"I like the special edition jersey, and the only ones they were selling in the store were Elliotts," said Troy Martin of Hilliard, who wore a red Lee jersey to Saturday's game vs. Minnesota. "Although I'm a huge fan of him, I like other players on the team also, so I like to get the number I want. And now that the NCAA is doing only the year and the No. 1, that kind of limits what we can buy."
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Stacy Elliott walked around Ohio State's media day in August wearing a black No. 15 Buckeyes jersey with his son's name on the back.
It was easy to think Stacy was sending a message to Ohio State's fan base that black jerseys were coming. How else could he have a stitched, authentic-looking jersey with Big Ten and Nike logos on it?
Maybe Stacy had an idea that black jersey were coming -- Ohio State wore them for the first time in program history against Penn State in October -- but he had no special apparel connections through the program.
Stacy bought that jersey on Ebay. The father of one of the most famous players in college football had no other options but to buy his son's jersey on EBay.
Searching online is the only way for anyone who wants an Ezekiel Elliott jersey with his name on it. Or a Cardale Jones jersey, or Darron Lee, or J.T. Barrett, or Joey Bosa or Braxton Miller.
And here's the kicker: They're all counterfeit. Anyone with a jersey with a number correlating with a current player's name on it either bought a fake one online or had it customized through their own avenues.
Ezekiel Elliott's father, Stacy, wearing a black Ohio State jersey at the Buckeyes football media day during fall camp. Notice the numbers are white, not red like the ones Ohio State actually wore vs. Penn State.Ari Wasserman, Northeast Ohio Media Group
"It's hard not to notice them because it has become an epidemic," Rick Van Brimmer, director of Ohio State's Trademark and Licensing Services, told cleveland.com.
So here are the questions: Why are so many Ohio State fans buying them, do they know they're counterfeit, where are they getting them and how is that impacting Ohio State's program?
The options
Before the season, Ohio State announced that it will only be selling two jersey numbers this season: No. 1 and No. 15.
It was an effort to separate itself from former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon's lawsuit in 2009 that challenged college football programs' rights to capitalize off a player's likeness.
Though No. 1 and No. 15 are numbers to two of Ohio State's most influential players -- Miller and Elliott -- the Buckeyes explained that No. 15 was for the year and No. 1 was because they were defending national champions.
Even so, that made the options for Ohio State fans limited to only two numbers. What if their favorite player is Bosa or Lee? So, in some cases, people are going online to find the products not offered by mainstream Ohio State retailers.
Troy Martin, left, and his brother Colton wearing counterfeit Ohio State jerseys they bought online to the Buckeyes win over Minnesota on Saturday. Ari Wasserman, cleveland.com
"I like the special edition jersey, and the only ones they were selling in the store were Elliotts," said Troy Martin of Hilliard, who wore a red Lee jersey to Saturday's game vs. Minnesota. "Although I'm a huge fan of him, I like other players on the team also, so I like to get the number I want. And now that the NCAA is doing only the year and the No. 1, that kind of limits what we can buy."
Though authorized retailers give consumers the option to customize their numbers and names of jerseys -- which can also be very expensive -- the numbers and names of current players and some legendary players have been blacked out. Even if your name is Scott Elliott, you can't legally customize a No. 15 jersey with the name Elliott on the back.
The Money
Though the jerseys are counterfeit, a lot of them have stitched numbers, scrunchy sleeves and sewn-on numbers. The heaviness of the fabric and the quality of the stitchwork, at least on some of the jerseys, is high quality.
And for the most part, these jerseys are retailing on the Internet from anywhere between $20 and $50. That's dramatically cheaper than how much it would cost an Ohio State fan to go to a place like Buckeye Corner and purchase a legitimate jersey that can cost way more than $100.
Mackenzie O'Hara of Doylestown, Ohio wore a black Joey Bosa to the Minnesota game. He knew it was counterfeit when he bought it. Ari Wasserman, cleveland.com
Mackenzie O'Hara of Doylestown, Ohio, was wandering around the sideline before the Minnesota game. He was wearing a black No. 97 jersey with Bosa's name on the back. It was the same exact jersey Stacy Elliott wore, just with a different name and number.
The numbers were stitched on, but they were white, which differed from the black jerseys Ohio State actually wore against Penn State. The authentic ones had red numbers. But that Bosa's name was on the back was the counterfeit giveaway.
"It was just a great deal," O'Hara told cleveland.com. "I get it with the names and the NCAA and all that money stuff, but it didn't matter to me. It was a good deal, it looks good and there was no other place to get it."
Where are they coming from?
There was a fan walking the Ohio State concourse wearing a Jones jersey, and when approached about why he bought a fake jersey he became offended because he was unaware if was fraudulent.
Tyler Knapp, an 18-year-old fan from Ravenna, Ohio, wore an Ezekiel Elliott jersey to the Minnesota game.Ari Wasserman, cleveland.com
That fan bought the jersey on Amazon.com, so he felt it was a legitimate place to purchase such a product.
Most fans are like O'Hara, though. They know that the NCAA restricts Ohio State from authorizing a jersey with a current player's name on it, but they buy them from online retailers.
The most popular one is AliExpress.com, the international version of Amazon. It's an aggregator of countless independent retailers that will send consumers in the United States the product directly. It usually takes three weeks, but the product comes.
But sometimes those products are sold second-handedly on places like EBay or Amazon, which is how unsuspecting consumers unaware of what's legitimate end up buying them.
"The people I've talked to, the majority of people know they're fake and don't care," Van Brimmer said. "That's distressing."
Impact on Ohio State
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith told cleveland.com that a very small portion of the program's revenue on apparel comes from jersey sales. It may be smaller than he thought off hand.
Nike jersey sales accounted for less than one percent of Ohio State's overall apparel business the last fiscal year. That figure is down from the six-year average of 1.51 percent. Jersey sales peaked in 2011 and declined every year since until last season, but last season included special national championship product.
Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliott helped the Buckeyes win a national title last year. There are fake versions of his jersey floating around everywhere.Chuck Crow, The Plain Dealer
During the last fiscal year -- July of 2014 to June of 2015 -- Ohio State made $1.6 million on jerseys, which was 0.7 percent of total apparel sales that totaled $221 million. Sales of T-Shirts, sweaters, hats, shorts, pants and things like that make up the majority. The number of jerseys may seem overwhelming at a game, but in the grand scheme of apparel, they're not the top thing purchased.
But that doesn't mean the the mass counterfeit sales of jerseys isn't a concern for Ohio State.
"There's a quality issue. Where was it made? How was the worker treated? There's a lot of issues involved," Van Brimmer said. "Counterfeiting is a crime."
And Ohio State is having a really hard time of shutting it down. In the old days, counterfeit jerseys were made in mass in places like China and brought through a port of entry into the United States in a place like New Orleans. Many times, those counterfeits were intercepted by U.S. customs agents and they never saw the secondary market.
Now those manufacturers are making and shipping those counterfeits directly to the consumer, so it's much harder for Ohio State to track and shut down. Ohio State tries to shut down every fraudulent manufacture it comes across -- places like AliExpress have fraud departments -- but most times those manufacturers pop back up under different names almost immediately.
Ohio State sales are healthy, though. It's just hard not to notice when you go to a football game that those fakes are floating around everywhere you look, whether the fan knows it or not.
"From a total sales perspective, we've seen nothing but increases this year," Van Brimmer said. "It's hard to say what the impact is because things are good. If things were in the toilet we could tell you something's going on and things are going badly.
"But the problem with these kind of goods is that we can't track them and we don't know how much we're losing or how many of the illegal goods are actually in the market place."
It's a lot.
