This might be the most satisfying jersey match I’ve ever performed.
Last week I saw that a seller listed a bundle of Middle Tennessee football jerseys on eBay for $35 each. The jerseys had no information as to the year they were worn and all nameplates had been removed.
Mysterious jerseys with no provenance from a random school? Challenge accepted.
I pulled up a list of NFL players and draft picks who played for Middle Tennessee in the past decade and a few names came up. I used the school’s yearly rosters to find their numbers then searched the seller’s listings for those jersey numbers. One of the hits that came up was #30, which was worn by Darius Harris (2015-2018) and Jakobe Thomas (2021-2023). The jersey showed a lot of use, with paint transfers and ripped seams. Interesting.
I zoomed in closely on the seller’s photos and noticed a very faint outline of a captain’s patch on the right shoulder. I also noticed that the C-USA patch was sitting overtop the outline of a larger patch that was previously removed. I did some photo searching and noticed that graduate players wore a special C-USA patch that was larger than the normal one.
More searching found that Darius Harris was a redshirt senior in 2018 and was also named a captain that year. I scoured the internet for photos of him from his college days and although I found multiple with the same jersey style, the nameplate on the back was much more narrow than the nameplate stitch outline on the jersey for sale.
After a couple hours of searching I said screw it, the jersey is only $35, just buy it and resume the research when it arrives. I don’t love buying a jersey before I’ve photomatched it but that price is solid even for a generic game-used college jersey.
It arrived in the mail today and I got back to work. I hit some dead ends in my photo searching (surprisingly enough, major media outlets don’t send many photographers to Middle Tennessee games), but then I realized the clue was sitting right in front of me. In Jakobe Thomas’ 2022 team photo, I could clearly see the same outline of the removed C-USA graduate patch, along with a couple matching paint transfer scrapes on the shoulder. Business just picked up.
I performed Google image searches to determine the games in which Middle Tennessee used this jersey style in 2022. One of the hits was a showdown against Western Kentucky. Thomas had a big game, logging a bunch of tackles. I found the game posted online and scrubbed through the footage, watching the defensive plays closely. At one point the camera zoomed in on Thomas after he made a play and I could clearly see the swooping dark paint transfer on the front #3, along with matching paint transfers on the shoulders.
Boom. I turned nothing into something. Pure sweat equity. That’s why I love this hobby.
I’ll never know for certain, but if I had to guess, the team intended the jersey as an alternate for Darius Harris, which is why the jersey had the graduate logo and captain’s patch at one point. They probably didn’t put his nameplate on the back, and after he graduated they removed the patches to get the jersey back into circulation, ultimately repurposing it for Jakobe Thomas.
Thomas went on to join Miami in 2025 after leaving Middle Tennessee, playing a key defensive role in the Hurricanes’ run to the National Championship game. He was drafted by the Vikings in the 3rd round in April. Wherever he goes from here, he has at least one supporter.
