{"id":822052,"date":"2026-08-22T11:52:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T11:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/822052\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T11:52:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T11:52:14","slug":"theres-an-unexpected-group-concerned-with-the-big-12-monster-deal-doctors-and-scientists-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/822052\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s an unexpected group concerned with the Big 12, Monster deal \u2014 doctors and scientists \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark stood on the podium at the league\u2019s football media days in July and announced a multiyear partnership between the conference and Monster Energy<\/a>, the move has drawn plenty of scrutiny.<\/p>\n

This week, another group shared its concerns over the partnership: doctors and scientists.<\/p>\n

What does the Big 12\/Monster Energy partnership include?<\/p>\n

Monster will reportedly pay the Big 12 $20 million annually \u2014 or about $1 million every year for each of the conference\u2019s 16 member institutions, according to Sports Business Journal\u2019s Ben Portnoy<\/a> \u2014 in exchange for rights to a co-branded Big 12\/Monster patch on football, men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball jerseys, as well as a co-branded Big 12 and Monster logo on the playing surfaces for those sports.<\/p>\n

The regular seasons for football, men\u2019s basketball and women\u2019s basketball will also be co-branded and now titled \u201cMonster Energy Big 12 Football\u201d and \u201cMonster Energy Big 12 Basketball,\u201d as the beverage brand was named the entitlement partner of the league.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an important partnership for the Big 12 as we continue to grow our commercial business,\u201d Yormark said in a statement at the partnership\u2019s announcement. \u201cMonster Energy is a global, culturally relevant brand that aligns with who we are and where we\u2019re going. Together, we will bring the Big 12 to new audiences, expand our reach, and deliver innovative experiences for our fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why doctors, scientists are concerned<\/p>\n

That expanded reach \u2014 and its potential impact with a certain demographic \u2014 is why a group of doctors and scientists have petitioned the Big 12 to halt the sponsorship, according to USA Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brent Schrotenboer reported that this group has sent letters to leadership at the Big 12 and the NCAA, sharing concern that energy drinks, like Monster Energy, are a health risk to children, but said it hasn\u2019t received a response.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason for focusing on the Big 12 is primarily the scale and demographics of its audience,\u201d John Higgins, a sports cardiologist with the Houston Rockets<\/a> and Rice Athletics, who is part of the group<\/a>, told USA Today. <\/p>\n

\u201cBig 12 games can reach roughly 10\u201318 million viewers per weekend, with particularly strong exposure among younger fans. That makes the conference an especially important environment to examine when considering the marketing and consumption of energy drinks among young people.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time that schools or individual players have struck their own sponsorship deals with other energy drinks, like Red Bull or Celsius.<\/p>\n

AJ Dybantsa, who played last season at BYU and was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NBA draft, had an endorsement deal with Red Bull<\/a> during his time in college.<\/p>\n

Two members of the group asking for the Big 12\u2019s response to this matter are alumni of BYU, according to USA Today. The school, which joined the Big 12 in 2022, has an honor code<\/a> that advises both students and faculty to abstain from drinking coffee or tea, beverages that traditionally contain caffeine.<\/p>\n

The group recently sent a letter to the Big 12\u2019s board of directors chairman Doug Girod, the chancellor at Kansas, and made three suggestions regarding the Big 12, Monster partnership.<\/p>\n

According to USA Today, these suggestions included:<\/p>\n

Asking for a pause of the \u201cyouth-facing activation of the sponsorship, including branding on player uniforms, fields, courts, student sections, and conference-controlled media likely to reach minors.\u201dA request to commission an independent health review, including pediatrics and cardiovascular medicine.Asking that the matter be brought to the Big 12 board before this branding \u201cbecomes embedded across football and basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the Big 12 and Monster Energy responded to a request for comment from the USA Today concerning this matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe energy drink category is not new to collegiate athletics,\u201d the Big 12 said in its statement. \u201cCategory leaders in the space continue to be active and aggressive in seeking opportunities to partner with and engage college sports fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement from Monster Energy said, \u201cMainstream energy drinks have been marketed worldwide for more than 30 years and more than 100 billion energy drinks have been sold and safely consumed globally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ingredients in Monster Energy and other mainstream energy drinks \u2014 which include caffeine, B vitamins, and other functional ingredients \u2014 are found in a broad range of familiar food products that have a long history of safe consumption. Monster Energy contains about half the caffeine found in a similarly sized coffee-house coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n

How the Big 12\/Monster sponsorship has been received<\/p>\n

The partnership has drawn plenty of scrutiny, among them the concern that the Big 12 could and perhaps should have received more revenue from the deal. <\/p>\n

In the time since the announcement of the partnership, individual schools from other leagues, like the Big Ten\u2019s Ohio State<\/a>, have announced their own lucrative jersey patch deals. <\/p>\n

Beginning with the 2026-27 academic season, the NCAA is permitting Division I teams to wear up to two commercial sponsorship patches during the regular season and preseason, plus one extra for conference championships.<\/p>\n

The Big 12\u2019s deal with Monster still allows the conference\u2019s member institutions to seek their own jersey sponsorship deal. <\/p>\n

Within a week of Big 12 media days, BYU announced its first-ever football jersey sponsorship deal with Entrata<\/a>, a Utah-based tech company. <\/p>\n

The day after the Big 12\/Monster deal was announced, Utah athletic director Mark Harlan talked about the new sponsorship.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you have to think of this a little bit different than a typical jersey patch in that it is part of the Big 12\u2019s patch. It\u2019s really their turf and the NCAA said they could do it,\u201d Harlan said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a really innovative thing that (Yormark has) done and someone was being critical about the deal and I said on radio \u2026 I just said it\u2019s about a million bucks more than Utah had yesterday, and that\u2019s really important,” Harlan added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe traditionalist in me is like, \u2018Ugh,\u2019 but the reality that the operation that we have to run is revenue is important and I think this one\u2019s pretty harmless and pretty cool.\u201d <\/p>\n

What will the Big 12\/Monster logo look like?<\/p>\n

While the Big 12 has yet to officially share what the co-branded Big 12\/Monster logo will appear like both on jerseys and playing surfaces, there have been numerous photos shared on social of what the logo apparently will look like \u2014 and it\u2019s often been met with mixed reactions.<\/p>\n

The first Big 12 football game of the season is quickly approaching, with TCU playing North Carolina in a neutral-site matchup in Ireland on Aug. 29.<\/p>\n

The rest of the league begins play the next week \u2014 locally, Utah hosts Idaho on Sept. 3 to open its 2026 season, while BYU kicks off the year two days later on Sept. 5 in a home game against Utah Tech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark stood on the podium at the league\u2019s football media days in July…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,8793,99],"class_list":["post-822052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-news-feed-national","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}