Colorado Saudi NIL story takes wild turns

There are many strange stories around the Colorado Buffaloes at the moment, but the oddest one from a media perspective may involve a staffer who no longer works there. That would be Trevor Reilly, the former special teams coordinator, who resigned from that position Aug. 1.

Since then, Front Office Sports, Extra Points, and the FanNation site Colorado on SI have dug up remarkable things about Reilly’s exit. Those include his self-funded trip to the Middle East to try and get NIL funding from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and more and the video of his parking-lot fight with current graduate assistant and former CU player Josh Jynes when he tried to retrieve his stuff following his resignation. Here’s that video, via FOS’ A.J. Perez, tied to the piece on this from him and colleague Jill Painter Lopez:

Interestingly, as the new piece on this from FOS’ Perez and Painter Lopez notes , the parking-lot fight wasn’t really tied into the attempts to gain Middle Eastern NIL funding. It was about Reilly trying to retrieve the electric bikes he and his family used and other belongings after his Aug. 1 resignation, and about Jynes denying him access and refusing to get them for him, with Jynes being the one who started the physical conflict.

And, as per Reilly’s comments in that piece, his resignation was more about Colorado suddenly deciding to revoke football facility access for his children (aged 9, 11, and 13) unless they were supervised. He told Painter Lopez (who flew to Hawaii, where he lives now, to interview him) he was upset his work on possible NIL deals didn’t pan out, but more annoyed about the move around his children. “The final straw for me was the kids. That pissed me off.”

But the Middle Eastern money, and especially the attempts to gain that from the highly-controversial Saudi Public Investment Fund (backers of LIV Golf , Newcastle United , boxing , the UFC , WWE , tennis , Uber, and more ) is what makes this a wider story. And all of the above sites have done great reporting digging into this.

Jeff Hauser and Jason Jones of the Colorado on SI FanNation site started the ball rolling last month by publishing comments from Reilly on his outreach to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries (with supporting documents). FOS’ Perez then built on that with the athletic department’s distancing of itself from Reilly’s outreach to the Middle East, with comments like “he acted on his own accord.” And Extra Points’ Matt Brown then FOIAed the email correspondence from Reilly to ask@visitsaudi.com, producing quite the receipt (which Brown fully discusses in a piece here ; that also includes Reilly’s pitch deck, which Perez has since uploaded here ):

Yes, that reads like one of the scammy emails that daily clog up all of our inboxes. But this one stands out thanks to it being an official university employee using his official email account to pitch the Saudis on sponsoring Colorado football players. And that pitch deck sure makes Reilly look official, including with his ask for $10 million. Here are the first two and last two of the nine slides from it :

And there’s more to that when it comes to Reilly’s in-person visits to the Middle East, as he detailed to FOS’ Painter Lopez:

A Colorado athletics department spokesperson says Reilly “acted on his own accord.” Reilly reiterated he funded the trip himself.

Why did he pay for his own travel to Jordan, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia?

“I’m betting on myself,” Reilly says, adding his aim was to “get more money so we can get better players. That’s it. More money, better players. What else is there? We had no NIL money when we came there [before the 2022 season].”

…Reilly’s pitch didn’t get any bites in Jordan. He spent about five days there, bought a thawb (a long-sleeved, ankle-length, traditional robe) and worked on his manners. When he got to Saudi Arabia, he walked around a government complex all day asking to meet people, and eventually got a meeting with PIF officials.

FOS has reviewed an email from a PIF executive dated Dec. 28, 2023, that confirmed the meeting.

…“I said, ‘Let’s get together a formal proposal.’ This is totally rough. Here is me showing up here and trying to make some s*** happen. And they understood it. They were like, ‘Yeah, let’s go,’” Reilly says.

None of this seems to have actually led to much. Here’s what that piece adds on the reception he got after his return, and how he told athletic department officials he didn’t commit Sanders to anything:

Once he got back to Colorado in January, he talked to some coaches—not Sanders—and athletic department officials about his trip, and that’s when “things got weird,” he says.

“I didn’t say Deion was going to do this, but I did say that he might be open to a conversation,” Reilly said. “So that’s something that I told them. I said, before we even go down any road with the collective, you guys need to decide if you want [the] Deion Sanders brand to be involved with that.”

And that FOS piece adds that this idea hit further problems after Blueprint Sports (which represents 27 colleges overall, including UCLA and Penn State) took over administration of the 5430 Foundation in March. They specifically distanced themselves from Reilly’s outreach to the Middle East in statements to FOS. And that’s also understandable; Saudi investment in anything will draw criticism and blowback, as we’ve seen with both Newcastle United and LIV Golf, and investing in a U.S. university athletics program would raise a whole new list of hurdles. So this may never have been much more than a longshot Reilly thought up, and the Saudis agreeing to take a meeting because he showed up on their doorstep.

But the real takeaway from this whole situation may be about the value of reporting, and the value of investing in reporting from outlets beyond the usual Worldwide Leaders . This story has seen several key parts emerge from different players, from the Colorado on SI team getting Reilly’s initial comments to Brown and Extra Points FOIAing the emails and pitch decks to FOS getting the initial university response and the eventual fight video, and also sending Painter Lopez to Hawaii (not an inexpensive proposition!) to get in-person comments from Reilly (who was likely much more open in that setting than he would have been in a phone or virtual video interview).

A conjunction of smaller outlets led the way on a fascinating story here. And even if Reilly’s outreach to the Middle East didn’t lead to anything in particular, it’s notable to hear about how he felt empowered to do that as a Colorado special teams coordinator. And it’s interesting that even after his resignation, he still thinks Buffaloes’ head coach Deion Sanders isn’t getting what he should in terms of NIL support. There, he told Painter Lopez “I think Deion’s getting f***ed. We’re asking him to do all this stuff and make all these miracles, and he only has $6 million [for NIL]. He brought it to the table, not them. There was no donor, there was donor fatigue. He shows up, they get this money.”

There may or may not be further discussions of Middle Eastern investment in universities’ NIL funds down the road. If that does happen, it’s going to come with a lot of scrutiny and conversation. But even though this attempt from Reilly may have been “on his own accord,” and may not have been highly likely to lead to something substantial, it’s notable that he does not appear to have received any formal discipline for this, that the pushback was rather limited until Blueprint Sports got involved, and that he himself cited the changes to access for his children as his reason for resigning, not the collapse of this NIL deal. And this reporting was key to illuminating those dimensions, and may be valuable if and when anything further comes up in a similar vein.

[ Front Office Sports ]

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