It is the nightmare scenario for many coaches in college football right now, at the Group of Five level especially.
You build out your roster, finding players who may have been overlooked and undervalued by other teams.
Over time, you develop said players into genuine contributors and stars. Some even show real NFL potential.
Then in swoops a more monied program, often from one of the Power 4 conferences. And your players are offered more money than you can possibly provide them if they transfer. Significant enough sums that in many cases your player(s) are hard pressed to refuse.
By rule, that set of events is not supposed to happen.
If players have not entered their names into the NCAA transfer portal, opposing programs are — again, by rule — not supposed to contact them and offer incentives of any kind. Either themselves or through a third party.
That isn’t the current landscape of college football, though.
Just last week, Utah State head coach Bronco Mendenhall said, Aggie football players were offered money to enter the transfer portal and leave USU when the spring window rolls around on April 16.
“There is no portal window open, there is no anything. And third parties are being contacted to reach out to players and money is being offered,” Mendenhall said. “And it is really year-round at this point.”
Mendenhall — and he believes most college football coaches, really — despises the way things currently function. In his eyes, the prevalence of tampering is a real failing on the part of college football coaches and other leaders across the sport.
“If grown men leading programs won’t play by the rules, than what an indictment against the world of leadership in sport,” he said.
Enforcement of the rules that prevent tampering is next to impossible, Mendenhall added.
“I don’t think there is an enforcement staff that can pull it off,” he said. “I don’t think there is a governing body currently that can pull it off. The guidelines and the rules have to simply be more powerfully designed to where it can be governed. But it is clearly not. And I am not sure you could find a head coach at any level that says that it is being governed well.”
Mendenhall has to do his best to mitigate tampering, though.
His job and the success of Utah State football in the coming years depends on it.
“We are really having to make choices now as leaders and how we run our programs to really protect our players as best as possible,” he said.
What is Utah State’s NIL situation?
Before getting into anything Mendenhall is planning to do to combat tampering/Utah State losing valuable players, the reality is that players want to be paid.
As Mendenhall put it, there used to be scholarship athletes and walk-ons.
Now, if you don’t offer money on top of a scholarship, players view that the same as being asked to walk-on at a program. Money on top of a scholarship is what players want.
That reality necessitates that every program have a viable collective that can pay its players. It is a must in 2025, even with revenue sharing coming in the near future.
The Blue A Collective is the collective affiliated with Utah State and though it has grown in the wake of Mendenhall’s hire, it still has a long way to go, he said.
“We are at the very beginning, in an infancy stage of where we need to be,” Mendenhall said. “There is momentum being generated, there is education happening. But we are still significantly behind. Not only where I just came from (New Mexico), but where we need to be.”
It isn’t all doom and gloom, though.
A new tiered membership model was announced late last month, and with each “increasing level of investment” USU supporters are rewarded with more and more perks, including “unique experiences and opportunities to connect with Aggie student-athletes and coaches that are only made possible as members of the collective.”
“A strong NIL program is critical to our vision for Utah State Athletics,” Utah State athletic director Diana Sabau said in a statement. “No matter where Aggie fans live or the amount of their giving, participation is what matters most. The enhanced membership options through the Blue A Collective provide a simple way for our most dedicated fans to have access to exclusive experiences and benefits for supporting the programs they are passionate about.”
Mendenhall is optimistic that things are moving in the right direction for the collective. Even though realistically he believes it has a long way to go.
“I am excited about the trajectory, I am encouraged by the momentum, I see the results coming. It is going to have to be a significant effort on my part. And the education and the magnitude of what we will have to have happen for Utah State to remain relevant with the ability to have a roster that is needed year in and year out. And so we are behind. But where we are headed, with urgency speed and trajectory I am encouraged about.”
Balancing fan engagement while protecting the roster
Since Utah State is not currently in the position to really out-bid tamperers for its own players — realistically the Aggies will never have the funds of SEC or Big Ten programs, to say nothing of many ACC and Big 12 programs — it falls on Mendenhall to try and limit the availability of his players as best he can. While balancing the need to generate excitement for his program and connect with the Utah State fanbase.
To that point, Mendenhall is seriously considering eliminating the showcase scrimmage — the Blue and White Game — that traditionally puts a bow on spring camp.
As he sees it, the scrimmage allows opponents, any program really, to get eyes on his players. Which only increases the odds of them being tampered with and enticed to leave Utah State.
“Am I concerned about having an open scrimmage (in the spring) for opponents to show up or the national landscape to send personnel here to watch that and then simply buy our players? Certainly,” he said. “I’ll consider what our spring practice will look like, in terms of a spring game.
“I’d love to generate momentum and excitement for Utah State football. To connect with the community. I might move that to the fall, right before the season starts — something like that where the roster can be solidified without the risks that we are talking about. Because I would love for our fans and for those who support our program to see our team. But I have to manage that in the context of what is best for the program. With a spring (transfer portal) window."
Mendenhall’s New Mexico program experienced significant attrition during the spring portal window last season, which led to him needed to replace 17 scholarship players.
He doesn’t want to deal with that again, in his first year leading Utah State.
“There really is nothing preventing anyone that is looking for players or has an interest in one of our players to show up to the spring game, assess them in real-time, with their eyes on the them, and then here is the window and offer them and try to have them leave for their program,” he said. “It is a concern. Yes, we will address it. How I’m not quite sure yet. But I will do so in the way that is best for our team, best for our community and best for our fans.”
Mendenhall is hopeful, though, that Utah State fans will understand that whatever changes he makes are made with the program’s best interests at heart. Even if that means limiting — in the spring especially — the opportunity to see his players.
“I think, man, once our folks, the supporters of our program understand why, they will support that,” he said. “And I will do the best that I can, probably in the fall as we get ready to play, of maybe staging something else similar that allows to connect.”
