This question seems to come up all the time: why can’t people buy a college basketball player’s jersey? You can buy a team jersey, for example Kentucky, but not a John Wall jersey.
With March Madness right around the corner, this question carries even more weight. In brief, college players are not professional athletes; i.e. they don’t make a salary for playing basketball. And the NCAA has strict rules against monetary rewards for student athletes. It would be unethical for a company to make money off of a student athlete’s on-court success while the athlete receives no compensation.
Okay, so what are your choices if you’ve got a favorite NCAA player you want to support? Well, one option is to buy a counterfeit jersey from a non-authorized website. We don’t recommend this. Your money would be going to a dishonest vendor and not the player or the school.
Option number 2 is to buy the team’s jersey and get it customized with the player’s name. The schools found this loophole to let fans support their favorite players. Hey, what if my last name happens to be Wall, what prevents me from putting that on the jersey (just so happens to be the same last name as the most highly recognized college basketball player). The up side is that you’ll still be supporting your school. Note that customized jerseys can be expensive.
If it were up to us, we’d recommend not doing either of these. Go out and buy the team’s jersey and support the spirit of college. Let college athletes enjoy competing for their schools and let’s leave the individuality out of the picture … at least until they join the NBA. Let’s not let the influence of money taint these student athletes’ lives.