The urge to put one's logo on a college football uniform is not new, but the opportunity to act on it is, and the competition for attention in the second tier of that opportunity is already fierce.
Sam Houston State University has agreed to a one-year, football-only jersey patch sponsorship with SnapBack Sports, a digital media company whose primary asset is enthusiasm for college football road trips and whose primary liability is that most people have never heard of it. The deal makes Sam Houston the second Conference USA school to sell jersey real estate since the N.C.A.A. opened the market in January.
The company's logo — a simple hat icon, rendered in orange and white to match the Bearkats' colors rather than SnapBack's customary bright yellow — will appear in a two-by-two-inch patch on game uniforms. "People might see it and Google, 'What's this logo?'" said Jack Settleman, SnapBack's founder, who started the venture as a Snapchat account in 2017 and now employs 15 people. (That theory of advertising — that obscurity is a feature, not a bug — has been tested before, with mixed results.)
Mr. Settleman had been publicly expressing his willingness to spend $100,000 on a college football jersey patch for months. With this deal, he said, "we got our price." Sam Houston's schedule of five nationally televised games, including three consecutive appearances on ESPN2 in October, made the school attractive. Rice and East Carolina were among the other programs SnapBack considered.
In exchange for the patch, SnapBack will produce at least 50 pieces of content promoting Sam Houston across its social channels, including an episode of "SnapBack Saturdays," its flagship digital series. More unusually, select SnapBack personnel will travel with the football team — on its plane, in its hotel, on its bus, and in its locker room — to document an away game from the inside.
The company is also adding Melvin Gordon, the former Wisconsin All-American and Super Bowl-winning running back, to its on-air roster, a move designed to provide the sort of credential that a hat logo alone cannot.
"We think we're in that top tier," Mr. Settleman said, situating SnapBack somewhere beneath "College GameDay" and above what he described as "a whole lot of other people creating college football content."
Whether a two-inch hat on a Conference USA jersey can deliver that altitude remains to be seen. Mr. Settleman said there was a "slim chance" the company might pursue a basketball patch deal later — possibly with Sam Houston, possibly elsewhere. The market, like the company's ambitions, is still finding its shape.
Original story published in Front Office Sports: "Sam Houston State's Snapback Deal Is Next Creator Jersey Patch"