AD Rick George addressed talk that 'We didn't have a great collective'

The Buffs4Life NIL Collective launched in October 2022 as the first collective to support athletes at Colorado. The university hired Deion Sanders from Jackson State less than two months later. Recalling his first phone call with Sanders, Colorado athletic director Rick George said he was blunt about Colorado’s position in the landscape regarding the Transfer Portal and collectives.

“I talked very little to Coach through the process. We had a lengthy first phone call and really me just laying out what the opportunity was,” George said on the Canzano and Wilner podcast. “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.’

“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.”

NIL collectives can now play a significant role in the coaching carousel.

“When you can sign good players because you can pay them through NIL, you have a chance to be a whole lot better coach,” a Power 5 assistant coach who was previously a head coach told On3’s Jeremy Crabtree last fall on the condition of anonymity.

Colorado’s fan and donor base was among the last in the Power 5 to establish a collective. The Buffs4Life Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization that provides financial assistance and mental health resources for former Colorado athletes, announced the creation of the Buffs4Life NIL Collective.

Buffs4Life NIL Collective launched in October

In exchange for Colorado’s men’s basketball team participating in the 2023 Sunshine Slam next fall, the sports and entertainment firm Gazelle Group has agreed to contribute $5,000 to a collective aligned with Colorado.

Regarding the Buffs4Life NIL Collective, Colorado Director of Player Development Zach Ruebesam said last fall, “Likely that will be the one it goes to.”

As the first, and for now only, collective at Colorado, it will likely serve as the preferred collective in the school’s ecosystem.

George said he and Sanders had a lengthy first meeting.

“It was really me mostly laying out that we’ve got great facilities,” George said on the podcast. “We’re in a great conference. Academically we’re sound. We live in this incredible place. We’ve got great programs for our student-athletes and then here’s the couple things that are negative that we need to focus on and fix, and we’ve done that.”

During Sanders’ first team meeting with Colorado’s players, which his son Bucky Sanders filmed, Sanders said, “I’m going to make y’all the most famous people walking this planet. But you gotta win.”

George said the number of social media followers of Colorado’s football program have more than doubled since Sanders was hired.

“I said we need a leader that’s gonna come in here and gonna do his thing and get a staff that’s great and can recruit and understand the landscape of college athletics,” George said. “With the NIL and Transfer Portal changing all at the same time, you have to be on top of that and I felt like he and the staff that he was going to bring in would do that.”