donors but also getting institutional alignment with just how BYU wants to do NIL. President Reese’s influence over the past year is probably a big part of that alignment finally clicking into place.

I think that things started to coalesce at the same time the basketball season took off, and then the excitement around KY’s hiring probably put gasoline on the fire in regards to donors.

I think it’s also possible that some big money donors didn’t like the way Pope left BYU and are are possibly taking NIL more personally than they have in the past.

And I think the football team is having similar success with NIL, which is proven by the relative lack of roster turnover into the transfer portal and by the strong recruiting class in December. I don’t think either of those things happen without NIL becoming competitive for football too. You probably don’t hear about it because there are more 8x as many football players and so the deals are probably smaller on average, but the football team is getting paid too or they’d be hitting the portal in droves like everybody else.

The big question is whether the football program will be able to go out and offer a top shelf QB prospect, for example, the same type of NIL deal that Egor Demin just got. If so then football recruiting will probably find another gear also.