Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
The FBS college football season starts in just nine days, with eight FBS games kicking off on Saturday the 29th. Football traveling parties are huge, but for most schools, the travel party ahead of kickoff hasn’t really started yet. The equipment trucks haven’t begun their pilgrimage across the country, nobody is taping ankles in a hotel conference room, etc.
But one of those early games isn’t like the others. The first FBS game, kicking off at 11:00 AM God’s Time Zone (Central, of course), North Carolina and TCU will continue what has become an early college football season mainstay: the kickoff game in Ireland.
On Location EVP John Anthony told me earlier this week that the logistical preparations to get ready for the game in Dublin had already begun.
“You’ve got the schools right now finishing their travel shipments, which means getting their manifest ready for customs and everything. We’re talking 20,000 pounds of stuff. And then in Ireland, you’ve got last-minute meetings with the local police and city leadership to hash out traffic plans. And since this event is more than just a game, we have over 40 other events happening in Dublin besides the football game…so there’s a lot of scurrying about right now.”
Much of logistical planning, like hotel assignments and VIP event invitations, has been taken care of well ahead of time, but Anthony reminded me that there are always little fires that may need to be put out.
“One thing that hasn’t been discussed as much is the fact that rosters change later into the offseason now, and maybe not every new player has a passport. But thankfully, there are ways to take care of that.”
Nobody would deny that getting two P4 football programs all the way over to Ireland to start a season is a huge undertaking. But schools keep signing up to participate, and they’re not just doing it for money or for the chance to dominate an early-season television window.
To Anthony, it also comes back to what makes this event unique, something that’s tricky to scale or emulate elsewhere.
The fact that this series is legitimately “more than a game.”
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A bi-weekly look at the rapidly changing licensing landscape in college sports, as part of a paid sponsorship with Desert Cactus.
In March, the NCAA filed a lawsuit against DraftKings, claiming the digital gaming company engaged in trademark infringement when it used terms like "March Madness" and "Final Four." The phrases are part of any sports fan's springtime vocabulary, but the NCAA has held trademarks on them for ages—so it sought an emergency temporary restraining order to force DraftKings to change its language.
A judge denied the NCAA's request. DraftKings had been using the phrasing for years, the judge ruled, and such terms are widely used; the NCAA had also failed to prove irreparable harm. But the judge did leave the door open for the NCAA to win an injunction after more discovery. Regardless of the eventual outcome, this drama fits into a bigger-picture trend: aggressive trademark enforcement across college sports.
As licensing revenue climbs, the NCAA and universities are getting more aggressive about defending their marks. And while the case against DraftKings is unresolved and pretty complex, it's not necessarily the norm. Consider another recent suit: The former Pac-12 schools sued Sportswear Inc. for selling retro-style merchandise featuring university branding it had never licensed. The two sides settled this spring, and even though the terms are confidential, the resolution shows schools can and will fight unlicensed sellers trying to cash in on the demand for nostalgia.
So what's there to Europe andlearn — besides the need to tread carefully when it comes to trademarks? For one, enforcement doesn't have to come in the form of reactive litigation. There are plenty of ways to be proactive about trademark monitoring: retail sweeps, secondary market checks, and clear licensing guidelines for throwback and nostalgia gear. Staying ahead of the problem is a much cheaper and easier solution than a multi-year lawsuit.
Headquartered in the Chicago area, Desert Cactus is a fast-growing e-commerce company specializing in officially licensed and custom merchandise for more than 650 colleges and universities.
