Sep 8th 2008 5:30PM by Will Brinson (author feed)
Filed under: Bengals, AFC North, NFL Fans, NFL Media Watch
In case you’ve been in total freak out mode about the availability of Chad Ocho Cinco jerseys, well, keep on freakin’, because you might not be seeing them for a while.

No, the NFL’s not angry enough to keep 85 from slinging jerseys — it wouldn’t behoove them financially to do that. But, if Reebok caves and swaps the jersey now, think about how many “Chad Johnson” jerseys the wouldn’t be able to sell. Yeah. A lot. Darren Rovell explains.
Reebok, which makes the league’s jerseys, and licensees have to protect themselves from a player suddenly changing their number (it’s normally not a name), so they make them change whatever they need to change months before the season. Failure to do so means that a change likely won’t be made that season.

The sticking point is that for a receiver of Johnson’s caliber, there’s likely as much as 100,000 “C. Johnson” jerseys, not only in Reebok inventory, but in store shelves around the country.

If Johnson wanted to buy out all the jerseys, a source with knowledge of the situation said it would cost him the cost to make the jersey, which is roughly 60 percent of the retail price. That would be about $48 a jersey or $4.8 million if that 100,000 number is reality.
That’s right. Someone finally found a sticking point for Ocho Cinco’s name change and potential marketing boom, recording one catch for 22 yards against the freaking Ravens on the first Sunday of the 2008 season aside.Continue Reading