Monday started with Ohio State making history and ended with Notre Dame erasing it. Pete Thamel broke the news that the Buckeyes were finalizing a corporate marriage with JPMorgan Chase that would put the bank's logo on jerseys across all 36 OSU sports programs, an arrangement reportedly worth close to $17 million a year.
Pete Thamel broke the Ohio State-JPMorgan Chase patch deal first, calling the number 'eye-popping.'
And it was eye-popping, at least for a few hours. Thamel and Pete Nakos both framed it as bigger than several NBA patch deals, and Nakos later put real numbers next to it: more per year than the Clippers get from Aspiration ($13M), the Cavaliers get from Goodyear ($10M), or the Sixers get from StubHub ($5M). For a college athletic department, cashing bigger checks than actual NBA franchises is the kind of stat that used to be unthinkable.
Nakos lined up the OSU number against real NBA jersey patch deals to show how absurd it had gotten.
Ohio State's jersey patch deal will pay more annually than: Clippers (Aspiration at $13M) Cavaliers (Goodyear at $10M) 76ers (StubHub at $5M)
Then, before the day was even over, Notre Dame showed up and dunked on the whole conversation. Nakos relayed Ross Dellenger's reporting that the Fighting Irish had agreed to a jersey patch deal with SoFi worth $18-20 million annually, a six-year agreement that, per outlets covering the deal, marks the first time a corporate logo will ever appear on a Notre Dame jersey in any sport. That's not a small detail for a program that has spent a century treating its uniforms like sacred texts.
Nakos flagged Ross Dellenger's report that Notre Dame had topped Ohio State's number just hours later.
Ohio State-JPMorgan Chase comes in at over $15M, Notre Dame trumps it with $18-$20M annually. @RossDellenger first.
The reactions online summed up the whiplash pretty well. Ohio State "held the 'most expensive jersey patch' record for 5 hours," as one account put it, and that's basically the whole story in one sentence.
The joke that wrote itself once Notre Dame's number came out: Ohio State's record lasted about 5 hours.
Ohio State held the “most expensive jersey patch” record for 5 hours 😭
There's also a real financial-education angle buried under the sticker shock. Reporting on the Notre Dame-SoFi partnership indicates SoFi is putting $1.4 million a year into Notre Dame's existing "4 for Forever" scholarship campaign, plus funding a full-tuition scholarship for a walk-on athlete, on top of the base patch money. It's the kind of add-on that lets both sides say this isn't just a bank buying billboard space on a 19-year-old's chest.
Two blue-blood programs cashing nine-figure corporate checks in the same afternoon says everything about where college athletics is right now. NIL, revenue sharing, and the transfer portal already turned rosters into something closer to free agency. Now the jerseys themselves are turning into ad inventory, and the number that felt untouchable at 9 a.m. was old news by dinner. Whichever athletic department gets the next call from a bank or fintech company is probably already drawing up a bigger ask.