In the Deloitte 2022 Outlook on Sports, the public accounting and consulting firm looked at future trends in sports and reinforces many of the topics we have covered this past year. When summarizing the current trends in collegiate athletics, the overarching conclusion of the study warns of the “impacts of conference realignment and NCAA constitutional changes on smaller athletic programs.” Specifically, student-athlete Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) legislation along with spiraling costs to keep up with the Power-5 conference spending. The side-effects of these trends include the probable elimination of automatic conference berths and unlimited scholarships and liberalized transfer rules as just a few of the threats to mid-major programs going forward. Continue reading Deloitte Issues Annual Outlook on Sports →

Would Duke ever abandon its name on uniform for its initials — ‘D.U.’ ? 

Our recent story about the DU administration’s overall branding decision to perhaps move away from the full “Denver” name on sports jerseys in favor of a new logo with an abbreviated “DU” has clearly touched some nerves, so we thought we’d share a deeper dive on the subject, comparing this strategy to other universities.

Rather than going through the jersey branding for every team in the country, we examined the current top 10 hockey programs, the top 10 lacrosse programs, the top 10 basketball programs, the Summit League members, and ten metro/urban universities to better understand jersey branding practices.

What did we find?

In nearly every case, schools branded their uniforms with the University name/location and not an abbreviation. Continue reading A Deeper Dive Into Jersey Branding Strategy →