Ohio State Sold Its Jersey for a Reported $17 Million a Year. Then It Said It Had No Contract to Show You.
On July 28, 2026, Ohio State announced that JPMorganChase would become the first paid sponsor to appear on its game jerseys — a deal ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported at roughly $17,000,000 a year. Front Office Sports filed a public-records request for the contract under Ohio’s Public Records Act. The university denied it within minutes.
The stated reason was not that terms were confidential or that trade secrets were at stake. It was that Ohio State is “not party to the jersey patch contracts” at all. The agreement, the school said, sits between Chase and Learfield — the private multimedia-rights firm that packages and sells Ohio State’s sponsorship inventory. No contract in the university’s hands, no record to produce.
Weeks earlier, the University of Kansas had given nearly the same answer about its own patch sponsor. That is the part of college sports’ new advertising economy nobody put in a press release: the schools are public, the jerseys are public, and the paperwork is being routed somewhere state sunshine laws do not reach.
- ~$17MOhio State / Chase, per yearthe reported annual value of the jersey-patch deal whose contract Ohio State says it does not hold — ESPN (Pete Thamel); other outlets report a $15M–$20M range
- 0records Kansas says it hasthe university's response to a Kansas Open Records Act request for its Ripple/XRP patch agreement: it “possesses no records responsive to this request” — Front Office Sports
- 13 of 25patch deals brokered by LearfieldSports Business Journal counted 25 announced college jersey-patch agreements as of late July 2026; Learfield was involved in 13 — more than half the market
- ~$2Breported value of the Learfield saleprivate-equity firm TPG's reported acquisition of Learfield, the rights holder at the center of both records denials — Front Office Sports
- 90 daysGeorgia's athletics records windowthe response period the 2016 law informally called “Kirby's Law” created for athletics-related open-records requests, up from three business days — Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Ohio State–JPMorganChase agreement is, by every public account, one of the two richest jersey-patch deals in college sports. ESPN put the Chase figure at about $17,000,000 annually; other outlets have described a range running from $15,000,000 to $20,000,000. Nobody outside the negotiating room can narrow it any further, because the one document that would settle it is not — according to Ohio State — in Ohio State’s possession.
Front Office Sports requested the contract under Ohio Rev. Code §149.43, the state’s Public Records Act. The denial arrived within minutes, resting entirely on the claim that the university is “not party to the jersey patch contracts.” The Columbus Dispatch’s Joey Kaufman reported the same rationale from the same office: because Learfield is a private entity, the school’s position is that Learfield is not subject to public records laws, and neither, therefore, is the contract.
Ohio State is a state institution, its athletic department is a unit of that institution, and the jersey the patch goes on carries the university’s name. Athletic Director Ross Bjork was happy to discuss the partnership in public terms, calling JPMorganChase “a global brand with deep roots in Ohio, making them a natural partner that shares our commitment to innovation, excellence and long-term community impact.” What the university did not do — what its own contracting structure made impossible — was let an Ohio resident read the deal.
Multimedia rights companies are not new and are not, by themselves, suspicious. Firms like Learfield and Playfly have run college sponsorship sales for decades: they buy or manage an athletic department’s inventory — stadium signage, radio reads, digital placements, and now jersey patches — sell it to corporate partners, and remit a negotiated share back to the school. Athletic departments use them because selling ads is not what athletic departments are staffed to do.
What is new is where the signature lines sit. When the sponsor contracts with the rights holder rather than the university, the university can truthfully tell a records requester that it holds nothing responsive — even though the revenue lands in a public athletic budget and the advertisement appears on a public university’s uniform. Sports Business Journal counted 25 announced college patch agreements as of late July 2026. Learfield was involved in 13 of them. More than half the market is already running through the exact structure that produced both denials, and Learfield itself declined to comment when Front Office Sports asked about it.
Commercial jersey patches take another step toward NCAA approval, expected to be approved this spring with an implementation date of August 1.
The ownership picture matters too. Learfield is being acquired by the private-equity firm TPG in a transaction reported at roughly $2,000,000,000. The company that now sits between the public and more than half of college sports’ new advertising contracts is, in other words, about to be a private-equity asset — and every one of those contracts is being written on the side of the wall where records requests stop.
On July 8, 2026, Kansas Athletics announced a five-year jersey-patch partnership featuring XRP, the cryptocurrency associated with the payments firm Ripple. The release quoted Director of Athletics Travis Goff saying that “this era of college athletics demands innovative, forward-thinking partnerships.” It did not include a dollar figure, and no figure has been disclosed since.
Front Office Sports requested records on the deal under the Kansas Open Records Act, K.S.A. 45-215 et seq. The university replied that it “possesses no records responsive to this request,” pointing again to Learfield as the broker. The result is that a public university in Kansas has agreed to put a cryptocurrency brand on its athletes’ uniforms for five years, and the residents who fund that university cannot learn what the school is being paid, what the term commitments are, or what happens to the agreement if the asset’s price collapses.
Two states, two statutes, two different sponsors, one identical answer. That is what turns a single denial into a story: not that a school said no, but that the mechanism for saying no is portable, repeatable, and already spreading.
Boise State law professor Sam Ehrlich, who tracks college sports litigation, told Front Office Sports the pattern is deliberate and accelerating.
“University athletic departments seem to be increasingly diverting their deals through their MMR first in a way that some may say violates the spirit — if not the letter — of open records laws.”
Sam Ehrlich · Law professor, Boise State University
Ehrlich’s warning is about what happens next: if the schools that tried it get away with it, that success “will probably encourage more schools” to do the same. The University of Utah has already run a parallel play, routing a private-equity arrangement through “Utah Brands & Entertainment,” an entity created by the university’s private foundation. A university spokesperson said plainly that the entity is “not a public or government entity” — and therefore not subject to records laws.
There is precedent for the legislature simply blessing the practice. In 2016, Georgia enacted a carve-out informally known as “Kirby’s Law” — named for football coach Kirby Smart, who lobbied for it — extending the response window for athletics-related open-records requests from three business days to as long as 90. Nothing was hidden outright; the clock was just moved past the point where the answer would still be news. In the Journal of Intercollegiate Sport, James Scott White documented that pattern across the country in 2024, describing a “race to the bottom” in how athletic departments handle open-records obligations.
The strongest argument against the Ohio State and Kansas position is that plenty of schools simply disclosed. Illinois announced a five-year deal with Busey Bank worth about $6,000,000 a year, roughly $30,000,000 in total. Michigan State announced a 10-year agreement with MSU Federal Credit Union at about $4,000,000 annually, roughly $40,000,000 across the term. The Big 12 put a conference-wide Monster Energy patch on every member school at a reported $20,000,000 a year. Notre Dame, a private university with no records obligation at all, volunteered that its six-year SoFi deal averages $18,000,000 to $20,000,000 annually — the largest yet announced.
Notre Dame / SoFi: $18,000,000–$20,000,000/yr, 6 years — disclosed by the school
Big 12 / Monster Energy: ~$20,000,000/yr, conference-wide — disclosed
Illinois / Busey Bank: ~$6,000,000/yr, ~$30,000,000 over 5 years — disclosed
Michigan State / MSUFCU: ~$4,000,000/yr, ~$40,000,000 over 10 years — disclosed
Ohio State / JPMorganChase: reported ~$17,000,000/yr — records request denied
Kansas / Ripple (XRP): undisclosed, 5 years — records request denied
LSU / Woodside Energy: “multimillion-dollar,” exact figure withheld
Cal / Dialpad: undisclosed — called the largest corporate partnership in Cal Athletics history
LSU sits in between. Its Woodside Energy patch was the first ad on a college football jersey, signed before the NCAA formally approved the practice, and the school has described it only as a “multimillion-dollar” agreement. Cal has called its Dialpad partnership the largest in the department’s history without attaching a number to it. In each case the reader is asked to accept the adjective and skip the arithmetic.
LSU is planning to sell jersey patch sponsorships once the NCAA formally approves the practice.
None of this is small money, and none of it is separate from the athletes. Patch revenue flows to the athletic department rather than to individual name-image-likeness deals, and schools have been explicit that it helps fund the roughly $20,500,000 a year in direct athlete revenue-sharing created by the House v. NCAA settlement. That is a defensible use of the money. It is also precisely why the public has an interest in the number: a state university is now signing multimillion-dollar advertising contracts to make payroll, and in at least two states the residents who fund those universities have been told the contracts do not exist in any form they are entitled to see.
Two public universities were asked for jersey-patch contracts worth millions of taxpayer-adjacent dollars, and both answered that the paperwork belongs to a private company. Illinois, Michigan State, and the Big 12 disclosed theirs without incident, which proves disclosure was always an option. The patch is four square inches. The question is whether a public school can sell it and still tell the public there is nothing to read.
