Where do sponsor patches go for swimmers?

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Last week, Fresno State joined a growing list of athletic departments when it announced a new jersey patch partnership, with the Wonderful Company, which holds a wide portfolio of businesses.

Some aspects of this partnership are unique to Fresno State: The athletic department is partnering with the entire Wonderful portfolio, not just an individual brand, so different teams will have different patches, promoting different nuts, fruits or juices. And the jersey patch component is part of a wide-reaching partnership that will also touch game signage, hospitality, special events (like away-game tailgates) and more.

But other components are more conventional. Per the announcement, each of Fresno State’s 18 athletics programs will feature a patch with one of Wonderful’s brands.

While some schools (like Wisconsin, Utah Valley, USF and Omaha) have elected to pursue different sponsors for different sports, the most common arrangement right now appears to be a single sponsor working with every varsity program. Other major programs, like LSU (Woodside Energy), Ohio State (Chase) and Notre Dame (SoFi), have made similar announcements.

And right there on the press release, you can see some examples of what the Wonderful patch might look like on a variety of Fresno State Bulldogs uniforms, jerseys for football, basketball, softball and more.

But Fresno State also sponsors women’s swimming, water polo and equestrian. So what do you do with a patch for an aquatic sport? Or a horse sport?

Spokespeople at Fresno State, Ohio State and Notre Dame confirmed to me that while their departments will feature sponsorship assets for all varsity sports, they haven’t made final decisions about where those patches will go for their swim teams.

I’ve checked all the announcements in our jersey patch tracker, and I couldn’t find a single public example of a uniform patch for an aquatic sport.

So how will anybody do this?