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Louisiana State University announced on Thursday that it had signed a multi-million-dollar deal to put sponsor patches on all of the school’s jerseys in every sport. LSU signed this deal despite jersey sponsor patches currently being prohibited under NCAA rules.
The move comes just two weeks after college football writer Ross Dellenger reported that the NCAA was expected to approve legislation allowing jersey sponsor patches to be added to uniforms as soon as Fall 2026. One of the hangups in getting the legislation approved was disagreement over who should set and control standards related to jersey patches: schools, conferences or the national association.
“The time has come for us to have a significant conversation around this, but we need to be thoughtful because there are a lot of layers to this, legal and otherwise,” MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said in December of last year. “We need to understand all the ramifications before we jump.”
LSU is the first college to sign a jersey sponsor patch deal
This week, LSU Deputy Athletic Director and Chief Revenue Officer Clay Harris told Front Office Sports that the jump has officially been made.
“We have signed an agreement,” Harris said. “We’ve mapped it out — it’ll be on all of our uniforms, every sport.”
This announcement by LSU comes one day after the Division I Administrative Committee introduced a proposal that would allow schools to place one commercial logo on equipment used by athletes. That proposal is expected to be voted on in January and Harris is “very confident” it will be approved. If it is, the new rules would go into effect on Aug. 1, 2026.
“The committee’s introduction of this proposal demonstrates the continued efforts by the NCAA to modernize rules where appropriate within Division I,” Josh Whitman, Athletic Director at the University of Illinois and Chairman of the Committee, said, ESPN reports. “As we move into a new era of Division I athletics, in which student-athletes can receive unprecedented financial benefits and support from their schools, it is appropriate for NCAA members to identify and consider additional opportunities for schools to generate additional revenue to fully support those benefits.”
Harris did not reveal how much money LSU received, nor who the jersey patch sponsor will be, but did say the deal would “rival some of the top pro sports teams.”
“We went through a very extensive process on the valuation piece, because we wanted to make sure we got that right,” Harris told Front Office Sports. “We did some internal studies—we started with pro sports and had a pretty good idea of what pro sports patches were going for. And so we based it off of that.”