Inside a Colorado Assistant’s Crusade for Saudi Money

By Kyle Golik

It just seems assistant football coaches over the last few seasons across the country have found ways to become motivated. Look at the slew of issues that occurred at Michigan, the Connor Stalions Netflix documentary alone blows my mind. If you are waiting for that “hold your beer” moment, I am about to lay on you what the good folks at Colorado For SI, Extra Points, and Front Office Sports have dug up on former Colorado assistant Trevor Reilly .

Let’s begin by asking: who is Trevor Reilly?

Reilly was your typical special teams grinder who bounced from NFL team for about five seasons with stints with the New England Patriots, New York Jets, and Miami Dolphins. Reilly was an All-Pac-12 linebacker for Utah back in 2013.

Reilly got his start in coaching with Deion Sanders at Jackson State as a graduate assistant in 2021 and moved with Sanders to Colorado in 2023. Reilly served as a special teams analyst for Colorado.

In August 2024, Reilly abruptly resigned.

Part of the reason Reilly resigned was his growing frustration over Colorado’s lack of NIL resources. Reilly, who is a driven person, decided to take matters into his own hands - something unfortunately we have seen other assistants do across the country.

When Reilly saw the money pouring into professional sports from Saudi Arabia with LIV/PGA tours, WWE, UFC, and other ventures, a light went off in Reilly’s head.

“I’m betting on myself,” Reilly says, adding his goal 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.”

Reilly expressed his feelings about Colorado having no money in a direct manner, “I think Deion’s getting f*cked,” Reilly says. “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.”

In Reilly’s pitch that Extra Points published , Reilly was seeking a $10 million investment and on Christmas 2023, Reilly’s email to ask@visitsaudi.com, Reilly states in the email, “I represent the interest of Coach Prime and Colorado.”

I am willing to bet Reilly missed that speech after practice one day where coach Sanders went, “Now men, we got fresh towels and gear see the equipment manager and oh yes, if one day you are fundraising for universities and reach out to sovereign wealth funds you will have legal issues not only with the NCAA but also under U.S. law.”

The coup de grace, Reilly felt empowered to travel to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and did it during Christmas. Now let’s chew on this, if you are reading this and you got a significant other and you go, “you know what, I'm going to leave you for Christmas to go to the Middle East and fundraise." I don’t think many significant others would be keen on the idea.

Needless to say, when Reilly returned and shared about his Christmas adventures, the university wasn’t thrilled about Reilly’s sudden ambition to raise NIL funds. “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.”

At this point, the university wisely began to distance themselves from Reilly and even the NIL trust 5430 Alliance came out and said Reilly didn’t have authorization to do this.

Needless to say, Reilly had his Cameron Frye moment from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. When Frye kicked his dad’s 1961 Ferrari GT enough that it skidded off the jack and plummeted to the classic car’s untimely death, Frye felt empowered that he was going to take a stand against his father. As asinine as that was, and if you think Hollywood just makes things up crazily like this, this is a new low of idiocy as Reilly demanded Colorado up its NIL money.

Right now, Colorado is realizing this rogue character had to go and leveraged smartly against Reilly that his kids no longer had access to facilities without adult supervision during their entire duration of using the facilities. That apparently was the trigger to end it abruptly for Reilly as he put it, “The final straw for me was the kids, that pissed me off.”

If that wasn’t enough for Reilly, after his resignation when he returned to the facility to grab some belongings. When a current assistant, Josh Jynes , restricted Reilly’s ability to get things and is accused of calling Reilly a “coward,” knowing how our Middle East voyager thinks about taking matters into his own hands, it was a brawl for all outside Colorado’s facilities.

The good news is Reilly and Jynes made amends about their fight but a variety of larger problems persists in college football. The amount of NIL money is not equal, if Colorado was budgeting $8 million for this year and Ohio State has said it takes around $20 million to keep its roster intact, how is it fair?

The win at all costs nature and behaviors from rogue assistants of late have gone extreme. It used to be that $100 handshakes were taboo in nature, now we have elaborate sign stealing, unauthorized access to files, and coaches going to the Middle East. In some ways, I agree with Reilly that Sanders is getting screwed at Colorado over NIL, but it wasn’t his place to interject himself to go about this. What will the college football landscape do to curb this extreme behavior and simply legislate a level playing field for all? And can it even be done?