FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: On Wednesday, July 2, Zach Barnett, FootballScoop national columnist and father of three, released the following statement in response to a news item revealed in Wilson Alexander's latest column for The Baton Rouge Advocate:
In his column, Alexander writes how LSU plans to find the $20.5 million it will pay athletes now that the House settlement is the law of the land. Alexander writes:
LSU hopes the NCAA will allow schools to sell patches on their jerseys, something (deputy AD for revenue generation Clay) Harris said also generates "multiple millions of dollars a year." LSU has identified a partner, which officials declined to name, if the rule changes.
LSU has mapped out where the patches would go on every jersey, from cross country to football. Most of them would appear on the chest, in purple and gold.
"We don't have this as some crazy, NASCAR-like situation," Harris said.
I hate to break it to you, Mr. Harris, but there is no way to tastefully place a Raising Cane's logo on the Mona Lisa. But once that logo is on there, that painting ceases to become Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece; it is now a really expense chicken finger ad.
The uniform is the connective tissue that bonds fan to team, particularly in college sports where the roster turns over every four years (in theory). Players and coaches come and go, but the logo, the uniform, the colors -- they are what endure. A uniform belongs to the players who bleed in it and the fans who cry over it. A 3-year-old child in the upper deck at Tiger Stadium could not tell you who Garrett Nussmeier is, but she knows what the Tiger logo means, and she knows why she wears purple and gold each fall Saturday. Similarly, a random, unattached fan in Maine or Montana could not tell you who led LSU in rushing three years ago, but they when they see that screaming Tiger logo, they know it represents Louisiana State University. There's power in that.
Now consider that LSU's jerseys already contain three forms of advertising:
1) There's the Nike advertisement. The apparel brands have propagandized the public into believing getting their logo on a uniform is not an advertisement, but it is. (If you don't believe me, the next time you get in the driver's seat of your car, check to see which logo is in the center of the steering wheel. Is it the car brand, or the company who provided the leather to cover the wheel?) Nike pays LSU a reported $1 million annually to have its Swoosh on the Tigers' uniforms.
2) There's an SEC advertisement. You can call it a patch, you can say that the professional leagues do it, and you are correct. That doesn't change that the patch is there to inform the onlooker that LSU belongs to the SEC.
3) Most importantly, the LSU uniform is an advertisement for LSU itself. The football helmet, and secondarily the football jersey, are the most important real estate Louisiana State University owns. More potential customers, potential students, potential future players interact with that piece of property than the rest of LSU's property combined by a factor of (approximately) 350 million. LSU itself is LSU's most important client, and diluting that brand will have consequences that might not appear on a balance sheet.
Are the extra couple million really worth sullying the multiple-hundred-million product (LSU athletics) or the multiple-billion-dollar institution (Louisiana State University) you actually represent? Can you sell LSU football, the LSU experience, and chicken fingers at the same time? (I have no proof that Raising Cane's is LSU's unnamed sponsor, just using it as an example.)
One could argue that the NBA, the NHL and Major League Baseball -- not to mention European soccer teams -- sell jersey patches, so what's the problem if LSU does as well? (And to be sure, LSU surely and sadly would not be alone in selling uniform ads.) I would argue that point with the proof that the NFL does not sell jersey patches. NFL owners are collectively some of the greediest individuals alive. These are people that would sell their mothers' souls if they thought there was profit in it, and even they recognize there's an intangible value is not breaking the invisible bond between fan and team connected by the uniform.
"I hate what college football is turning into," said one Reddit commenter. "Wtf, man. Money really does ruin everything," said another. "This lame ass shit has already ruined MLB and NBA, college football will take this to the absolute extreme. If they allow this get ready to not even see any team logos on the field," added a third.
Finally, let's consider the message LSU (and others) would send by sullying their uniforms now.
Yes, expenses are going up. But point to me a time in college athletics when expenses were not going up. After winning the 2003 national championship, LSU signed Nick Saban to a 7-year extension that started at $2.3 million and topped out at $3.4 million. Seventeen years later, the school hired Brian Kelly with a 10-year, $95 million contract. Where were the jersey patches then? Why weren't field advertisements, which are coming this fall, necessary when paying Ed Orgeron's $17 million buyout? Why does this suddenly only become a problem when the players get paid? What kind of message are you sending to your fans when it's when the kids get in on the action that suddenly every scrap of real estate is now a commercial commodity? The SEC distributed $808.4 million to its 16 members in 2023-24, and the new College Football Playoff TV contract will pay out $1.3 billion annually. From those sums, you can't find the $20.5 million to pay your athletes? You have to sell patches on your cross country singlets? Seriously?
Allow this scene from Jurassic Park to serve as a warning, with Jeff Goldblum speaking to the bean counters at LSU and every other athletics department in the country, substituting "genetic power" for the bond between teams and fans.
These bean-counting employees -- who may or may not have worked for LSU five years ago, and may or may not work for LSU five years from now -- did not bleed, sweat and cry to build the LSU brand over more than a century. And instead of stewarding that brand that others before them created, they are trafficking something that does not belong to them, and it should not be allowed to happen.