When a new sculpture of ’60s Syracuse football legend Ernie Davis recently was unveiled, and found to include historically-inaccurate Nike swooshes (not created until 1971) on the sneakers, it’s a little sad that this was the automatic assumption:

No, it wasn’t a marketing deal, Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross said. The sculptor simply made a mistake.

“Easy fix,” Gross said in an e-mail today. “The sculptor is on it and will make it perfect.”

That’s right: These days, whenever a corporate logo makes an appearance, we expect it to be a formal signed-and-delivered deal. In this case, the impending release of the Davis biopic, The Express (note: that properly should have been The Elmira Express), only accentuates the idea of a merchandising tie-in being incorporated into this posthumous tribute.

Despite the unintentionality of the Davis statue placement, we can safely assume that Nike’s grand-historical branding strategy still chugs along, unabated.