Utah State football coach Blake Anderson didn’t mince words Wednesday.
While talking about USU’s early signing class for 2024, he tackled the most pressing topic in college football — name, image and likeness, commonly referred to as NIL.
Still relatively new to the college sports scene, with the NCAA allowing student-athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness since July 1, 2021, NIL has completely changed how team building works, Anderson said.
“We have realize that this is a competitive world of college sports, and that these guys are going to have significant opportunities financially. To (have them) choose to stay and finish with us, we at least have to bridge the gap.” — USU coach Blake Anderson
“You didn’t have NIL in the conversation when we first took the job (here). That first group that we brought in that won it (the Mountain West Conference championship) in ’21, there was no talk about money at all. There was no, ‘I’m going where the money is,’ or ‘I need to be at a place that has NIL.’
“It was just I want to play, I want to have the right culture and I want to have a chance to win. When you added NIL to the space, it changed everything.”
Anderson isn’t wrong. In the nearly two and a half years since NIL came into effect, college sports have been dramatically altered, college football especially.
Some, such as ESPN’s Rece Davis and Pete Thamel, have credited NIL for bringing more parity to the top of the sport. Others, though, have lamented how the gap between the Group of Five programs and the Power Five programs is only growing, thanks to NIL budgets.
Utah State has been on the wrong end of NIL since its inception, specifically following the 2022 season when the Aggies lost nearly their entire defensive line to the transfer portal, NIL being a primary motivator in those defections.
This offseason, though, the Aggies have managed to hold on to most of their best players, thus far only losing one — safety Devin Dye — off their two-deep roster to another program.
So Utah State must be doing better when it comes to NIL, right?
Yes and no, said Anderson.
“I appreciate these guys (the Aggies who’ve announced they will remain with the team). They are not getting rich. We have a handful of guys getting money through the collective, but it is far from fully funded.”
The collective referenced is the Blue A Collective, spearheaded by Eric Laub and former Aggie football coach Gary Andersen.
And per Anderson, the collective does provide players with enough money to fly home if need be, buy a little extra food when hungry, or put a little more gas in their cars. It is far from providing players with six-figure stipends, though, which is what multiple current and future Aggies have been offered by other programs, Anderson said.
“It (the Blue A Collective) is far from where it needs to be to be truly competitive,” Anderson said. “... We’re in a different world, but it was a good first step. And I appreciate that they did stay. I appreciate the people that did help. This is a good first step, but this is not a finished product, we still have a long way to go. And our league is only going to get stronger and more difficult to compete in. I think this is a great first step towards them.”
Anderson noted that the Mountain West Conference is highly competitive in the NIL space right now, with multiple programs currently supported by collectives that have accumulated at least $1 million to spend on players on a yearly basis.
He cited Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty purportedly getting $300,000 to $400,000 to stay with the Broncos another season.
“We have a ton of room to make up,” Anderson said, before adding that Utah State may never be completely on par with some of their competition in the conference. That just may not be possible.
Even still, though, “if we want to retain our rosters in football and basketball especially,” Anderson said, “(NIL) is a place we have to (get to). We have realize that this is a competitive world of college sports, and that these guys are going to have significant opportunities financially. To (have them) choose to stay and finish with us, we at least have to bridge the gap.”
There are positives already. As previously mentioned, several key Aggies are returning next season — players like Ike Larsen, Anthony Switzer, Jalen Royals and Cooper Legas, to name a few — and many of them turned down major monetary offers to remain in Logan.
So too did some of the junior college transfers the Aggies just signed, players slated to join the team in January.
Utah State did that. The team, the coaches, the culture and the whole of Cache Valley, Anderson said.
“You have to understand these guys have chosen to stay here and they turned down six figure-plus type opportunities to stay here for way, way less than that. But they didn’t really want to leave. They love the culture. They love the valley and they want to be Aggies.”
In the modern era of college football, you need some money too, though.