College football's jersey patch arms race just broke the bank

For about half a workday on Tuesday, Ohio State had bragging rights to the biggest corporate patch deal in college football. Pete Thamel broke the news that the Buckeyes were partnering with JPMorgan Chase across all 36 varsity teams, a deal industry sources pegged at nearly $17 million a year.

Pete Thamel

@PeteThamel

NEWS: Ohio Stare is entering a new corporate partnership with JPMorganChase that includes jersey patches for all 36 OSU teams. Per industry sources, this is expected to yield OSU nearly $17 million per year, an eye-popping number that’s expected to be an industry leader.

That number wasn't just big for college sports — it was big, period. Thamel noted the value topped some NBA jersey patch deals outright, and Pete Nakos backed it up with the receipts: Ohio State-JPMorgan Chase would out-earn the Clippers' deal with Aspiration ($13M), the Cavaliers' with Goodyear ($10M), and the 76ers' with StubHub ($5M). For a single patch on a college jersey, that's absurd money, and it came bundled with NIL opportunities for OSU athletes on top of the sponsorship itself.

Pete Nakos

@PeteNakos

Ohio State's jersey patch deal will pay more annually than: Clippers (Aspiration at $13M) Cavaliers (Goodyear at $10M) 76ers (StubHub at $5M)

Then Notre Dame showed up and torched the record before the ink dried. Nakos reported the Irish had trumped Ohio State with a SoFi deal worth $18-20 million annually, first reported by Ross Dellenger, and CFB Home quickly put numbers to the deal on-platform. It's the first time a corporate logo will appear on a Notre Dame jersey, a program that has historically guarded its uniform aesthetic like a religious relic — which makes the size of the number even more jarring than the concept itself.

CFB Home

@CFBHome

Notre Dame athletics has signed a jersey patch sponsorship deal with SoFi worth $18-20M annually.

The timing turned it into an instant meme. CFB Kings summed up the whiplash bluntly, noting Ohio State held the "most expensive jersey patch" record for all of 5 hours before Notre Dame swiped it. It's the kind of one-upmanship you'd expect between rival GMs in free agency, except this was two blue-blood athletic departments and a bank versus a fintech company racing to out-brand each other on a single patch of fabric.

CFB Kings

@CFBKings

Ohio State held the “most expensive jersey patch” record for 5 hours 😭

Zoom out and the bigger story isn't Ohio State versus Notre Dame — it's what both deals say about where college athletics money is headed. Bleacher Report framed it plainly: two college football programs are now out-earning several NBA teams just off a patch on the chest. That's a direct byproduct of the post-revenue-sharing landscape, where athletic departments are chasing every dollar they can find to fund rosters now that schools are paying players directly.

Bleacher Report CFB

@BR_CFB

Ohio State and Notre Dame are making more from jersey patches than several NBA teams 🤯💰 Should more college football programs add jersey patches? 🤔

Notre Dame's deal also comes with a wrinkle Ohio State's doesn't quite match — SoFi is funding Notre Dame's "4 for Forever" campaign, which supports scholarships and career development across the Irish's 26 sports. Expect this record to keep moving. Every athletic director in a Power Four building is now staring at these two numbers and wondering how fast they can get their own logo on a jersey before someone else does.