Kansas State’s football field at Bill Snyder Family Stadium is on the verge of getting a sponsor logo, and athletic director Gene Taylor says the school is close to locking in a deal that would bring in a “pretty good chunk of change” for the athletic budget.
“Hopefully that will be done soon,” Taylor said Wednesday in an exclusive interview. “It’s close enough that we are starting to talk about field logos.”
The agreement is being handled by K-State’s sports marketing partner, Learfield, and Taylor did not name the company involved.
If it gets across the finish line, the field logo would come on top of the Big 12’s new sponsorship deal with Monster Energy, announced earlier this week for all football and basketball teams in the league. That arrangement is set to start this season as well.
Under the Monster Energy deal, every Big 12 school will have Monster logo patches on its jerseys and the Monster logo displayed on courts and fields alongside the conference logo. The league’s deal is reportedly worth $20 million annually.
Kansas and Oklahoma State have already revealed their own jersey patch sponsorships, and K-State is exploring that route too. Taylor said the school has talked with a couple of companies about adding another patch to the football jerseys, though nothing is close yet.
“We have discussed the patch with a couple of companies,” Taylor said. “We are kind of starting to focus a little bit more on local companies, because of the ability for them to be able to keep that patch on there as you go through the College Football Playoff or the NCAA Tournament.
“We’ve got some folks that have interest in it right now. Whether we can pull it off before the season starts, we’ll see.”
In Other News...
Austin Romaine Is Already Making K-State Fans Feel This Loss
Austin Romaines departure from Kansas State already has the feel of the kind of loss that takes more than one offseason to fully absorb. A high-profile linebacker with a reputation for competitiveness and real impact, he leaves behind a track record that made him one of the more reliable defenders in the room, and his former teammates have been quick to acknowledge how much he brought to the field.
Now at Texas Tech, Romaine is settling into a new defense and working toward a major role on a unit that expects him to matter right away. For K-State fans, the uneasy part is simple: this is the sort of player who tends to keep showing up on the biggest snaps, and the Wildcats will get a firsthand reminder of what they lost the next time he lines up across from them. [Read more 🡒]
Collin Klein Faces Big First Test As K-State Questions Keep Building
Collin Klein is about to get his first public turn as Kansas States head football coach, and it comes at a stage where every answer will be parsed for clues about what the Wildcats want to become. Big 12 Media Days in Frisco, Texas, on July 8 will put Klein alongside quarterback Avery Johnson, running back Joe Jackson, linebacker Rex Van Wyhe and defensive back Wesley Fair, giving K-State a chance to set the tone for a season that already has plenty of curiosity around it.
The questions are easy to see coming. Klein will be asked about the shape of his offense, Johnsons place in the program under the new NCAA landscape, and what expectations should look like as the Wildcats try to build on recent momentum. There will also be the usual summer health check-ins and roster updates, the kind that can matter just as much in July as anything that happens on a practice field in August. [Read more 🡒]