This week, the Kansas Athletics announced a partnership with Ripple, a cryptocurrency company. As part of the multi-year deal, the Kansas basketball team and the football team will wear patches on their uniforms. The company logo will also probably appear on the field at the David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium and on the court at Allen Fieldhouse.
This came on the heels of an announcement from the Big 12 offices that outlined a deal with Monster Energy. This partnership will bring in approximately $1 million a year for each school. Uniform patches for Monster Energy will also be worn by football and basketball teams throughout the conference.
This probably is not the end of corporate deals for Kansas or the conference. If these types of partnerships bother you, you are going to have to get over it. They are most likely here to stay.
Why major corporate sponsorships are necessary for continued Kansas success in sports
Let's be frank. No one wants or likes to see corporate patches plastered all over our beloved Jayhawks' jerseys. They are tacky and unattractive. No one wants college sports uniforms to end up looking like the NASCAR driver jumpsuits.
Alas, these sponsorships are absolutely necessary for schools to compete in today's world of college sports. If you want to blame something, don't be upset with Kansas, but with the NCAA.
For decades, the NCAA pushed an agenda that existed only in their massive rulebook. That organization has clung to the idea of amateurism that didn't really exist. The NCAA didn't even have the same rules for each sport, and the punishments meted out were inconsistent and uneven.
In Kansas' case, the NCAA doggedly hounded Bill Self for years, pursuing a case based on innuendo and assumptions, with nothing solid to back it up. The NCAA ignored the fact that in the federal case involving Adidas, Kansas was considered the victim by federal prosecutors. The NCAA ignored that and ignored many other schools mentioned during that trial and went after Kansas with a vengeance.
Even though the NCAA was unable to prove anything substantial, Self and Kansas self-imposed sanctions just to get the NCAA off their back.
Even IF Kansas acted inappropriately, it would have been just one sign of many that changes were bound to come. Players have been getting benefits under the table for years, and the NCAA didn't have the resources to address them all. Universities had been making millions off college athletes for decades without just compensation. Everyone knew things had to change.
In 2015, football players from Northwestern tried to unionize and failed. Every major school is tied to a shoe company, which were working in the shadows, maybe with school knowledge, maybe without. The NCAA, in its ivory tower, chose to ignore all signs and bury its head in the sand.
Now things have changed. Players have sued for compensation and won. The NCAA had no plan, no outline on how to pay players, and so the schools had to figure it out on their own. Things have gotten out of hand because of NCAA negligence.
In the first few years of NIL, school boosters funded the pool of money for players, but that model was not a long-term solution. Schools and conferences now have to find other streams of revenue to help fund the player NIL pool.
These high-paying corporate partnerships will help supplement and boost the Jayhawks's NIL pool of money. If KU wants to compete at a high level in this era of college sports, they need to provide attractive packages to the athletes. It is probably not going to stop with Ripple and Monster Energy.
Kansas Athletics is doing what it must in a less-than-ideal college sports world. The Big 12 is helping its schools any way it can. These corporate deals are going to help.
So, no, you don't have to like corporate patches on the Kansas uniforms, but you are going to have to get used to them. If you want to be angry or annoyed, focus that attention on the NCAA. It could have prevented most of this and didn't. Now, we are stuck with jersey billboards, and they are not going away any time soon.
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