air of national celebrity to the festivities.

“Today, standing here and surrounded by all of you—I’m just damn proud,” says Plank. “I’m proud of this company, proud of our journey, proud of our resilience. We’re the underdog brand that’s defined by its lunch-pail-carrying, get-the-job done attitude that matches Baltimore’s grit and determination.”

Plank counts down to the official opening of the Brand House and pushes an oversized red button that sets off a burst of pyrotechnics and welcomes the crowd in from the cold as the Towson University marching band plays stadium fight songs.

It’s an intoxicating scene and makes you believe in Under Armour’s unmet potential.

For Plank, it’s an opportunity to turn the page on years of controversies, stagnant sales, and lack of a clear brand identity that caused him to step down as the company’s CEO before retaking the top spot a year ago. He’s back to regain the buzz Under Armour created when it burst onto the scene and reshaped the athletic apparel industry in the 1990s. He understands the challenges ahead and hears the skeptics. He also remembers the first time he beat the odds to launch a revolutionary company from scratch.

“I get reflective on a day like this,” says Plank. “When you’re an entrepreneur and you’re just getting going, you’re constantly looking for validation. Have I gotten better? Are we growing? You’re just trying to find a way.”

Under Armour’s origin story is the stuff of start-up legend. Plank grew tired of wearing sweat-soaked cotton T-shirts under his uniform as special team captain of the University of Maryland football team.

After graduating, he prototyped what would become Under Armour’s signature HeatGear T-shirt, a performance base layer that wicks away moisture to keep athletes dry during intense workouts. It was a game-changing design. HeatGear technology has since redefined the market and informed the design of sports apparel across all brands.

Plank traveled up and down the East Coast, selling the shirt out of the trunk of his car. By the end of 1996, he had earned $17,000 in literal direct-to-consumer sales and launched Under Armour while living and working in his grandmother’s Georgetown rowhome.

Under Armour’s revenue exploded to nearly $300 million by 2005, the year it went public. Annual sales cracked $1 billion in 2010 and continued to climb past $5 billion as the company strung together years of revenue growth of at least 20 percent. However, the company reported a net loss in 2017 as growth slowed to the single digits and stock prices tumbled.

Controversies also began to swirl. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Under Armour with misleading investors about its revenue growth in the second half of 2015, forcing the company to pay $9 million to settle the matter. Under Armour also paid $434 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed in February 2017 that accused the company of defrauding shareholders about its revenue growth to meet Wall Street forecasts.

Under Armour was no longer an industry darling. Plank stepped down as CEO at the end of 2019 but remained onboard as executive chairman and brand chief. Industry analysts generally applauded his decision, believing the company would benefit from a fresh voice and new direction. Plank lasted on the sideline for close to five years before returning as president and CEO in April 2024.

The sudden and surprising move was met with skepticism. Yes, Plank possesses an innate understanding of Under Armour that only a founder can have and grew the company into a multi-billion-dollar business, but some industry analysts wondered if he could fix the problems that he helped create.

“Under Armour seemed to lose sight of its unique selling proposition and, at times, didn’t quite understand its consumer,” says Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, a personal investment firm. “It produced too much of what people didn’t want, particularly during a time when there was already excess inventory in the market.”

HE UNDERSTANDS THE CHALLENGES AHEAD AND HEARS THE SKEPTICS.

With that in mind, Plank immediately announced plans to streamline Under Armour’s product offerings by 25 percent and institute faster go-to-market capabilities. The idea was to spend less time and resources on producing repetitive sportswear so the company could refocus on introducing innovative products that reimagined how active apparel feels and functions.

Plank points to Under Armour’s Stealth-Form Uncrushable Hat, which was introduced a year ago and is made of proprietary cooling material, as the type of forward-thinking design consumers can expect from the company and promises similar types of products are in the pipeline for release later this year.

“Under Armour has made a lot of good products and some better products, but nowhere near enough best-level products,” he says.

During an earnings call last November, the halfway point of the company’s fiscal year 2025, Plank reported $50 million more in adjusted operating income than what the company had forecast. He said half of that found money would be spent on marketing and brand building efforts to deepen the company’s connection with consumers. Plank’s turnaround efforts were beginning to gain traction, but industry analysts warned about a long road ahead in a fragmented athletic apparel industry that makes it difficult for Under Armour to stand out.

“The level of innovation in the market has increased significantly,” says Hewson. “Consumers are interested in purchasing the latest hot product instead of remaining loyal to a brand.”

To make matters worse, Under Armour has lost shelf space at big box retailers that help drive sales. David Swartz, senior equity analyst at the investment research firm Morningstar, says the company used to generate about 40 percent of its revenue through Dick’s Sporting Goods and Sports Authority. When Sports Authority went bankrupt in 2016, Dick’s was also struggling financially. Under Armour responded by shifting most of its inventory to Kohl’s, a decision that proved costly.

Although Dick’s didn’t cut ties with Under Armour, it began to reserve prime shelf space for Nike and Adidas and rising newcomers like On and HOKA. Even Puma and New Balance, which have seen a brand resurgence in recent years, are prominently displayed. Under Armour is no longer at the top of Dick’s preferred brands list, preventing it from riding the wave of explosive sales growth the sporting goods chain has experienced in recent years.

Under Armour’s brand visibility took another hit when Kohl’s was forced to close several stores in 2024 due to slumping revenues. Swartz believes Under Armour can improve its retail presence by rebuilding its relationship with Dick’s and prioritizing other stores, particularly Foot Locker, which is diversifying its brand offerings and presents a growth opportunity.

Under Armour’s revenues currently rely heavily on selling discounted products at outlet stores. Plank wants to move away from that business model by creating a premium brand that consumers will pay full price to wear.

“For that to happen, the products need to be high quality, innovative, and deliver on their performance promises,” says Hewson. “Under Armour’s focus on innovating practical sportswear is key. If the company manages to position itself as an aspirational but affordable brand, it can persuade consumers to buy at full price. It’s a delicate balancing act. Products need to be desirable while remaining accessible.”

Under Armour has had a 12-year partnership with NBA superstar Steph Curry, one of the world’s most marketable athletes. The company launched the Curry Brand in 2020 and opened the first brand-dedicated store in China last September. Swartz believes the brand is underdeveloped, despite the enormous popularity of the Curry line of basketball sneakers.

“There hasn’t been a widespread consumer recognition of the Curry Brand as a distinct entity like Nike’s Jordan Brand,” he says.

[UA] WANTS TO MOVE PAST BEING A BRAND THAT SELLS ON PRICE TO ONE THAT SELLS ON STORY.

Rather than venturing into the casual athletic or athleisure market, which companies like Lululemon have successfully mined for significant revenue, Under Armour has remained focused on competing with Nike and Adidas for the attention of 16- to 22-year-old varsity athletes, a core demographic the company targets to maximize its reputation as an authentic team sports brand, a differentiator that Plank believes is key to driving the company’s future success.

Still, Swartz remains relatively optimistic about Under Armour’s prospects in a dynamic global market that offers opportunities for multiple winners.

“The key question is whether Plank can capitalize on those opportunities,” he says. “Shifting from being a niche brand to a serious player in global sports requires investing heavily in marketing and product innovation—and quickly. The competition isn’t standing still.”

Eric Liedtke, Under Armour’s executive vice president of brand strategy, says the company has the reputation of a performance-centric training brand for individuals, and men in particular, who are 34 and older—loyalists who grew up wearing the logo.

He acknowledges that Under Armour has been viewed as a bit too tough and intense in its efforts to connect with younger athletes in the past. Think about the company’s iconic ad campaigns and accompanying visuals. Protect This House. The Only Way Is Through. Scowling, sweat-stained athletes in shadowy portraits.

That will all change, says Liedtke, who vows to express the brand in fresh ways that appeal equally to young male and female team athletes, a demographic the company is “maniacally focused” on reaching.

“We’re going to channel the full energy of the brand into messaging that comes through as determined, passionate, fun, and yes, still a little tough and intense,” says Liedtke. “This positioning will be expressed in the most impactful marketing campaign in the company’s history that includes two chapters—reasons to love us and reasons to buy us.”

Under Armour wants to move past being a brand that sells on price to one that sells on a story, according to Kara Trent, Under Armour’s president of the Americas.

“We know the formula,” she says. “We have a portfolio of teams and athletes. We have product franchises and innovations, and we have the platform established to drive meaningful consumer experiences. But now we must execute integrated stories that drive connection to younger athletes—and do it at a level of impact and repetition like never before.”

Plank is back as Under Armour’s CEO because he wanted to be, and the company’s stock structure gave him the majority voting power he needed to retake the top spot. The power play was controversial among industry analysts, but it’s likely that no other executive would want the company to thrive more than Plank does.

“The one thing that he brings to the role is his unique understanding of what Under Armour is,” says Hewson. “A lot of founding CEOs can’t let go because they haven’t figured out a way to impart that knowledge to somebody else in a way that will make their company successful.”

Is Plank’s passion for the brand born from blood, sweat, and tears enough to drive top-line growth? Time will tell. Change won’t happen in the short term.

During the Brand House’s grand opening celebration, pictures of Plank sitting behind cluttered desks in Under Armour’s former office spaces appear behind him on a large digital screen. He tells the crowd that he came up with the “buy a new desk” mantra to gauge the company’s growth during the white-knuckle start-up days when bills were stacked higher than sales receipts. Business was good, his thinking went, if he could afford larger and more ornate work surfaces.

In 1996, the year Under Armour grossed $17,000, Plank bought a $350 IKEA desk. It wasn’t much, but it represented progress.

As revenues grew, Plank needed to expand Under Armour’s operations. He moved out of the Georgetown rowhome in 1998 and into a small space on South Sharp Street in Baltimore. Buy a new desk. Further growth necessitated moves to moderately sized offices on Bush Street and eventually to a large campus on Tide Point. Buy a new desk.

Plank is now standing outside his company’s latest home, a state-of-the-art facility that glows bright red at night, joining the Phillips and Domino Sugars signs as illuminated landmarks that define Baltimore’s skyline and identity.

Plank recounts Under Armour’s journey to remind the crowd, and perhaps even himself, that the company achieved its greatest success when the odds were stacked against it. Under Armour is once again the underdog. Maybe that’s what it needs to thrive.

“I’m approaching the brand like it’s a $5 billion start-up,” says Plank. “Watch as we show the world how great we can be and make this city proud. We’re just getting started.”

This year we celebrate our 50th Best of Baltimore issue—our biggest and boldest yet. Subscribe before 6/20 to guarantee your copy commemorating this milestone anniversary. 

Despite still-rising numbers of COVID-19 intensive care cases and deaths in Maryland, Governor Larry Hogan sounded a positive note at a press conference Friday, presenting his outline for reopening economic and recreational activities in the state.

“I’m optimistic and hopeful that if Marylanders continue staying at home and practicing aggressive physical distancing for a little while longer, our numbers could continue to plateau,” Hogan told reporters in Annapolis, “and then we should be able to begin the recovery. I’m hopeful we could then begin our recovery in early May.”

With 74 additional deaths from the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours, the number of confirmed deaths to date in the state has now reached 797. Additionally, the state has reported another 78 probable deaths due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The African American community, in particular, has been hard by the virus, experiencing the majority, and significantly disproportionate, number of deaths in Maryland.

Outbreaks and deaths at nursing home facilities continue to drive the death toll in the state.

Confirmed cases and deaths from the coronavirus cases continue to rise in broader capital region, Hogan highlighted. In Maryland, 1,408 people remained in the hospital at the start of the weekend because of the virus.

On Friday, Hogan outlined a gradual three-step plan to reopen the state, including some retail shops, service businesses, outdoor religious gatherings, outside recreational activities—such as golf, tennis, boating and fishing—and elective surgeries in the first phase. He cautioned, however, that the state’s key COVID-19 outbreak data—including hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths—would need to decline for at least 14 days. Predicting when the state could resume full activities is impossible at this time, the governor added.

“Until a vaccine is developed, the way we go about our daily lives and the way we work is going to be significantly different for a little while longer,” Hogan said.

Public health experts and researchers have said a vaccine is likely many months, possibly up to 12 and 18 months, away from being available to the public at large.

In the second stage of the phased-in reopening of the state, the limit would be raised on social gatherings, non-essential workers who cannot telecommute would be allowed to return to work, and bars and restaurants could open with certain safety restrictions.

Stage three of the phased-in reopening would essentially return life to something closer to a new normal with larger entertainment venues open, larger religious gatherings allowed, a lessening of restrictions at state hospitals, and family visits allowed to nursing homes.

“We all want the state to reopen as quickly as it can, but it’s clear that if we open the state today we would risk a fast acceleration in the epidemic to very high numbers,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and advisor to Hogan on coronavirus containment.

Among other unfortunate and potentially tragic news Friday, Gov. Hogan’s communication director, Mike Ricci, said more than 100 Marylanders called the state’s emergency hotline asking about whether injecting or ingesting disinfectants could help cure COVID-19 following President Donald Trump’s comments during a White House briefing Thursday.

Hogan’s “Roadmap to Recovery” did not offer timeline goals—or specific COVID-19 health-related data, but emphasized the need for decreased numbers of hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths.

“There isn’t a decline yet and we need to get to a point where the numbers are starting to move downward,” Inglesby said.

The governor did not offer an update on the continued closure of Maryland schools, which he said previously will remain closed through May 15. Most states have already decided to keep schools closed for the remainder of the spring calendar. Classes are held online, but not all students in the state have been logging on local school websites and participating, some due to lack of proper technology and internet access.

Maryland schools have been closed since March 13. Hogan ordered nonessential businesses to close March 23 and Marylanders to stay at home March 30.

Meanwhile, more than 344,000 people have filed for unemployment in Maryland from the start of the outbreak through April 18, more than 125,000 more state residents than all of last year.

By late Friday, some 44,000 people had logged on to the state’s new unemployment site, which crashed several times during the day with 19,000 new claims to process.

Last weekend, at least 200 protestors in Annapolis caravanned around State Circle, demanding the governor lift restrictions on public gatherings and reopen Maryland businesses.

Hogan also announced a “recovery team” Friday to assist in the planning of the state’s economic reopening and recovery.

Team members include: Arne Sorensen, the president of Marriott International; Robert Doar, president of the American Enterprise Institute; Kevin Plank, executive chairman of Under Armour; Jim Davis, chairman of the Allegis Group; Mark McManus, general president of United Association, a union; and Augie Chiasera, president of M&T Bank’s Baltimore and Chesapeake regions.

Throughout his more than 30-year career, Under Armour’s current president and chief operating officer Patrik Frisk has been praised for his drive, energy, and leadership skills. In three months, he’ll need those in spades, as he is set to become the chief executive officer of the company.

“Patrik’s proven track record of industry experience, straightforward leadership style and championship of our brand and culture makes him uniquely positioned to smartly capitalize on the opportunities in front of us,” said founder Kevin Plank—who Frisk will take over for as Plank steps into a chief and executive chairman role—in a press statement announcing the change today.

In a letter to his employees, published by the Baltimore Business Journal, Plank explained that the shift in his personal role is by no means a retirement. “Under Armour is my heart and full-time job,” he said. “This is an evolution of company leadership that is reflective of how we are operating today.”

Frisk came to Under Armour after previously serving as the CEO of The Aldo Group, a footwear and accessories company. He also held various supervisory roles at VF Corporation, which counts The North Face and Timberland among its brands. Effective in January, he will report to Plank and join the company’s board of directors.

“For the past two and a half years having worked next to—as well as sweated with Patrik—in and out of the gym, board room, executive meetings, quarterly business and line reviews, and domestic and international travel, I have seen first-hand how he has sincerely earned the trust and respect of our teammates, customers, and shareholders,” Plank said in his letter. “Along the way, always present has been Patrik’s unshakable passion for our brand.”

Frisk has experience working all over the world, which is an attractive proposition for a global company like Under Armour that only hopes to expand its reach. Frisk’s experience in the clothing industry, coupled with the fact that for the past few years he has been quietly groomed for the role, makes for what Plank hopes to be a seamless transition.

“The opportunity that lies ahead of us is incredible,” Frisk said in a statement. “As our entire global team continues to lean hard into our transformation, I am honored to lead this great brand toward the realization of its full potential.”

As for Plank, his move aside marks a big step for the company he founded in 1996. He told Baltimore in 2013 that the culture and identity of the city was one of the things that attracted him to start the “hard-edged, blue-collar” brand here. Since then, Under Armour has grown into a multi-billion dollar operation that has allowed Plank to explore other local initiatives like the massive Port Covington project and revamped water taxi system.

As Under Armour, which exists in a highly competitive market, works to establish its footing after a few down years, Plank is making it clear that his involvement in the company will still be his main priority.

“What I am most excited about in this next chapter is a platform that brings these strengths together in a vision that empowers us to reach our full potential,” Plank said. “Patrik makes us better.”

As Carl Bart remembers it, on the first day of service for the Harbor Connector water taxi service from Maritime Point to Locust Point, there were three passengers the entire day. To say that things have changed since the route’s inception 10 years ago would be an understatement.

In its current form, the Baltimore Water Taxi and the Harbor Connector service it is contracted to oversee has proven to be a valuable resource for those commuting to and from work every day, as well as those looking to get around Baltimore in style. As the captains tell it, the changes made since Kevin Plank’s Sagamore Ventures acquired Harbor Boating, Inc. in 2016, while gradual, have been noticeable, ushering in a professional era for the Water Taxi in a time when the exploration of alternative modes of transportation in major American cities has become an imperative.

“We want to reduce the amount of congestion on the streets,” says Michael McDaniel, president and CEO of Harbor Boating. “The Water Taxi is not going to be the end-all-be-all of transportation and getting vehicles off the street and people using alternate modes of transportation, but we’re going to be a part of that.”

Naturally, when a company is under new management, there are going to be tweaks, and the Water Taxi was no different. Bart has worked with the company in some capacity since 2008, and says that Sagamore has brought a new sheen. “Sagamore has listened to the employees and basically turned the job into a career for the younger guys,” he says.

The Baltimore Water Taxi was once known as Ed Kane’s Water Taxis, named after its founder, who started the business in 1975. When Kane passed away in 2003, ownership was passed over to his wife Cameron, who oversaw the enterprise for six years until McDaniel and Baltimore Water Taxi gained ownership.

Sagamore took over in 2016 and turned the business into what it looks like today. With that transition came an added focus on the business side of things. There is an inevitable sense of corporate influence when a company like Sagamore takes over; boat captains were given new Under Armour-branded uniforms, shiny $635,000-dollar black boats were introduced, and now individual day passes and charters for special events are offered. “For the people who have been there a while, it took some getting used to and an understanding of how things were going to change,” Bart says. “It’s much more professional today in terms of the back end.”

One of the issues the business side of the Baltimore Water Taxi faces is the need to be current and consistently attract customers and riders. Newer boats now have charging ports for phones, while commuter boats can take two bikes at a time per ride—small amenities to entice people to become repeat users of their services. The growth of water transportation, whether by ferry or taxi, has spiked in the last several years across the country, as cities with access to waterways work to emphasize a once-dominant medium. In Baltimore, the Water Taxi is a resource borne out of the landscape of the harbor that surrounds it, and those in charge would like to keep it that way. “It’s been an institution for 40-plus years,” says captain Bob Crouthamel, who’s worked part-time for the Water Taxi for 15 years. “It’s a real important part of our city.”

There is also the recent announcement that construction on a new Water Taxi terminal in the Inner Harbor has been approved, located at Pier I, replacing what is currently the U.S.S. Constellation Museum. It’s further evidence that the Baltimore Water Taxi is taking active measures to improve and expand its reach to as many as possible.

And as the Baltimore Water Taxi reckons with its future and continues to consider what it will look like under Sagamore leadership, expansion and reach—both for reasons of utility and visibility—are top priorities. McDaniel hopes that extending Harbor Connector operations from five days a week to seven is in the service’s future. He also envisions a scenario where riders might be able to get off a bus and step right onto a Water Taxi stop nearby, creating a more interconnected Baltimore where riders might not even need to get in a car.

“[There is] a lot of fine tuning to do in the years to come,” McDaniel says. “We want to make it a more attractive system to increase ridership and that will see the benefits of taking vehicles off the streets, potentially circulating more tourism dollars to areas that are underserved. Getting people on the water and to areas that they would normally not go to by the water really puts a positive spin on both transportation as well as this city—seeing it from a different vantage point.”

One aspect of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul law was a provision designed to create “opportunity zones” in low-income areas around the country. By offering tax breaks to developers for investing in targeted, low-income areas—vetted by each state’s governor—the purpose was to spur economic and commercial activity and revitalization efforts in under-invested neighborhoods.

However, according to a just-released report from ProPublica, an independent, journalism nonprofit focused on government accountability, that new tax law will likely benefit Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, Goldman Sachs, and other Port Covington investors with what could be millions in tax breaks for their ongoing South Baltimore project.

As the selection process for opportunity zone sites was underway, Gov. Larry Hogan’s deputy chief of staff, Sean Powell, noted in an email last year that Port Covington did not qualify for one of the potential 147 low-income tracts in Maryland. That was largely because of the higher household incomes in Federal Hill and Locust Point that are included in the census tract. ProPublica reports that Hogan, also a real estate developer, of course, nonetheless selected Port Covington after his aides met with Plank’s lobbyists.

“This is a classic example of a windfall benefit,” Robert Stoker, a George Washington University professor who has studied Baltimore’s economic development, told ProPublica reporters Jeff Ernsthausen and Justin Elliott. “A major investment was already planned and now is in a zone where they are going to qualify for all kinds of beneficial tax treatment.”

Port Covington, a former railroad terminal and brown field, is Plank’s ambitious effort to build an essentially new waterfront city within Baltimore’s city boundaries. The project is being overseen by Sagamore Development, a privately held company founded by Plank and real estate developer Marc Weller in 2013. Port Covington is already one of the largest development projects in the U.S.—as well as the recipient of $660 million in tax-incremental financing breaks from Baltimore City, and all told, another $1.3 billion in public infrastructure spending. The entire buildout is projected to cost $7.3 billion and take 25 years to finish.

“Port Covington being part of an Opportunity Zone will attract more investors, foster more economic growth in a neglected area of the City, and directly benefit all of the surrounding communities for decades to come,” Weller said in a statement to ProPublica.

“For parts of Port Covington and the six adjacent South Baltimore communities, the Opportunity Zone program provides an incredible opportunity to drive capital, bring outside investment and create jobs in areas that have been left behind for decades,” Weller added in a statement emailed to Baltimore magazine.

Geared toward attracting newer and younger people to Baltimore—the Sagamore Spirit distillery and Rye Street Tavern are already in place—the futuristic vision for Port Covington calls for mixed-use development that will feature high-rise offices, an upscale hotel, apartments for millennials, restaurants, walkable shopping, and Water Taxi travel.

As ProPublica reports, Port Covington is not in an impoverished census tract and nor is it a new investment. Also, according to its investigation, “the census tract only became eligible to be an opportunity zone thanks to a mapping error.”

City Councilman Ryan Dorsey decried the selection of Port Covington (over other areas in Baltimore) for additional tax breaks Wednesday on Twitter following ProPublica’s report, questioning Weller’s statement that Port Covington is a “neglected area” and Hogan’s statement that the project will go “a long way to providing benefits for the whole city.”

Baltimore fair housing lawyer Barbara Samuels asked via a tweet: “Is there a gov’t subsidy that this (misad)venture hasn’t vacuumed up?”

Pro or con, the full story on opportunity zone tax breaks and Port Covington is worth a read.

“The Port Covington tract is just 4 percent black,” the ProPublica pieces highlights in the piece. “For it to be included in the program, another community somewhere in Maryland had to be excluded. The ones that the city suggested that were excluded by the governor, for example, are 68 percent black and have a poverty rate three times higher than Port Covington’s.”

A politician’s best bet days before an election? Make sweeping job-creation claims at a corporate gold-shovel show. Then hope nobody fact-checks you.

That’s a bit what it sounded like recently, when, two weeks before election day, local, state, and national elected officials from both parties joined economic development officials and company officials to announce “Cybertown, USA.” In essence, a cybersecurity firm and venture-capital companies that invest in tech startups are setting up shop in Port Covington, the massive mixed-use mini-city on a large waterfront tract in South Baltimore that’s the brainchild of Under Armour founder Kevin Plank.

Try on some of these claims for size: “Maryland is home to the world’s most advanced cybersecurity and data science . . .”; Baltimore is positioned to be the cyber and innovation capital of our nation”; and the jobs announcement “helps solidify Baltimore and Maryland’s reputation as the cybersecurity capital of the world.”

(That’s from Mike Janke, co-founder of DataTribe, Gov. Larry Hogan, and congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, respectively.)

Granted, it’s always good news that three companies are locating here: DataTribe, a globally known cybersecurity startup studio with offices in Maryland and Silicon Valley; AllegisCyber, a leading Silicon Valley-based early-stage cybersecurity venture-capital firm; and Evergreen Advisors, a Columbia-based investment banking and corporate advisory firm focused on assisting emerging-growth and middle-market companies.

And one of Port Covington’s draws for the tech industry in the years ahead may be that it boasts a secure, redundant, private fiber-optic loop to provide gigabit-speed internet connectivity and site-wide public Wi-Fi service. The development is also unique in that it will be built from the ground up with a cybersecurity-hardened infrastructure.

But how does the Baltimore region really stack up nationally when it comes to cybersecurity and other I.T. jobs?

We checked out sources that don’t need ballots to maintain their bank balances: The folks at Money magazine say we fall about in the middle of the pack in terms of I.T. job growth—109 percent growth annually—on a list of 20 cities outside of Silicon Valley (which is still the leading location).

When it comes to cybersecurity jobs, Tripwire says that Columbia is near the top of the list in the nation in per-capita terms, but behind Jersey City, NJ. And who wants to live there?

And metro Baltimore is nowhere on Forbes’s list of seven cities destined to be cybersecurity capitals of the world (though Washington, D.C., is, as is Silicon Valley).

That may be partly because, compared to most metro areas, the I.T. sector is a relatively small share of the overall economy in Baltimore, says economist Dr. Jacob Cosman, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School whose specialties include real estate, retail business, and spatial competition in cities.

“The share of jobs in I.T. in Baltimore looks less like Seattle or San Francisco and more like Cincinnati or Las Vegas,” he says. “Conversely, education and healthcare comprise a larger share of the workforce in Baltimore than most other metro areas.”

In fact, he says, though Tech jobs in Baltimore are relatively well-paid, and might then have outsized importance to the region’s tax base, “the concentration of I.T. jobs and I.T. firms is nowhere near the real centers of innovation and technology like Seattle and Silicon Valley,” he says. “The concentration of I.T. in Baltimore is not even near the level in smaller centers like Boulder, Madison, and Raleigh. Without that high density, it’s difficult to build the pool of specialized workers and financing that would accompany a legitimate hub of innovation.”

So why can’t Baltimore make all these dreamy geek-capital claims come true?

“The biggest obstacle is that other cities already have easy access to specialized workers and financing because they have a pre-existing hub of I.T. activity,” says Cosman. “In addition, it’s more difficult to attract highly paid, highly mobile workers to Baltimore because the city offers fewer of the amenities that high-income workers want. Some of this is geography—Baltimore will never have temperate winters, beaches, or easy access to wilderness—but some of that might change as the city develops more entertainment and cultural amenities.”

Of course, if we can curb our enthusiasm a bit, the Port Covington development is still good for the city, Cosman says.

“Even if the announcement makes some very optimistic claims, the fact that established firms want to occupy the office space in Port Covington is still overall good news,” he says. “The city government took a risk on the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars to finance development there. We can debate whether that was really the best use of the city’s scarce fiscal resources, but the city government has made that decision to commit those resources, and at least it seems like there is some demand for the development the city has financed. This is probably not Cyber Town, USA, but it is much better than empty space.”

There’s nothing quite like going back to your hometown—revisiting old stomping grounds, walking familiar streets, and reminiscing about the good ol’ days.

Enter Baltimore Homecoming, a brand-new initiative taking place October 3-5 that invites accomplished Baltimore expats back to reconnect with their roots and reinvest in the city through a series of private events. Launched in November by cofounders and Baltimore natives Nate Loewentheil, and J.M. Schapiro, this nonprofit project aims to employ the talent and resources of former Baltimoreans who have gone on to make an impact in their fields, such as SoulCycle CEO Melanie Whelan and actor Josh Charles.

With help from leaders in the city’s education, business, arts, and religious communities—co-chairs include actress Julie Bowen and Congressman Elijah Cummings—the one-time locals will participate in neighborhood tours, art and music presentations, talks with area business owners such as Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, and field trips to local spaces including the Center for Urban Families and Living Classrooms’ Target Investment Zone in East Baltimore.

Loewentheil was inspired by Detroit’s annual Homecoming event, which has garnered more than $212 million in total investments over the past four years. “People from here have a strong sense of connection to the city,” he says. “There’s a reservoir of goodwill for Baltimore around the country that, right now, is untapped.”

The goal is that sharing the stories of local change makers, and connecting them to the honored guests, will help spread positive narratives about the city and encourage giving back. To that end, the nonprofit will be launching the inaugural Homecoming Hero awards to recognize five outstanding community members. Among the nominees is Brittany Young, the founder of social venture B360.

Young says her program’s message, which de-stigmatizes dirt bike riding by teaching local kids the STEM-related skills needed to build and maintain their wheels, goes hand in hand with that of this event. “Both projects are committed to telling positive stories about our city and collaborating with one another to build a stronger and better Baltimore,” says Young, “for now and for the future.”

With more than 400 Baltimore “alumni” invited to this first-ever event, the organizers hope that it will grow in size and scope every year by creating a network of guests devoted to giving back to the city. “I hope that for every year the city holds this event,” says Young, “that more positive examples of who Baltimore citizens are and what we bring to the table spread to the rest of the country.”

With more than a dozen restaurant concepts scattered from New York to Miami operating under his reign, James Beard Award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini is no stranger to the jitters of opening night.

“You have to break the machine to figure out where the holes are,” he says. “I can make the recipes no problem, but it’s the human component that’s the hard part. Luckily, we’ve had a lot of practice.”

Carmellini will celebrate yet another opening night on Tuesday, September 12, as he welcomes diners to Rye Street Tavern on the campus of Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank’s Sagamore Spirit Distillery in Port Covington. The restaurant marks Carmellini’s second venture into Charm City dining, the first being the Italian-influenced Rec Pier Chop House that opened inside of Plank’s Sagamore Pendry Hotel in Fells Point last spring.

With a focus on American cuisine, the 315-seat restaurant will feature Carmellini’s spins on classic comfort foods that incorporate the flavors of the Eastern Shore. Among the token dishes will include crab pot pie, classic fried chicken, Bloody Mary blue crab salad, roasted local carrots with popped sorghum (a grain similar to popcorn), and an array of wood-fired seafood bakes.

Carmellini credits visiting area purveyors—think Calvert’s Gift Farm in Sparks and Whistle Pig Hollow in Reisterstown—and exploring aquaculture on the Eastern Shore as being some of the most exciting aspects of landing on the local food scene.

“Baltimore is very diverse, and no one really knows that,” he says, describing the area’s many microclimates. “A sense of place is important. You always want to be respectful of the community in executing it, while also presenting things from another point of view.”

Developed by local designer Patrick Sutton, the restaurant’s cozy interior is a fitting accompaniment to the menu of comfort foods. Filled with wooden and copper accents, the space is also a nice complement to the neighboring Sagamore Spirit Rye distillery. The building is comprised of a front bar (boasting exclusively domestic wine and spirits), main dining room, upstairs area for private events, and outdoor space complete with firepits and Adirondack chairs overlooking the water.

“To me, a good tavern should have a little sense of home when you walk in,” Carmellini says. “That’s what I want it to be—a mix between a destination and a neighborhood place where you just stop by for a bite to eat.”

Aside from its own wood-burning fireplace and an elevated platform to host live music, the front bar also features a collection of vintage paintings surrounding a huge taxidermy buffalo.

The 65-seat dining room highlights a killer waterfront view, as well as elements like exposed wine racks, interior greenery, leather booths, and a chef’s table overlooking the kitchen’s hearth oven.

“Cooking with wood is a long American tradition that goes beyond just barbecue,” Carmellini adds. “A good part of the menu is cooked over wood, so seeing it all happen creates a special connection.”

Upstairs, the tavern houses two loft rooms overlooking the front bar, a dual-climate wine cellar, and two pieces of the original American flag that flew over Fort McHenry that have been framed and put on display. The top-level also pays homage to the restaurant’s proximity to the distillery with a non-functional copper column still and a hallway lined with whiskey barrels.

“I’m a big fan of whiskey and bourbon, and obviously wanted to incorporate that into what we do here,” Carmellini says, mentioning that his team has fermented ingredients like pickles and hot sauces inside some of the reclaimed whiskey barrels. “I will say one thing about Baltimore is, man, you guys like to drink.”

Other than the city’s burgeoning booze scene, Carmellini says that he’s enjoyed getting acquainted with the community’s quirk.

“Baltimore is pretty weird, man,” he says with a laugh. “There are a ton of characters around that should be embraced and celebrated. Here, you have that grit. As far as food culture goes, it’s all about finding a way to maintain that organically.”

Baltimore is one step closer to hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Back in April, when executive director for Maryland Sports Terry Hasseltine heard that the United States had entered a tri-country bid with Canada and Mexico for the 2026 World Cup, he knew that Baltimore needed to be included—so he placed a bid to host at M&T Bank Stadium.

“We obviously want to make sure that M&T Bank Stadium and the city of Baltimore are considered a part of that portfolio,” Hasseltine told Baltimore in April. “We had such a great response when we put in a bid for 2022 [FIFA World Cup], we did it again.”

In a list released on August 15 by the United Bid Committee of the United States, Mexico, and Canada, Baltimore was listed as a potential candidate to host and will have until September 5 to declare interest. Final bids will be due January 2018 pending declaration requests.

Ravens are undefeated in the pre-season.

Okay, we know it’s only two games…and it’s only pre-season but we looked good in Thursday’s game against the Miami Dolphins. 

Taking the game early, Baltimore ended the game with a final score of 31-7.

The Ravens defense controlled the tempo of the game, holding Miami to just one touchdown. Third string QB Josh Woodrum showed his chops with 2 touchdowns and some quick running. 

Speaking of the Ravens. . .
There are rumors that the former Ravens center Jeremy Zuttah may be headed back to Baltimore. The 2016 Pro-Bowler was traded to San Francisco in March. However, by August, the 49ers released him putting the big guy in a tough spot.

Considering the injuries on the offensive line and the familiarity of Zuttah, it would be a kismet reunion for both sides if he came back to Baltimore. According to The Sun, the 31-year old offensive lineman and the Ravens are close to a deal. But they better act fast because word on the street is that the Indianapolis Colts are in need of a big guy to protect QB Andrew Luck.

Under Armour’s Kevin Plank parts ways with Trump.
In a statement on Monday, August 14, Under Armour’s CEO Kevin Plank announced that he would be stepping down from President Donald J. Trump’s American Manufacturing Council after the president was openly criticized for not responding quickly to the events in Charlottesville.

“We remain resolute in our potential and ability to improve American manufacturing,” Plank said in a statement. “However, Under Armour engages in innovation and sports, not politics.”

Plank joined the 28-member panel back in January to help the White House promote job growth because he believed that “it was important for Under Armour to have an active seat at the table” representing the sports industry.  After announcing the company’s departure from the group, others on the board followed suit causing the president to disband the panel.

O’s outfielder Anthony Santander set to hit the field in today’s game.
The injury-prone outfielder was unable to play in 2016 due to a right shoulder surgery and was unable to throw during spring training because of a forearm injury. While on the disabled list for 60 days, the Venezuelan has hit .382/.453/.745 in 16 minor league rehab games. To make space for Santander on the roster, the Orioles have optioned outfielder Joey Rickard to triple-A in Norfolk. 

On Tuesday, Under Armour announced that effective July 10, retail veteran Patrik Frisk would become the new president and COO for the Baltimore-based company. 

“This appointment has always been part of the growth strategy,” said director of global communications at Under Armour Erin Wendell in an email. “This role will work closely with the leadership team on our go-to-market strategy and the execution of it.”

Frisk, most recently the former CEO of the shoe and accessories company Aldo, has nearly 30 years of experience in the retail industry working with companies like The North Face, Timberland, and Jansport. He will be responsible for executing Under Armour’s long-term growth plan that focuses on digital business strategies and category management. 

“Patrik’s global experience in brand building, while enhancing profitability and efficiency, will be instrumental as we work to transform our business model to deliver long-term value for our consumers, customers and shareholders,” said CEO of Under Armour Kevin Plank in a statement.

Plank founded Under Armour in 1995 while playing football for the University of Maryland. He developed a prototype that would replace cotton shirts with a material that would keep athletes cool and dry. After landing its first major client, Georgia Tech in 1999, the company settled in a 2,400-square-foot space on Sharp Street in Baltimore.

“When I looked at the factors, the culture and identity of Baltimore is one of the things that attracted me as much as anything else,” Plank told Baltimore in 2013. “We wanted to build a hard-edged, blue-collar company, and that attitude fit with what Baltimore was. We had a chip on our shoulder. I think our city still does, and I think our company does.”

According to Wendell, Plank’s day-to-day role will remain the same and Frisk will report directly to him.

“With the goals of accelerating our innovation agenda, optimizing our product assortment and creating a merchandising center of excellence,” Plank says, “this underscores our work toward evolving from a great brand with good operation—to a great brand with great operations.”

Mayor Catherine Pugh, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, and Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz joined a host of national dignitaries by signing the “We Are Still In” pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emission in Maryland as detailed in the Paris climate change agreement.

The coalition, led by philanthropist Michael Bloomberg, is an “open letter to the international community” from local and national leaders declaring to continue the fight against global warming. This comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s June 1 announcement to remove the United States from the agreement of 194 nations to work to hold the warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.

President Trump argues that the deal, as is, “hamstrings” the U.S. and said he plans to pursue renegotiation in an effort to make things “fair” for the country.

“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to the United States and its citizens, the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, but begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accords or a really entirely new transaction, on terms that are fair to the United States,” Trump said at a press conference.

As of June 9, there are 178 cities and counties, 272 colleges and universities, and more than 1,300 private companies that have committed to “working together to take forceful action and to ensure that the U.S. remains a global leader in reducing emissions.”

The U.S. is the second largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, and now joins Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries refusing to commit to the agreement. Although there is no penalty for withdrawing, the details of the agreement signed in 2015 by President Barack Obama, says that the earliest any country is eligible to withdraw is November 2020.

Among the list of private companies joining the “We Are Still In” pledge is Under Armour. One day after Trump’s announcement, CEO Kevin Plank released a statement asserting his disappointment with the decision.

“Climate change is real and must be taken seriously by our business community, our customers, our neighbors, and our elected officials,” he said. “Sustainability has always been part of our DNA: it’s integral to how we live and work and is essential to our environment. As a business leader concerned with creating American jobs, I disagree with the decision to exit the Paris accord.”

The impact on local jobs is also something that concerns Carl Simon, the interim executive director at environmental nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore. 

“The economic future of Baltimore is supported, strengthened, and enhanced by focusing on the rapidly growing renewable energy sector,” he explained. “There are thousands of jobs that could be, and are being, created due to strong environmental policies.”

He also added that climate change is an especially oppressing issue for a coastal city like Baltimore.

“Factually, the rate of flooding here is increased due to climate change,” he said. “Science shows the Inner Harbor, Dundalk, and other coastal parts of Baltimore flood more than they used to due to manmade climate change.”

Mayor Pugh said that Baltimore City would adopt a Climate Action Plan and Disaster Preparedness Plan that will focus on lowering the city’s impact on the environment.

“Our diverse natural ecosystems, including the Chesapeake Bay, are in serious jeopardy, yet remain the lifeblood of our region and the viability of our communities,” she said in a statement. “My endorsement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including goal thirteen, which specifically addresses climate action related to greenhouse gas reduction, recognizes the complexity of these challenges. As a city we cannot ignore the urgency of these issues.”

Kamenetz said he has been proactively taking steps to conserve energy in Baltimore County, converting traffic signals to LED bulbs, and using GPS routing programs for county fleet vehicles to reduce carbon emissions. He’d like to see the powers that be follow suit.

“I’m disturbed by Trump, but even more disturbed that Governor Hogan continues to remain silent,” he said. “I appreciate that he has accepted the general assembly initiatives to reduce energy, but by supporting the alliance, it would strengthen the commitment.”

Growing up in the public housing development Perkins Homes, Travis Street saw firsthand the importance of community centers in Baltimore City. “Once ours closed, I started to notice a lot of my peers getting into trouble, using drugs, selling drugs, going to jail,” he says. “And our communities were divided.”

As their numbers have dwindled from 150 in 1990 to a mere 42 today, the lack of community centers in Baltimore’s underserved neighborhoods has become a critical component in conversations about the city, an issue underscored by the 2015 uprising after the death of Freddie Gray.

But beside the heavy traffic of Fayette Street stands a bright blue beacon of hope for East Baltimore and the city as a whole. Here, Street now serves as the director of UA House at Fayette, a newly renovated, 30,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art community center—operated by Living Classrooms—which opened in November with a generous donation from Under Armour’s Kevin Plank. The cobalt-colored entrance beckons you inside where, to the left, a recording studio offers guitars, drums, and keyboards for making music and, to the right, a covered field house features a turf field and sky-high garage doors. There’s also a yoga and dance studio, a full-purpose neighborhood kitchen, and a regulation-size basketball court.

Just a few steps from where Street grew up (and near other low-income housing like Pleasant View Gardens and Douglas Homes), the 37-year-old now finds himself working to help transform the lives of those same kids he grew up with, not to mention their own children, and even grandchildren. “We’re taking a multigenerational approach,” he says. “The whole goal is to strengthen the communities and bring people together.”

As the anchor of Living Classrooms’ Target Investment Zone initiative, which aims to disrupt the cycle of poverty in 2.5 square miles of underserved communities from the JFX to Patterson Park, the UA House offers more than just fun and games. “This is the heartbeat of the community,” says James Piper Bond, president and CEO of Living Classrooms. “The programming that’s happening here is rippling out across the city.”

The space offers year-round after-school programming for elementary through high school students, and features a STEM classroom with white boards and Mac computers. The building’s lower level houses an impressive workforce development and entrepreneurship center with job and skill training for adults. “It’s about overcoming and eliminating barriers, looking at the long term, and making sure people succeed,” says Street. “When we say we are community-driven, we are. We know every household. This is my family.”

Sports Illustrated names Michael Phelps “The Greatest Olympian of All Time.”
And we’re not going to argue with that. The Baltimore aquaman has 28 career medals, including 23 gold (see above photo). Number two on all-time medal list is former Soviet Union gymnast Union Larisa Latynina, who took home 18 medals, including nine, in the 1950s and 1960s. But is he done? Phelps said he’s retired, but he has also said that before and he’s been equivocating lately, too. Here’s the what Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, a friend and golfing partner of Phelps, told SI in their Dec. 26 issue (keeping in mind UA has Phelps signed to a long-term deal):

“I know what Michael is going to say about Tokyo: ‘I’ll be 35 years old, I can’t stare at the black line anymore.’ I understand. But Tokyo is going to be a great Olympics. He said he was retiring after London, when he was 27, with the lung capacity of a Great White Shark. You can bet I’m going to be nudging him as best I can for the next four years. I think he believes he is retired now. Three years is a long time to rest.”

‘Tis the season to be jolly. ‘Tis also football season.
The Ravens travel to Heinz Field Christmas afternoon with nothing less than a division title and a playoff berth in the balance. We don’t want to go around denigrating another city’s football team this time of year, but we do expect the Ravens will deliver some well-deserved coal to all those Steeler stockings hanging in the Pittsburgh locker room.

Added to laundry list of questionable Steeler activities over the years—head coach Mike Tomlin attempting to trip Jacoby Jones on a kickoff, for example—Pittsburgh had its own hushed-up Deflate-gate scandal this season following a game with the New York Giants. Fortunately for the Steelers, however, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell quickly moved to sweep the episode away, learning from the New England episode that cheating scandals are gigantic headache and not exactly good PR for the league. The fact that the family owners of Giants, the Maras, and the family owners of the Steelers, the Rooneys, are related (note actress Rooney Mara) may have also played a role in the nothing-to-see-here-folks approach by the NFL.

Matt Wieters may not be going that far away.
We knew there was little chance the free-agent O’s catcher would stay in Baltimore. All things considered, the team’s signing of Welington Castillo to hold down the receiving duties until highly touted minor league star Chance Sisco is ready for The Show looks like a good deal. That said, Wieters, a class act on and off the field, will be missed here. Recent rumors have him headed down I-95 to Washington. As painful as it would be see the big guy in a red cap with a “W” scrawled across the front, it would give us a chance to track his career and occasionally watch him play on MASN.

The man who stole the Colts from Baltimore died this week.
William Hudnut III often gets credit for revitalizing downtown Indianapolis. In the early 1980s, one of the things then-mayor Hudnut pushed for was the construction of the city’s Hoosier Dome football stadium. As longtime Baltimoreans recall, before the stadium had even been completed, Hudnut had hooked easy mark Robert Irsay, persuading the Colts owner to steal the team away from Baltimore in the middle of the night in 1984. Hudnut, it turned out, moved to the Washington, D.C. area in the 1990s, even serving briefly as mayor of Chevy Chase in the mid-2000s. The 84-year-old Hudnut died this week of congestive heart failure while in a Rockville hospice center.

Remarkably, even Indianapolis TV stations refer to their city’s theft of the Colts as “that scandalous night” when “Indianapolis stole the Colts unannounced.”

In the weeks leading up to April’s Masters golf tournament, defending champion Jordan Spieth’s smiling face was seemingly everywhere. He hit drives with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show, yakked it up with Charlie Rose, stared out from the cover of Golf magazine, and was the subject of a rare double-episode of Golf Channel’s popular interview show, Feherty.

During all these appearances, the clean-cut phenom sported just one brand of clothing: Under Armour (UA). Save for a few segments when the interlocking UA was hidden under the green jacket he won at Augusta National last year, the logo was plainly visible on every hat, shirt, and pullover he wore.

Just 17 months ago, Spieth was a relatively unknown 21-year-old with only a few professional wins under his belt when Under Armour made what outwardly looked like a curious decision. It ripped up his original endorsement contract, and signed him to a brand new 10-year deal.

“He had already shown me that he was going to be around a while at that elite level, so we wanted to make sure that we were paying him as such,” says Ryan Kuehl, Under Armour’s vice president of sports marketing and sponsorships, who first targeted Spieth when the Texan was just a teenager. “Did I know he would be this good this fast? Obviously not. But I knew we could build a business around him. We structured the deal for a top-five player. He’s performed every bit of that if not more.”

Let’s go with “more.” Just three months after inking the new deal, Spieth burst onto the world scene by tying the Masters record for the lowest score. The TV exposure he earned for Under Armour during the four-day broadcast was worth $33.6 million to the company, sports sponsorship analytics expert Eric Smallwood told USA Today. Clad in Under Armour gear, Spieth graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, and went on to win the U.S. Open and break Tiger Woods’s record with $22 million in on-course earnings for the season.

In the process, Spieth sold a whole lot of shirts for Under Armour. When the company released its 2015 earnings, it attributed much of the 22 percent increase in apparel net revenues to growth in the golf sector. Overall, revenue increased 28 percent to $3.96 billion.

Under Armour prides itself on zigging when its competitors zag.

Spieth’s emergence was a major coup for Under Armour, which has had quite a few of them in recent years. In 2013 the company signed basketball player Stephen Curry, who had been with rival Nike, just as he was primed to evolve from a player with potential to the biggest star in the NBA. Last year he won the MVP award and a championship with the Golden State Warriors, and this season he has become the face of the league.

Cam Newton was the NFL’s MVP and led his Carolina Panthers to the Super Bowl. Tom Brady transformed from the 199th pick in the 2000 NFL draft to a global icon. Like Spieth, these athletes—also Under Armour endorsers—are brash, supremely talented, and, at some point in their careers, felt they were overlooked and underrated—exactly the way Under Armour sees itself. When it comes to picking the players who burnish its brand, tell its story, and most importantly, sell its products, Under Armour has been, like the athletes it signs so frequently, in the zone.

One of Under Armour’s stars has never won a championship ring or any most valuable player award. And she never will.

In 2012, the company launched a campaign to “re-define the athlete and allow women to talk about beauty through the lens of sport,” says Adrienne Lofton, UA’s senior vice president of global brand marketing. It needed someone who would transcend the world of traditional sports to serve as the face of its women’s brand.

“We always talk about the athletes that have the DNA that best aligns with our brand,” Lofton says. “We call it underdog spirit. It’s this ability to constantly feel like there’s this chip on your shoulder, this need to keep pushing and driving.”

That describes ballerina Misty Copeland to a tee. Copeland didn’t start dancing until she was 13 and repeatedly was told that her body type wasn’t suited to the discipline. But she eventually became the first African-American principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre (which, yes, happened after Under Armour brought her onboard).

“As we talked to women around the world, it’s not so much competitive sport that inspires them, it’s everyday women and in ‘nontraditional’ sports like dance,” Lofton says. “After meeting Misty and hearing her story and hearing her passion to tell the next generation of young girls they can be her in 10 years, we wanted her to be our microphone.”

Under Armour prides itself on zigging when its competitors zag, so pitching the idea of signing a ballerina to CEO Kevin Plank, who has final say on most endorsement deals, wasn’t difficult. Kuehl helped close the deal with Copeland’s agent, Gilda Squire, after a meeting at Norma’s in Le Parker Méridien Hotel on West 56th Street in Manhattan. In 2014, Copeland was officially added to Under Armour’s roster, but one question remained: What would the company do with her?

Copeland obviously can’t wear Under Armour products when she performs, so they set about creating a narrative around her story. As part of the “I Will What I Want” campaign, an ad featured her (and her otherworldly calves) dancing in an Under Armour outfit while a young girl reads a rejection letter from a ballet company. The ad went viral, and now has more than 10 million views on YouTube. The Under Armour deal has been mutually beneficial, helping propel Copeland’s popularity beyond the world of ballet. UA’s brand awareness among women is the highest it has ever been.

“The biggest shift since signing was the respect I started to receive from men,” Copeland says.

“The biggest shift since signing was the respect I started to receive from men,” Copeland says from Detroit, where she is performing. “They really began to see me and dancers in general as athletes. Overall, the campaigns have definitely broadened my visibility and really put ballerinas on the map, giving us the long due respect from the American public we deserve.”

The success of the Copeland deal is one reason why Plank thinks women’s apparel sales can one day surpass men’s for the company. It may sound hyperbolic, but that’s the kind of thinking that’s enabled him to build Under Armour from his grandmother’s basement into the second-largest sports apparel company in the U.S.

“Under Armour made a huge investment in Misty and it was a huge risk,” Squire says. “I don’t think another athletic company would have [done it]. If that was the case, we would have been getting calls from all kinds of athletic wear brands. But we weren’t.”

Companies like Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour sign athletes to endorse their products for two major reasons, says Haiyang Yang, assistant professor of marketing at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. They want to appeal to the customer’s rational side—if Steph Curry is wearing those shoes and because he’s the best, his shoes must be the best too—and to their emotional side—I love Steph Curry and want to feel close to him by wearing his shoes.

“You are picking somebody who is congruent with the brand image you are trying to portray,” Yang says. “If the brand image is, ‘We are the underdog, but we are striving to become the best,’ it might actually be better to align your brand with a rising star than somebody who has already achieved everything. There are probably a lot of people who have the potential to become a superstar, but how do you know which one will? It’s a probability game. I’d say Under Armour did their homework very well. They made some bets, and their bets paid off.”

A former long snapper in the NFL, Ryan Kuehl is built like a grizzly, but has the disposition of a teddy bear. His affable manner and experience dealing with athletes has helped him land some of Under Armour’s most important endorsers, including Tom Brady in 2010.

“Tom brought a different level of eyeballs, and quite frankly, scrutiny,” he says. “Tom has allowed us to sign a lot more athletes. It’s sort of like that Good Housekeeping seal of approval. Anytime we have a chance to put our products on our athletes, it authenticates us in the sense that people feel like we’re going in the right direction. They’re all our small North Stars.”

There are three traits Kuehl values most in Under Armour’s potential “partners,” as the company calls its endorsers: character, talent, and style. “In that order,” he says. His marketing team works with the business units to establish goals, and then finds athletes who fit the protocol.

Plus, Under Armour gets in early. The company was already designing shoes for Curry in 2009, the year he was drafted, even though he was years away from being on Under Armour’s roster. According to ESPN, it was that forward thinking—plus a botched Nike re-signing meeting and some convincing from former Warriors teammate and Under Armour partner Kent Bazemore—that led Curry to sign in 2013.

Similarly, Kuehl was watching Spieth during a practice round back at the 2012 AT&T National at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda when he knew he’d found his man. Kuehl walked with Spieth’s group for the front nine, observing from afar how the then-18-year-old interacted with fans, his fellow players, and his caddy. On the back nine, Kuehl introduced himself.

“The thing that stuck out to me was how strong Jordan was mentally and how much he cared about winning,” Kuehl says. “In golf, you can have a really good life by finishing 25th every tournament. You’re going to make a ton of money; you’re going to drive fancy cars. But to win takes something different. From Jordan’s perspective that came through from the first time I met him. I think that’s special in the sport of golf—what he’s willing to do to compete and win.”

“When I went up to Baltimore, it was a no-brainer,” Spieth said.

When Spieth turned pro later that year, he hired Jay Danzi to be his agent. Danzi had represented golfer Hunter Mahan when Mahan became Under Armour’s first golf partner in 2004. Quickly, Kuehl arranged for Danzi and Spieth to visit the company’s Tide Point campus. They met with various Under Armour product and business teams and ate lunch with Plank.

“I went up there, and when I left Baltimore it was a no-brainer,” Spieth told USA Today. “I was going with them. The whole atmosphere there, seeing the headquarters, I loved the attitude there.”

The deal the parties reached was unique in the golf world. Under Armour bought all the spots on Spieth’s apparel, meaning its logos would be the only ones visible on his attire.

“Jordan likes having the clean look that Under Armour provided him—not looking like a NASCAR driver with a bunch of different logos on him,” Danzi says. “It’s clean and athletic but still being classic. It fit well from day one.”

Spieth was named PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 2013, and finished second in the Masters in 2014. Soon after, Under Armour decided to lock him up for the foreseeable future, signing him through 2025. Although terms were not released, Golf Digest reported that “the deal, which industry insiders say has ‘Tiger-like numbers,’ includes an eight-figure guarantee annually, bonus benchmarks (for things like winning a major), stock options and, in the future, a signature line of clothing.”

At this year’s Masters, Spieth seemed poised to win again. Wearing a blue-striped Under Armour shirt and a white UA hat, he took a five-shot lead to the back nine, where America watched in agony as he unraveled, ultimately finishing tied for second.

After the round, he was widely praised for the class he exhibited while facing the cameras, the UA logo visible in each painful shot. Golf can be a fickle and cruel game, and as anyone who’s played it at any level can tell you, failures far outnumber successes.

When the shell-shocked Spieth talked to the press after the heartbreak, he referred to himself and his team with words that could practically be an Under Armour slogan: “There is no give-up in us.”

Six horses come barreling around the rail at Churchill Downs, a cacophony of thundering hooves and screaming fans providing the soundtrack to one of the most astonishing finishes in recent horse racing history.

At the 16th pole, Shared Account surges from the inside into the lead. She’s carrying famed jockey Edgar Prado and odds longer than the lunchtime line at Faidley’s. But there’s even more riding on this four-year-old’s back: a shot at validation for the Baltimore businessman determined to resurrect a legendary Maryland farm.

As she gallops toward the finish line, it seems the lofty weight of possibility only spurs on the 1,200-pound filly. Not even the renowned horse Midday can catch this brown blur, who dashes one and three-eighths miles in two minutes and 17.74 seconds—an average speed of about 35 miles per hour—to victory.

Shared Account’s win at the Breeders’ Cup in November was more than just the biggest upset in the history of the Filly and Mare Turf race, one of racing’s preeminent events. It also served notice, with all the subtlety of a Louisville Slugger to the side of the head, that the once-great Sagamore Farm was back.

“Long shots define everything about my life,” says Sagamore’s savior, Kevin Plank, after the race. “Everything we [do] came out today in a 46-to-1 long shot. I think we had odds a little longer than that at Under Armour.”

He’s referring, of course, to the sports apparel company he founded in 1996 in his grandmother’s Washington, D.C. row house. It’s grown into a global brand, and Plank says he’s using the same blueprint to turn Sagamore, the 530-acre Glyndon farm once home to the now-mythical stallion Native Dancer, into nothing short of America’s next great sports franchise.

“I fundamentally believe that we’ll deliver the next Triple Crown winner,” he says, though Sagamore won’t have a contender this year. “I want that identity where people turn on the Kentucky Derby and say, ‘Is there a Sagamore horse? I like Sagamore horses, they are tough and gritty every time they run.’”

Shared Account’s win is the most visible chapter in the story Plank is trying to create, but it isn’t the first. He bought Sagamore Farm in 2007, and since then has overseen its physical renovation and the creation of a racing organization from the horseshoes up.

“We were always very clear—this is a 20-year plan,” he says. “I use the statement at Under Armour that we’re always smart enough to be naïve enough to not know what we can’t accomplish. Winning the Breeders’ Cup in year four is like striking lightening, but we always believed it could happen.”

Just about everyone else in the horse racing world considered Shared Account an afterthought. Plank was both puzzled and amused by the indifference.

“He felt like he had a great horse,” says Eric Mitchell, editorial director of The Blood-Horse, an industry magazine. “Obviously, the betting public didn’t see it that way. But Shared Account won. That’s horse racing.”

While stunning to most, the swiftness with which Plank has steered Sagamore back to the winner’s circle is the natural speed at which he’s always operated. The 38-year-old conceived of Under Armour while he was a football player at the University of Maryland; last year, the company posted revenues of more than $1 billion.

Before he set out creating the “biggest, baddest brand on the planet,” Plank was the Terrapins’ scrappy special teams captain. Originally a walk-on, in five years he never missed a practice.

Not to say that college was all work and no play. As an undergrad, he attended his first Preakness, and it was the fading fortunes of the second jewel of the Triple Crown that ultimately sparked his entrance into the horse business. For years, the crumbling infrastructure of Pimlico Race Course and the overall decline of Maryland racing have raised fears that the state could lose the iconic race.

“The Preakness needs to be looking at the Kentucky Derby and saying we’re going to kick your butt,” Plank says. “There’s such a negative impression of Maryland racing. They need to stop talking about what they can’t do and start talking about what they can do. Slots are not going to save racing in the state. Great stories and a belief in people, that’s what needs to be driven home.”

Plank views himself as an advocate for Maryland racing, not its shepherd or spokesman. “Name another day when the entire country looks at Maryland,” he says. “It’s a great platform for us to say, ‘Look at the resources we have here.’ We need to sell this area. Maryland’s a phenomenal place. I would like to use Sagamore’s success as a vehicle to help tell that story.”

In 2006, an old high school teammate of Plank’s, Tom Mullikin, stopped by for dinner. After 9/11, Mullikin had suffered what he called a “quarter-life crisis,” ditched the corporate world, and moved to Kentucky to work on a horse farm. Once the two men had polished off a couple of steaks, Plank pulled his buddy aside: He was getting into horse racing, and he wanted Mullikin to head up his operation.

“I said, ‘Well, good luck. It’s a tough game, there’s a lot of sharks out there,’” Mullikin recalls.

But Plank was determined to get his man. Too many Maryland horsemen, Plank thinks, are resigned to being chum. “They’re so beaten down and negative,” he says. “That’s why we hired no one from the area. We imported people from Kentucky. Tommy had a swagger and he was just a winner.”

In his old friend, Mullikin saw the same qualities. So he took a leap of faith, quitting his job in the heart of horse country to work for a man in Baltimore with absolutely no experience in the game.

They set out looking for a farm. No matter where they went, time and time again they’d find their way back to Sagamore.

“I thought we’d start with 100 acres and parlay that into something bigger,” Mullikin says. “He showed me [Sagamore] and I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ There was a lot of history here, but it was like urban renewal. I was a little overwhelmed at first.”

Though it looked all of its 80-plus years, Sagamore’s pedigree was sterling. Founded in 1925 by Isaac Emerson of Bromo-Seltzer fame, it was bequeathed to his grandson Alfred Vanderbilt when he turned 21.

A member of New York’s wealthy Vanderbilt clan, Alfred turned Sagamore into a world-renowned farm. The Queen of England kept a broodmare on the property during its heyday, but its most famous resident always will be Native Dancer. From 1952 to 1954, he won 21 of his 22 career races, including the Preakness, and captured the public’s imagination like few horses before him—or since. His popularity was such that, in 1953, TV Guide named him one of America’s three most popular figures. (Ed Sullivan and Arthur Godfrey were the humans who made the cut.) Vanderbilt sold Sagamore to developer James Ward in 1986. For the next two decades, it floundered, its deterioration in many ways a metaphor for a once-proud industry now struggling to survive.

But Plank saw only promise.

“Sagamore Farm may be the prettiest place in America,” he says. “Go to Grand Canyon, go to Sonoma Valley, but [this] is about as picturesque as it gets.”

Stroll through the farm today and it’s tough to argue. A winding drive leads from Belmont Avenue to the “Big House” atop a hill. In the foyer, photos of famous Sagamore residents Discovery and Bed o’ Roses hang alongside images of Native Dancer, including a framed copy of his 1954 Time magazine cover. A large Maryland flag hangs over a fireplace in the living room, leading to a back patio with sweeping vistas.

All this beauty carries a weighty price, but Plank’s pockets are plenty deep. His last public disclosure reported that he owns 12,093,750 shares of Under Armour stock, which was trading at about $68 a share on March 14. While he won’t disclose how much he paid for Sagamore, running an operation its size is estimated to be a seven-figure endeavor.

“I’m in [horse racing] because we’re building the next great athletic brand,” says Plank. “This isn’t meant to be some charitable thing that you just throw money at. Frankly, nobody’s pockets are that deep, and more importantly, it’s just depressing.”

To develop a world-class horse, you need a world-class facility. “When we first took the farm over, there were 17 miles of fence ranging from four to 40 years old,” Plank says. “While we respect the history of the farm, we’re going to build our own history. So the first thing we did was we tore down all that fence.”

Eleven miles of new four-board oak fencing have been installed, and 150 acres of corn and vegetation have been returned to pasture. The broodmare and foaling barns have been renovated, and now include an observation room, video monitoring system, large stall windows, and skylights.

The three-quarter mile outdoor track was redone using a synthetic base that includes recycled Under Armour shirts. Down the line, the 90-stall training barn with a quarter-mile indoor track may undergo a facelift.

Sagamore now houses 36 horses, and is expecting eight foals this spring.

“He’s training horses there and he’s breeding horses there,” says Cricket Goodall, executive director of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association. “All of that is evidence of his commitment to the industry. It’s a beautiful farm that was in need of somebody to believe in it. There were several wonderful farms that bred great horses in Maryland that over the years have become housing developments. Those are gone, but Sagamore is not, and I think the thoroughbred industry is indebted to him in some ways.”

Inside the very first horse trailer that rolled onto Kevin Plank’s Sagamore was Shared Account, purchased as a yearling for $170,000.

“Winston Churchill had the famous line, ‘There’s something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man,’” Mullikin says. “She had good size, and she has a really cool personality. At the Breeders’ Cup, there’s all this commotion, and she’s just hanging out. I could have put my six-year-old daughter on her. Then she goes out and has a heart like a bulldog.”

Shared Account had won just five of her previous 14 starts when she entered the Breeders’ Cup. The sharps clearly weren’t sold: a $2 Shared Account win ticket wound up paying a wallet-fattening $94. Plank coyly deflects questions about how many of those he held. “Enough that I was sticking money in my socks and my underwear,” he says.

When you combine that with the official winner’s share of $1.08 million, it was a dream day for Plank, and perhaps more importantly, for Maryland racing.

“You’ve got to be the ultimate optimist, and you’ve got to have a great capacity for suffering to be in this business,” says Bill Witman, manager of famous Calumet Farm in Lexington, KY. “The win at the Breeders’ Cup kind of capped what he’s doing in the industry. He’s innovative, he’s got great support and direction.”

At one point before the race, Plank was dismissively ushered aside by the security detail of an Arab sheik. But after it, his place at the podium in the sport of kings was undeniable.

“We’re going to use the farm and the little bit of success we’ve had so far as a vehicle to tell people about racing,” he says. “We’re producing world champions with the mentality we have here. I want people to know that we did it the Maryland way—we earned it.”