Players promoted protein bars, NFTs and other products after being told they’d receive a percentage of the sales, but they haven’t seen that money.
If the NIL landscape at BYU seems messy and tilting toward chaos, it can sometimes be. On multiple occasions over the past two years, companies have brought promising promotions to BYU only to falter at the goal line. But the confusion isn’t limited to Provo. The lack of transparency around deals — some tipping into millions of dollars, others as small as a few hundred — has become so commonplace that the NCAA has called upon Congress to add some guardrails.
There are players who have been well compensated in the two years since NIL money started flowing into college sports. The Cougars’ top players last year — includingand wide receiver Puka Nacua — made five- and six-figure sums thanks to individual deals. Mountain America Credit Union paid Nacua $40,000 last year, sources said.
The BYU football players who spoke to the Tribune expressed frustration with a number of corporate sponsorships they say failed to pay them what they were promised. “It felt like BYU was telling us what we wanted to hear to keep us happy, but it never actually happened,” one player said. “People would present and say it was ‘life-changing money.’ Then nothing.”, a top quarterback prospect, has become the posterboy for NIL deals gone wrong. In January he asked to be released from his commitment to the University of Florida after, according to media reports, an NIL deal with a third party went south. The deal’s reported value? $13 million.
Former Florida football star and NFL tight end Trey Burton also took issue with the inconsistency among states, schools and potential sponsors in his statement to the committee. Built has contributed more than $1 million to BYU football via NIL, the company said, including $170,000 paid to scholarship players.