Nathan Giese/Avalanche-Journal “He wanted his alma mater with Adidas – and at the same time he had the vision for growth of his ‘Gladiator’ logo, his brand,” Hocutt said.The NFL superstar didn’t just want to help his alma mater, he wanted his name to be forever associated with Texas Tech.”I don’t ever remember a more […]
“He wanted his alma mater with Adidas – and at the same time he had the vision for growth of his ‘Gladiator’ logo, his brand,” Hocutt said.The NFL superstar didn’t just want to help his alma mater, he wanted his name to be forever associated with Texas Tech.”I don’t ever remember a more outspoken athlete in his prime talking about how it’s all about his university,” McGuire said.The announcement was a hit with the Red Raiders’ players and fans, but it wasn’t the first formal deal to involve some combination of the university, Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. Texas Tech has seemingly hitched its wagon to Mahomes over the last four years, going as far to sign a multi-million dollar marketing deal with the NFL franchise that includes game-day advertisements for Texas Tech at Arrowhead Stadium and across the Chiefs’ in-house broadcasts and social media.
The answer dates back to the pandemic in 2020, when Kansas City was pumping out video content about Mahomes’ upbringing at Whitehouse High School in Texas and his development with the Chiefs.”We look forward to the day when the Gladiator logo is on all of our uniforms and apparel here at Texas Tech,” Hocutt said.A few years ago at a fundraising event in Hawai’i, Patrick Mahomes saddled up next to Texas Tech’s athletics director and pitched an idea.
The informal conversation soon led to action, and in 2024, Texas Tech jumped to Adidas and signed a 10-year agreement. In that agreement, Mahomes’ branded “Gladiator” logo appeared on jerseys for one home football game against Colorado.When Mahomes’ rise began, Tech struck gold. He won his first Super Bowl as the starter in January 2020, transforming him into a household name. His jersey sales jumped into the top 10 among NFL players, and in Lubbock, more Chiefs bumper stickers started replacing the Dallas Cowboys’ insignia on cars and trucks. Dewey, who formerly worked at Michigan, knew he had to make a pitch to his bosses at Tech.”A lot of the content just kind of seemed to gloss over Texas Tech, so I reached out to them and said, ‘Hey, what could we do to get his Texas Tech story to be part of his broader Kansas City Chiefs story?'” said Matt Dewey, Texas Tech’s vice president of marketing and communications.
The in-stadium ads prompted questions from befuddled casual viewers. After all, why the heck is a university 701 miles away entrenched with an NFL franchise?Texas Tech was in talks at the time with Under Armour to extend their apparel and equipment contract, but Mahomes, who had recently signed with Adidas, had a different pitch: why not sign with Adidas and include his own brand in the contract?Mahomes often tweets about Tech, most recently congratulating the basketball program’s upset of top-five Houston on Feb. 1. He attended Tech football games during his bye weeks with the Chiefs in 2021, 2022 and 2023. He was unable to attend a game in 2024 because Kansas City’s open date was on the same week as Tech’s open date. “Seeing my own logo on the Texas Tech uniform I put so much blood, sweat and tears in is one of the most meaningful off-field accomplishments of my career,” Mahomes said in October.
Soon, the Mahomes-Tech relationship will deepen. “Anytime you turn on a Chiefs game, you’re going to see something with Texas Tech on their boards,” Red Raiders coach Joey McGuire said.It’s difficult to avoid the power “TT” logo at Arrowhead Stadium. It appears often on video and ribbon boards inside the stadium, which is often caught on national television broadcasts during kickoffs and intermittently during action.
Mahomes didn’t win a lot of games in his two seasons as a full-time starter at Tech (12-13), but he was still a head-turning superstar. He led the nation in passing with 5,052 yards passing and broke the FBS record for single-game total offense with 819 yards in a loss to Oklahoma in 2016. His jet-fueled rise with the Chiefs, who selected him 10th overall in the 2017 NFL Draft, has placed him in the conversation as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. The Chiefs can become the first NFL team in history Sunday to win three straight Super Bowls. In August, Mahomes returned to campus to announce the million donation and new name, image and likeness deals with seven Tech athletes for a program he calls “Team Mahomes,” which is expected to be renewed next fall. His short visit to Lubbock had the campus stirring with onlookers.Talks are underway to permanently place his Gladiator logo on the Red Raiders’ adidas uniforms for every football game starting in 2026, Tech officials said, in what might be the first full-time branding agreement between an active NFL player and an NCAA university.
“We’ve seen tremendous excitement and sell-through around our Texas Tech apparel from Red Raiders fans,” said Jim Murphy, senior director of NCAA sports marketing at Adidas.
Courtesy Adidas
“There’s no way you could put a dollar figure on the exposure, the marketing and the branding that he brings back to his program and his university,” Hocutt said.”It’s probably like when the Beatles first came to America in the ’60s,” Dewey said. “He’s like an iconic figure.”
Tech advertises on the Chiefs’ video boards and ribbon boards inside Arrowhead Stadium and has commercial time on TVs inside the stadium’s concourse. Tech-branded content regularly appears on the Chiefs’ social media and radio broadcasts as well. Texas Tech dignitaries attend one Chiefs game each year and Chiefs personnel participate in virtual business classes at Tech. Before the Chiefs traveled to Germany for a game in 2023, Tech sent German faculty to Kansas City to help educate the Chiefs’ staff on German culture and language.
Texas Tech struck a seven-year marketing deal with the Kansas City Chiefs in the summer of 2021 worth .47 million, according to documents obtained by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. The contract stretches through the 2027 season. It seemed like a risky deal at the time, but now it’s seemingly a bargain. Millions of people every week see the Texas Tech advertisements.Applicants to Texas Tech from the Kansas City area have “gone up significantly” during the marketing agreement, Hocutt said. About 100 students from the Kansas City area have enrolled at Tech, Dewey said.In August, Mahomes and his wife, Brittany, donated million toward the university’s ongoing football facilities projects, which is estimated to total 2 million. Inside the football facility, a large “walkthrough room” for the team is now called the “Patrick Mahomes Walkthrough Room,” and includes a 70-foot video board and turf field. The office for the offensive coordinator and a meeting room for the offense are also named after Mahomes.
Mahomes, a two-time NFL MVP and three-time Super Bowl MVP, has led the franchise to seven straight AFC Championship games to go along with five Super Bowls and three Super Bowl titles in only seven seasons. The Chiefs play the Philadelphia Eagles Sunday in Super Bowl 59. “One of the things I always wished we had (at Michigan) was a more formal relationship with the New England Patriots and with (Tom) Brady,” Dewey said. “There was never really much of an appetite for that.”
