The flurry of jersey patch announcements have kept me and plenty others in the college sports space busy. Here were a couple things that caught my eye:
Kansas partnering with a crypto company: When I heard KU’s jersey patch was going to be a cryptocurrency (Ripple’s XRP), my first reaction was some variation of “Wut?”
Crypto companies previously worked their way into college sports. Heck, Cal announced a 10-year field naming rights deal with FTX in 2021. That lasted all of about 13 months before FTX went bankrupt and the deal was suspended in November 2022.
The Kansas deal has inherent ties to the school. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is a Kansas grad and former student body president. I still asked Kansas AD Travis Goff about the optics of partnering with a crypto company. His response was relatively insightful.
“I’ll call this more ‘emerging’ than I would call it ‘controversial’ or ‘risk,’” Goff said. “Is this a little bit of a leap of faith on both parties’ sides? I think it is. ... At the end of the day, you’re working with a space and a category that is very innovative and can rapidly change. I think college athletics sounds that way, too — pretty innovative and can rapidly change.”
Charlotte is getting in on the “XYZ Ventures” craze: This may have been lost in the shuffle of some bigger news, but Charlotte is the latest school to realign some of its commercial operations.
The school announced Wednesday that it would roll up its ticketing operations and corporate sponsorships into 49ers Ventures. The vertical will now house premium sales, annual fund collaboration, customer retention, business intelligence and revenue innovation.
New Charlotte AD Kevin White came from Clemson, which effectively created this model. If memory serves, this is one of the first Group of Six schools to take on this kind of approach.
Props to the Charlotte brass for a forward- thinking mindset.
