AUBURN — Auburn football will feature a corporate sponsor on Pat Dye Field at Jordan-Hare Stadium in 2025.
Auburn alum and billionaire Jimmy Rane’s company, YellaWood, will serve as the sponsor. Rane leads Great Southern Wood, the nation’s top producer of pressure-treated lumber. Rane has been a member of the Auburn Board of Trustees since 1999.
“Pat Dye revolutionized Auburn Athletics,” said YellaWood founder and CEO Jimmy Rane in a statement, recalling Dye’s 1981 introductory news conference. “He left no doubt about what he was about and what he intended to do. The reporter asked him, ‘Coach, how long is it going to take you to beat Alabama?’
“With a cold-eyed, steel look, he looked at him and said, ‘Sixty minutes.’ You knew damn well he meant business. From that day forward until he stopped coaching, that’s the attitude and grit he brought to Auburn’s program.”
Sources tell AuburnSports the deal will be an five-year, eight-figure deal. The logo will feature the words “Pat Dye Field” with the Yellawood logo below it. Sources tell AuburnSports that Rane wanted Pat Dye’s recognition to be larger than the YellaWood logo.
“We are profoundly grateful to Jimmy Rane and YellaWood for honoring Coach Dye and supporting Auburn Athletics in this innovative manner,” athletics director John Cohen said. “To Jimmy and to Auburn, this is so much more than a sponsorship agreement.”
Estimates over the past year have corporate field sponsorships priced between $2 million and $6 million annually. Sources tell AuburnSports that the YellaWood deal falls roughly in the middle.
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Sources confirm to AuburnSports the field-logo deal will direct significant money to Auburn football’s NIL efforts. NCAA president Charlie Baker spoke on the subject last summer.
“This change allows schools to generate additional income to support student-athletes,” he said. “I’m pleased that we could find flexibility within our rules to make this happen for member schools.”
The university’s social media reveal video highlighted players Jackson Arnold, Eric Singleton Jr., Cam Colemanand Keldric Faulk. Sources say NIL funds from the field-logo deal will reduce revenue-share costs for the four players.
In short, Auburn freed up extra revenue-sharing money this season by offsetting it with NIL funds. The same mechanism can be applied to future players, giving Auburn added flexibility throughout the life of the deal.
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LSU, Tennessee, South Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt all have—or will have—corporate field sponsors.
