Who won the big game? Student clothing tells stories

NOTE: This is an updated version Story first published on January 8, 2015

The winner of Monday’s college football national championship game will be written on the clothes of Ohio State students on Tuesday, research suggests.

If you saw students wearing Ohio State jerseys, hats and other gear on Tuesday, you knew the Buckeyes had a win over Notre Dame.

If Buckeye apparel is scarce, well… prepare for the worst.

But it’s not just the Buckeyes who choose their apparel based on the success of their favorite team.

A 2015 study of students at seven universities, including Ohio State University, found that students were more than twice as likely to wear team apparel at the first class meeting after a football team win.

“People want to connect with winners. It makes you feel better about yourself, even if you’re just a fan,” said Brian TurnerStudy co-author and professor of sports management at The Ohio State University School of Education and Human Ecology.

“This is what we call BIRGing – Bask in reflected glory”.

Failure changes what students wear. The results showed that students were 55% less likely to wear team apparel after a loss.

Turner conducted the study—replicating a famous study from more than 40 years ago— Jonathan JensenAt the time he was a doctoral student at Ohio State University. Jensen is now associate director of the Center for Sports Management Research and Education at Texas A&M University. They presented their research at the North American Sports Management Society conference.

The study was conducted during the 2013 football season at Ohio State University, Minnesota State University, Indiana State University, Louisiana State University, Florida State University, Louisville State University and Syracuse University.

Researchers at Ohio State University recruited faculty and staff from each school to count how many students wore school uniforms during the first class meeting after each football game that season, resulting in more than 3,200 unique data points.

Overall, students at these seven universities wear uniforms about 27% of the time.

Some students (about 6.7%) went all out and actually wore more than one team uniform. Studies show that winning as a team more than triples the likelihood of wearing two items of clothing.

This study replicates a study Robert Cialdininow a professor emeritus at Arizona State University, the study was conducted in 1973.

Cialdini, Turner said, was the coiner of the phrase “bathe in reflected glory.” The research has become a classic in the field of consumer behavior.

“This is the most cited and best-known study in sports marketing,” Turner said.

Another related study published in 2023, authored by Turner, Jensen and James Evans, now at Indiana University, found that fans’ expectations help determine how much they BIRGing after a win.

The study found that fans of teams that expected to lose a game but later won did not wear their team’s apparel as much as fans of teams that expected to win.

Turner said researchers believe these fans don’t want to celebrate too much in case their team makes the same mistake again.

“Fans may not want to get too excited about a win when a team isn’t used to winning because they might get heartbreak down the road,” Turner said.

But the study was done during the regular season and included some teams unfamiliar with winning. Even though Notre Dame is the underdog in the national championship game, Turner expects their fans to do a lot of BIRGing if they win.

“Notre Dame, like Ohio State, is used to winning,” he said.