Report: Former Colorado assistant sought NIL funding from Saudi Arabia in unprecedented partnership

College football’s current direction with the expansion of NIL and the growing financial burden it places on programs to try to keep up has led some to seek creative solutions to the problem. Colorado might well be at the forefront of that.

According to some investigative reporting by Sports Illustrated, Deion Sanders and his Buffaloes staff made overtures to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) with some personal lobbying.

Former assistant coach Trevor Reilly, who resigned on Aug. 1, went on record about trying to secure funding for Colorado’s NIL collective.

In a resignation letter obtained by Sports Illustrated, he provided some insight.

“You paid me $90,000 a year and let me handle special teams. I did all this work in your name and was told to pursue it,” Reilly wrote. “I burned through all my contacts in my Mormon community, which is worth about $3 trillion. Now, I can’t get these people to answer my calls because I just found out today that none of my endeavors will happen.

“I even went to Saudi Arabia and got a meeting with the Saudis, who were interested in pursuing business. I have email receipts to prove it, and you guys let it fall flat on its face.”

Reilly had previously served as Colorado’s special teams coordinator. According to Sports Illustrated, he said that he acted on his own accord in seeking funding from the Saudis. Colorado athletics did not comment on Reilly’s trip to the Middle East, per SI.

Colorado has been open about its efforts to bolster NIL, though Deion Sanders himself wants to make sure the focus stays on the field, too.

“There’s kids nowadays that want to play for money and there’s kids, they want to get paid, but their heart is to one day be out here,” Sanders said on an Amazon Prime Thursday Night Football pregame show on Nov. 30. “You know that ‘Why?’ You understand that, ‘Why?’ All of us sitting up here right now, we had a ‘Why?’ And I want the ‘Why?’ not to just be about a bag. Let’s be about getting to the NFL, not the NIL.

“But the NIL is tremendously important. The collectives are tremendously important. If you do a search on the top-five schools right now in their budget, a recruiting budget or just a budget for football, it’s unbelievable and it topples ours. We’ve got to have finances to compete, as well.”