NCAA rule throws water on Olive Hill’s feel-good moment

When baseball player Ben Jordan joined the University of Kentucky basketball team late last month, a business in his hometown of Olive Hill thought to commemorate this development with a T-shirt. As UK basketball coach John Calipari pointed out, Jordan’s many baseball accomplishments never merited a T-shirt, but joining UK basketball as a practice player did.

Wanda Antrobus, the owner of Stylish Stitches (the company that is selling the T-shirts), explained.

“Everybody is a huge basketball fan and everybody bleeds blue,” she said. “We are in the BBN, which is Big Ben Nation here.”

Apparently, the T-shirt part of the celebration will be short-lived. Because of the NCAA’s current rules against a player profiting off his or her name, image and likeness, UK sent a cease-and-desist order to Stylish Stitches on Friday. Heather Henderson, who thought of the idea of the T-shirt, said she had been told to stop production.

Jordan’s athletic eligibility will not be affected, UK said.

The front of the T-shirt has an outlined map of Kentucky with a basketball on the eastern end. Underneath the map are the words in cursive “local kid.” UK said the problem was the words “Big Ben” also in cursive on the back of the shirt.

Earlier in the week, Antrobus said she was aware of the current issue of college players profiting off their names, images and likenesses. The NCAA recently took a step toward allowing players to profit this way. But that actually happening is believed to be at least a few years in the future. Earlier this year, California passed a law allowing college athletes to profit off their names, images and likenesses beginning in January of 2023.

Of the so-called NIL implications, Antrobus said, “That’s why we were careful with it. Because we weren’t sure what he could and couldn’t do.”

Antrobus said her business contacted Jordan’s parents about the idea of a commemorative T-shirt. She said she would donate profits from sales to an organization, school, club or club of Jordan’s choosing.

“We’ll donate to the Little League or high school baseball team if that’s what Ben wants,” Antrobus said earlier in the week. Jordan had not yet decided where he’d like the profits to go, Antrobus said.

Stylish Stitches is an embroidery and screen -printing business, Antrobus said. It opened in September. Henderson, who came up with the idea of a Jordan T-shirt, said, “We can pretty much make anything you want. . . . Anything that can be put on a shirt, we can do it.”

Of the Jordan T-shirt, Henderson said, “We want to do, like, a shirt of the week. And I was, like, ‘Hey, we need to do a UK shirt.’ And it kind of went from there.”

The Jordan T-shirts have been popular. Henderson said the store was selling four or five a day.

Antrobus said orders come in daily, with six to eight taken on Wednesday.

Jordan joining UK’s basketball team “is very exciting for our small town,” said Antrobus, who added a moment later, “My kids grew up idolizing him.”

This story was originally published November 1, 2019 at 2:35 PM.

Jerry Tipton

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-472-4091

Jerry Tipton has covered Kentucky basketball beginning with the 1981-82 season to the present. He is a member of the United States Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame. Support my work with a digital subscription