On Feb. 5, MSU Athletic Director Mark Hollis announced MSU would not change the current logo to one redesigned by Nike. The redesigned logo was met with heavy public disapproval after it appeared on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Web site.

Simon said MSU will move forward with registering variations of the current logo so other institutions have little to no options to mimic it.

“(It’s a) full array of perceptual space so no other university can use a variation of that as their logo,” Simon said. “It’s to protect the image of the Spartan helmet. We have to make sure we protect our brand identity.”

MSU Trustee Joel Ferguson said he disapproved of public speculation that Nike mostly was the blame for the redesign.

“This was not Nike-driven,” Ferguson said. “This was a need for the university to make these changes.”

Trustee George Perles, a former MSU head football coach, said he slightly disagreed with Ferguson. He said the problem was the dramatic changes to the helmet.

“The detail work in the helmet … is to Nike’s advantage to get rid of it, because that’s hard to do,” Perles said. “I think the Spartans concerned about it can be happy now that it’s not been changed.”

The board also resolved to change the university’s current shade of green used on logos and in other media back to a darker shade. Simon said the switch reverts back to the shade of green used before the board authorized the current shade in 1997.

Simon said the move will make MSU athletics uniforms and printed materials more unified in appearance, among other things. She also said the move will be gradual and will not be costly.

“There’s no big money associated with all of this,” Simon said. “It’s a matter of as we do things gradually, we’ll make the changes.”