The Big 12 Put Monster Energy on Every Jersey. Its Own Researchers Have Been Flagging the Risks for Years.
- $20,000,000 the reported annual value of Monster Energy's Big 12 sponsorship conference-wide — about $1,000,000 per school across all 16 members, a figure from secondary reporting rather than the conference's own release — Front Office Sports, On3
- Aug. 29, 2026 the date Monster Energy patches first appeared on game jerseys, when TCU played North Carolina in Dublin, Ireland — Front Office Sports
- 17+ physicians the size of the “Protect Young Fans” coalition that wrote the NCAA and the Big 12 demanding a pause on youth-facing activation of the sponsorship — Deseret News, On3
- Bylaw 16.5.2.7 the existing NCAA rule barring member schools from directly supplying caffeinated energy drinks to their own athletes as a nutritional supplement — Extra Points, On3
Every football and basketball jersey across the Big 12’s 16 member schools now carries the same co-branded patch, and the seasons themselves carry the same sponsor’s name: “Monster Energy Big 12 Football,” “Monster Energy Big 12 Basketball.” It is the first conference-wide deal of its kind with an energy-drink maker, and Sportico’s reporting on it landed on an uncomfortable detail the Big 12 did not put in its press releases: researchers at four of its own member universities have spent the last decade studying energy drinks, and none of their independently funded work found the product safe for the young athletes now wearing it on their chests.
That is not one alarming study. It is a pattern across four separate research teams, using four different methods, that a physicians’ coalition says the conference should have reckoned with before signing.
The relationship started smaller. On Nov. 21, 2025, the Big 12 announced Monster Energy as the “Official Energy Drink of the Conference,” presenting sponsor of the student sections at the Big 12 Football Championship and digital partner of Big 12 Wrestling. “Monster Energy is a name synonymous with all sports fans,” said Tyrel Kirkham, the Big 12’s chief brand and business officer. “We look forward to showcasing the Conference — with Monster — as a different league.”
Big 12 and Monster Energy have finalized an expanded 'Entitlement Partner' deal — jersey patches, rebranded seasons, across all 16 schools.
The Big 12 announced a multiyear 'entitlement partnership' with Monster Energy worth a reported $20 million annually that will brand its sports as 'Monster Energy Big 12 Football' and 'Monster Energy Big 12 Basketball.' It will include patches on jerseys and playing surfaces.
By July 7, 2026, that limited sponsorship had grown into a full “Entitlement Partner” agreement. Commissioner Brett Yormark called Monster “a global, culturally relevant brand that aligns with who we are and where we’re going.” The deal put co-branded patches on every football and men’s and women’s basketball jersey, on the field, and on the court at all 16 member schools — Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, Colorado, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech, Utah, and West Virginia. The first jerseys were worn Aug. 29, 2026, when TCU played North Carolina in Dublin, Ireland.
Not every reaction to the number was about health. Industry analysts questioned whether the Big 12 undersold itself. “There is no scenario where a deal like this doesn’t have some impact on an individual school’s asset rights,” said Craig Sloan, CEO of Playfly Sports, which negotiates multimedia rights for dozens of athletic departments. Front Office Sports and Barrett Media both reported the roughly $20,000,000 conference-wide figure looked underpriced against comparable individual-school jersey-patch deals negotiated elsewhere in college sports.
Not everyone read the structure that way. Sports attorney Mit Winter, who tracks college-sports business deals, called it a smart way for the conference to avoid conflicts with schools’ own media-rights agreements, since individual schools keep the ability to sell their own separate jersey patches:
Innovative deal from the Big 12. Member school football and men's & women's basketball team jerseys will feature co-branded Big12/Monster Energy patches. Will also be co-branded field/court logos. Schools can still sell their own jersey patches. Creative way to avoid MMR right issues.
At Baylor, then-faculty member Andrew R. Gallucci (now dean of health sciences at Utah Tech University) led a peer-reviewed 2016 study in the Journal of Community Health surveying 692 college students, including 58 student-athletes who reported using energy drinks. The self-report design found energy drink consumption correlated with increased binge and hazardous drinking and with prescription-drug misuse among both general students and athletes. Correlation, not causation — but a documented pattern from a Big 12 school’s own faculty a decade before its conference put an energy-drink logo on every jersey.
At Oklahoma State’s Center for Health Sciences, an unpublished 2024 medical-student-led analysis of CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System data reportedly found a statistical association between energy drink consumption and concussion history — among middle-schoolers, not college athletes, using cross-sectional survey data that shows association, not cause and effect. The finding has not been peer-reviewed or formally published, so it carries far less weight than the other three schools’ work cited here, and it describes a narrower population than the Big 12’s own rosters — but it is the same product category now marketed to the conference’s youngest fans.
At Arizona State, assistant professor Jack T. Waddell of the DRAMA Research Lab published a 2025 daily-diary study finding that days combining alcohol, cannabis, and energy drinks were associated with higher drinking quantity and more negative consequences than alcohol-only days. Only at Texas Tech did the research point the other way — and only there was the researcher’s funding tied to the product. Grant Tinsley, who runs an industry-funded sports-nutrition lab and separately consults for sports-nutrition companies, published a 2020 study — funded by the then-maker of Bang Energy, since acquired by Monster — finding a Bang product significantly increased energy expenditure with minimal effect on lower-body muscle performance. Tinsley has said he has personally used Monster’s product and called the Big 12 deal “kind of cool” on first reaction, a favorable, financially entangled view standing apart from the other three schools’ independently funded, cautionary findings.
The NCAA has already made its own judgment about this product category, just not the one now printed on jerseys. Division I Bylaw 16.5.2.7 makes energy drinks containing caffeine or guarana impermissible for a school to provide directly to its own student-athletes as a nutritional supplement — the same governing body that oversees a conference now built around one.
That contradiction is what pushed “Protect Young Fans,” a coalition of more than 17 physicians and scientists concentrated at UTHealth Houston with Harvard and UConn affiliations, to send the NCAA and the Big 12 a letter in late August 2026 demanding a pause on youth-facing activation — uniforms, fields, student sections — an independent health review, and a full Big 12 board review before further rollout. The coalition’s leader, Dr. John P. Higgins, a Houston sports cardiologist who serves as team cardiologist for the Houston Rockets and Rice Athletics, has his own published research behind the concern: measuring vascular function in 47 young, healthy medical students before and 90 minutes after energy drink consumption, he found a significant reduction in blood-vessel function. His conclusion from that work is that pregnant women, children, and athletes generally should avoid energy drinks, particularly before exercise.
NCAA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Deena Casiero responded on Aug. 24, 2026, saying the association lacks “authority to regulate conference or school sponsorship agreements” but would circulate the letter to its Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports. As of publication, the Big 12 had not issued a formal response to Protect Young Fans; its public defense, reported by EssentiallySports, was that mainstream energy drinks “have been marketed worldwide for more than 30 years” and that Monster has “about half the caffeine found in a similarly sized coffee-house coffee.”
Neither Higgins’s coalition nor the Big 12’s Bylaw 16.5.2.7 problem exists in a vacuum. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended since 2011 that children and adolescents avoid energy drinks entirely, a policy statement still operative today. The National Federation of State High School Associations’ Sports Medicine Advisory Committee reaffirmed in October 2024 that young athletes should not use energy drinks for hydration or performance. Both predate the Big 12’s sponsorship by years; neither has stopped the rollout.
What makes the Big 12’s position harder to defend on the merits is not that outside doctors disagree with a marketing deal — that happens constantly in sports sponsorship. It is that the disagreement is substantially in-house. Three of the four research findings casting doubt on youth and college-athlete energy drink use came out of Big 12-affiliated labs, funded independently of the beverage industry. The fourth, the one favorable finding, came from a lab whose funding source was the industry itself. The conference did not need Protect Young Fans to tell it its own campuses had already raised the question.
The Big 12’s roughly $20,000,000-a-year Monster Energy sponsorship put a caffeinated beverage’s logo on every jersey at all 16 member schools, even though the NCAA already bars schools from handing that same category of drink directly to their own athletes. Three independently funded studies from Big 12-affiliated researchers at Baylor, Oklahoma State, and Arizona State have found the product category associated with risky drinking, concussion history, and worse substance-use outcomes; only a fourth study, funded by the industry itself, found a favorable result. A physicians’ coalition led by a Houston sports cardiologist has asked for a pause and an independent review. The NCAA says the decision isn’t its call to make, and as of publication, the Big 12 has not formally answered the doctors at all.
