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.
Former NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday his NASCAR team, JR Motorsports, had secured the rights to a stylized 8 mark through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The announcement came after attorneys for quarterback Lamar Jackson, who wears the No. 8 jersey for the Baltimore Ravens, filed a notice of opposition with the USPTO over JR Motorsports’s trademark claim to the mark, arguing it “falsely suggests a connection” with Jackson.
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) April 4, 2025
Earnhardt and his team have raced before as No. 8; and in 2019, when the team got the No. 8 car, he said the number was “very special to me and to JR nation. There’s a lot of history with the No. 8 in my family and in NASCAR. It’s time to write some new stories and continue to add to the number’s rich heritage,” according to Autoweek.
But the number also means something to Jackson, who played with a No. 8 jersey at the University of Louisville, which the school retired, as well as for the Ravens since being drafted by the team in 2018.
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.