While the Notre Dame football team has plenty of advantages over its rivals that are locked into conferences, now and then it appears there are trends the Irish have to jump on to keep pace with the big-money schools in college sports. One trend that is picking up steam faster than anyone could like is the proliferation of jersey patches.
The trend continued to spread on Monday when Ohio State announced it agreed to a deal with Chase Bank. The agreement will put a Chase patch on Buckeye uniforms this year, and in return, OSU will get around $17 million annually.
It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of teams adding patches to their uniforms was seen as a bridge too far. And then schools kept spending and spending, and now some college players are making quite a bit more money than their NFL counterparts. And that’s why Notre Dame will have to consider, whether now or in the near future, whether it wants to sully its uniforms with this kind of financial deal.
The knee-jerk reaction from Fighting Irish fans will always be “oh heck no.” There are few things in South Bend as sacrosanct as the golden domes and the uniforms that go with them.
Ohio State’s $17 million patch deal creates new pressure on Notre Dame football
But the long and short of it is that just like every other school looking to compete in the modern age, AD Pete Bevacqua needs all the money he can scrape together. Even for a cash-rich program like Notre Dame, there will never be enough money in this era. But it’s not even about finding money wherever he can; Bevacqua can’t ignore the other part of the agreement between Ohio State and Chase.
“In addition to the jersey patch sponsorship, JPMorgan Chase will provide NIL opportunities to Ohio State athletes. Chase will also provide financial literacy resources to Ohio State athletes through “dedicated programming,” a news release about the deal stated.
It’s the additional NIL opportunities that are what’s really worth its weight in gold. Not only does OSU get a straight payout to try to offset revenue share, salaries, or whatever it believes it needs that money for, but it will also get to lure in more athletes with this deal.
The other reason that Notre Dame might eventually think about jumping into this pond is that it’s not just the schools that have already thought about having more resources than many of their peers. 26 different Division I schools with publicly announced school-specific agreements illustrate just how fast this trend is moving. It won’t be long before schools without this deal are in the minority.
It’s one of those ideas that Notre Dame will dislike and for good reason. The Irish have fought off other unappetizing trends that nearly every other school in the country has fallen prey to. Joining a conference is just the biggest of those trends.
The Buckeyes will debut the Chase Bank jersey patch as part of their new football uniforms featuring Buckeye stripes when they open their season against Ball State. If there’s a way that Notre Dame can strike one of these deals and still make the patches blend in with the uniform, it feels like something it's got to try.
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