Colorado players support Buffs4Life NIL Collective at BOLDERBoulder

Colorado running back Anthony Hankerson, offensive lineman Van Wells and tight end Caleb Fauria attended the BOLDERBoulder 10K, where they used their name, image and likeness rights on Memorial Day to sign autographs and promote the Buffs4Life NIL Collective. BOLDERBoulder’s website says Runner’s World has called the race “America’s All-Time Best 10K.”

The finish line for the race is inside Colorado’s Folsom Field. Race organizers estimated 34,000 entrants participated in the race in 2022, along with 100,000 spectators.

Buffs4Life NIL Collective’s Twitter account shared a video of the three players sitting at a booth Monday morning, where they signed autographs for runners. The table featured a flyer with a QR code and the all-caps message “Donate Now.” Hankerson and Wells wore Colorado shirts and Fauria wore a Buffs4Life T-shirt.

Last season, Hankerson finished third on the team with 274 rushing yards. He had a team-high three rushing touchdowns. Fauria had three receptions for 23 yards on the season.

The Buffs4Life NIL Collective hosted its first event in January, when at least nine Colorado football players attended a dinner at the Italian restaurant Carelli’s of Boulder prior to a Colorado men’s basketball home game. Hankerson and Wells also attended that event.

Buffs4Life Foundation creates Buffs4Life NIL Collective

The origins of the Buffs4Life NIL Collective are slightly different than many NIL collectives. Buffs4Life Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that describes its mission as providing “a support system that provides financial assistance, mental health resources, and community to former CU Boulder student-athletes in need.”

The Buffs4Life NIL Collective is an expansion of the preexisting resources and support the organization offers. Donations to the Buffs4Life NIL Collective are tax deductible because of Buffs4Life Foundation’s 501(c)(3) status. Buffs4Life Foundation notes, however, that 15% of every donation to the Buffs4Life NIL Collective goes to the Buffs4Life Foundation “while the rest goes directly towards compensating student-athletes for their name, image and likeness.”

Buffs4Life Foundation announced the creation of the Buffs4Life NIL Collective in late October 2022, which was later the many NIL collectives nationally. When Colorado athletic director Rick George appeared on the podcast “Canzano and Wilner” in January, he described his first phone call with Deion Sanders, whom he later hired as the university’s football coach.

“At that point I didn’t know if he was interested or not but I was very candid about where we were at with some of the stuff out there about not being able to get transfers in and you know, ‘we didn’t have a great collective,'” George said. “And so, you know, you’ve got to talk about the good and the bad, and I think it’s important that you lay that out because you don’t want him to come in without knowing the total scope of this.”

There appears to be some degree of alignment between the collective and the university.

Last fall, a member of the Colorado men’s basketball program identified the collective as the likely recipient of a $5,000 contribution the sports and entertainment marketing firm Gazelle Group, Inc., agreed to pay to a Colorado-affiliated NIL collective as part of the Buffaloes’ participation in the 2023 Sunshine Slam.

Colorado football roster amid significant turnover

Colorado hired Sanders last December following a three-year tenure at Jackson State, where he achieved a 27-6 overall record and back-to-back undefeated regular-season conference records.

When Sanders met his new team in Boulder, he told them, “I’m going to make y’all the most famous people walking this planet. But you gotta win.”

One of Sanders’s sons, Deion “Bucky” Sanders Jr., filmed the meeting and uploaded the video to his YouTube channel, Well Off Media.

This offseason, Colorado’s roster has experienced potentially unprecedented turnover relative to the modern era of the sport. On3’s Transfer Portal Index ranks Colorado second nationally with an Index Score of 65, behind only Louisville.

Fifty-seven players have transferred from Colorado and 48 have transferred to Boulder, including five former four-star recruits and former five-star recruit Travis Hunter, who followed Sanders from Jackson State. Colorado finished with a 1-11 record last season.

The players from Colorado who have entered the transfer portal this offseason include wide receivers Montana Lemonious-Craig and Jordyn Tyson, and cornerback Nikko Reed, each of whom attended the Buffs4Life NIL Collective’s first event in January. They’ve since committed to competing Pac-12 schools – Arizona, Arizona State and Oregon, respectively.