Name Image Likeness

NAIA College Partners with Zimmer Biomet to Become First School with a Jersey Sponsor

The three year exclusive sponsorship with Grace College will feature the Zimmer Biomet logo on all athletic jerseys

Noah Henderson

Grace College and Seminary located in Winona Lake, Indiana on Tuesday, March 30, 2021. Gracecollege 033021 Es20
Grace College and Seminary located in Winona Lake, Indiana on Tuesday, March 30, 2021. Gracecollege 033021 Es20 / Eric Seals / USA TODAY NETWORK

Outside of a 1992 NAIA Division II Men’s basketball title run, Grace College athletics are quite unremarkable. With an undergraduate population of 1,392 students, the school is largely unknown outside its Winona Lake, Indiana home. Competing dually in the NAIA and NCCAA, the school has had moderate NAIA athletic success, including a top-25 finish in the NAIA Learfield Director’s Cup in the 2023 season. However, the school has cemented itself in college sports history by becoming the first program to secure a jersey sponsorship partner. 

Just today, the Grace College athletic department announced an exclusive partnership with long-time medical technology company Zimmer Biomet. While no financial details of the sponsorship agreement have been made public, all athletic jerseys will bear the company’s logo for the next three years. Proximity is a major advantage of the partnership. Headquartered in the adjacent town of Warsaw, Indiana, Zimmer Biomet is only 3.4 miles from campus. 

With South Bend, Indiana, not too far up the road, many will wonder why Zimmer Biomet, a company that generated $7,300,000,000 in revenue in 2023, chose to align itself with a small college unlikely ever to see its athletic programs broadcast on television, as opposed to a team like Notre Dame, which can eclipse eight-figure television viewers for its most marquee matchups. The answer is quite simple: they can’t. 

It isn’t that Zimmer Biomet can’t afford a jersey partnership with Notre Dame or any other Division I program; it’s that the current posture of the NCAA does not allow corporate jersey sponsorships. Grace College competes outside of the NCAA, which allows it to take on this unique revenue-driving opportunity. 

However, this could soon change. The NCAA recently changed its policy on on-field sponsorships, and the 2024 football season will be the first to feature corporate logos on football fields. The change was at least in part instigated by heightened pressure to create new revenue streams for athletic programs. With legal challenges indicating a future NIL revenue-sharing system where NCAA revenue athletes will receive some allocation of broadcasting revenue, schools are proactively searching for ways to recuperate the cost of paying their on-field talent. Jersey sponsorships could be the next NCAA restriction to be loosened. 

The partnership with Grace College is a unique opportunity for Zimmer Biomet and could be replicated at other small schools. With a much lower price point than any NCAA institution, Zimmer Biomet can leverage its jersey partnership not for marketing and brand recognition that would be seen at a large FBS institution but for talent recruitment. A statement from Jim Lancaster, President of Recon and Global Headquarters Executive Director, echoes this sentiment: “We want to support our community, and we know some of our best team members historically have been former Grace College athletes. We hope many more of these excellent student-athletes stay and make a difference in our community."

Grace College will be the template for other small schools looking to cash in on jersey partnerships. Small institutions can leverage local companies by pitching talent recruitment and community involvement instead of large-scale marketing campaigns, a strategy likely to work for other NAIA schools and NCAA D2 and D3 institutions once jersey restrictions are lifted.  

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Noah Henderson

NOAH HENDERSON

Professor Noah Henderson teaches in the sport management department at Loyola University Chicago. Outside the classroom, he advises companies, schools, and collectives on Name, Image, and Likeness best practices. His academic research focuses on the intersection of law, economics, and social consequences regarding college athletics, NIL, and sports gambling. Before teaching, Prof. Henderson was part of a team that amended Illinois NIL legislation and managed NIL collectives at the nation’s most prominent athletic institutions while working for industry leader Student Athlete NIL. He holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Illinois College of Law in Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Economics from Saint Joseph’s University, where he was a four-year letter winner on the golf team. Prof. Henderson is a native of San Diego, California, and a former golf CIF state champion with Torrey Pines High School. Outside of athletics, he enjoys playing guitar, hanging out with dogs, and eating California burritos. You can follow him on Twitter: @NoahImgLikeness. 

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