Two famous athletes battled over the number 8. A font helped them call a truce
Who gets to own a number? That’s the question at the heart of a dispute between football star Lamar Jackson and Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s.
Two famous athletes battled over the number 8. A font helped them call a truce
A dispute between a pair of pro athletes who both use the number 8 has been resolved, thanks to a change in font.
Jackson’s attorneys went after another No. 8 athlete last year, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman. At the time, Aikman joked in a post on X, “Hey Lamar—Looks like a worthy conversation over a couple cold EIGHT beers! Maybe Steve Young can arbitrate??” (Aikman was referring to his beer brand Eight; and Young, a former San Francisco 49ers No. 8 player.)
Aikman’s joke showed how a single number can refer to multiple well-known athletes simultaneously, potentially watering down the case a single athlete can make to lay absolute claim to a number.
Earnhardt didn’t say much about how the dispute was resolved except that his JR Motorsports team would no longer use the forward-leaning 8 mark that they’ve used since 2019 and instead use a backward-leaning mark that resembles the No. 8 car Earnhardt raced with in the 2000s for Dale Earnhardt Inc., the team founded by his father. The resolution seems to suggest that the styling of a number plays a role in how the public perceives it in connection to specific athletes.
Jackson has proven litigious over the number, but he said in 2021 that he’d change from No. 8 to No. 1 if he ever won a Super Bowl. So if you see Earnhardt, Aikman, Young, and other No. 8 athletes cheering for the Ravens, you might figure out why.
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