This is a laugh
If you're a big fan of The Ohio State University, your sense of identity could go down the toilet.
Not because the NCAA finally has dug up some dirt to back Maurice Clarett's story of receiving illegal assistance. Not because the Buckeyes have lost their top recruits. Not because they don't have a prayer against Michigan this year.
The school has granted a license to a company to manufacture a toilet tank bearing the school's logo. The request was one of 100 granted among 500 applications the school received.
Don't laugh. Licensed toilet tanks are part of a serious business. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Ohio State took in $4.8 million in licensing royalties last year, second only to 2002, when it won the national championship in football. For comparison's sake, national basketball champion North Carolina raked in $3.7 million.
Consider that the royalties are just 8 percent of the total sales. So Buckeyes fans are willing to flush away almost $60 million for the privilege of showing the world that they're Buckeyes fans.
Rules governing licenses appear to be more voluminous than the "Attorneys" section of the Yellow Pages. An important one to note is that if the school's athletics department licensed the item and sells it on its Web site, it keeps the royalty. So the athletics department has another legitimate revenue stream.
One surprising aspect in the case of Ohio State is that sales have stayed strong despite the amount of time that has passed since the national championship and because of the charges of improprieties.
"It's extremely difficult to continue to be a national champion since there's only one a year," said Christian M. End, an assistant professor of psychology at Xavier University who specializes in fan behavior. "I still think Ohio State's championship is recent enough so that if they would lose to Michigan, they could cope with that defeat by saying, 'You may have beat us this year, but when was the last time you won a national championship?' It's still in their back pocket."
Another reason for Ohio State's staying power is its omnipresence on national TV. Other schools that top the list for licensing sales include the universities of Michigan, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma and Notre Dame.
