Beginning in 2025, power conference schools will be permitted to share up to $22 million directly with their athletes. This presents a problem, given that virtually no one has an extra $22 million a year pinned between their couch cushions. And when expenses go up, the natural inclination is to brainstorm ways to increase revenue.
Some of those brainstorming sessions have the people in charge of college football to some terrible places.
Ross Dellenger reports for Yahoo that officials are considering allowing schools to place corporate sponsorships on the playing field and perhaps even jerseys. Ads on the 25-yard lines could be worth $1 million a year, and jersey patches are worth an estimated $5 million a year.
“I believe the NCAA is going to allow us to put a sponsor logo on the field during the regular season,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said. “That's an obvious revenue stream that has not been there in the past. Pro sports are putting patches on jerseys. That doesn't seem like something that's crazy for us to consider these days.”
Sorry, Scott, but it is crazy. It's not just crazy, it's wrong -- the very definition of penny wise and pound foolish.
Anyone who's read me over the years knows I'm extremely passionate about uniforms and field design, which is why I reacted so negatively way back in 2016 when the NBA broke the seal on this horrifying trend years ago. Allow me to speak for a legion of millions: College sports leaders of America, do not do this.
First, let's keep in mind that every college football uniform contains two different ads already. There's the swoosh of Nike, the three stripes of Adidas, the interlocking UA of UnderArmour, or the Jumpman of Jordan that are now so ubiquitous that no one thinks of advertisements, but are advertisements in every sense of the word.
And then there is a second, bigger advertisement: yourself. There's a reason Ford doesn't outfit its F-150s with a McDonald's logo on the steering wheel. There's a reason Coca-Cola doesn't put Colonel Sanders' face on its Diet Coke cans. These corporations understand something the sports world has forgotten: THE MOST IMPORTANT CLIENT YOUR PRODUCT ADVERTISES IS ITSELF.
In sports, the uniform is the product, especially as a sport as transient in nature as college football. The players come and go every five years, but the uniform (for most programs, anyway) endures. As Jerry Seinfeld says, in college sports we really are rooting for laundry.
The justification for bringing ads to uniforms in the NBA was that European soccer teams have worn advertisements for years, but those teams do so because their games don't have TV timeouts. Already in college football, commerce crosses the rubicon to the playing field seven time per half, pausing the game for no reason other than to make money. NBA and Major League Baseball fans are being sold to every single moment of every single game. One would be excused for thinking the games exist solely as a conduit for consumption.
Already, college football is asking a lot of its fans, all in the name of money. Big Ten fans are required to stay up until 11 p.m. ET on a Friday night to watch a conference game between teams 3,000 miles apart. The unique thrill of college football has always been that the season was the playoff, where a single loss could derail a national championship chase. That's gone, too; it's only a matter of time until an 8-4 SEC team makes the 12-team Playoff.
All of those changes were made with the explicit or implicit goal of generating more revenue. And it's with that established I ask the ADs and commissioners in charge: Can't y'all just use some of that money to come up with the $22 million? Is it really worth the extra $6 million to sully your field and your uniform with a Wendy's logo?
The answer is no. The problem with an issue like this is the cost doesn't show up on a balance sheet, and especially not immediately. The uniform serves as the entry point between fan and team, and the bond between fan and team is the entry point between fan and university.
Years from now, no one will point and say that the reason they stopped watching games, the reason they stopped buying tickets, the reason their child didn't apply to the university was because the school put Starbucks patches on the football uniform in 2025. They'll just shrug and vaguely say they no longer feel as connected to college football, to their school as they used to.
And the reason for that will be that the industry forgot the most important product college football uniforms advertised was itself.