Thoughts on NIL from a BYU fan (I come in peace)

Those are very interesting points.

It is the rivalry. Fans of each school will question and probably hate anything that gives the rival school a real or perceived advantage. There are probably Utah fans who hate the Utah Hockey Club only because Ryan Smith owns it and brought it to Utah. I am a big fan of the Utah Hockey Club!

This season is a reminder to me that watching sports is a roller coaster ride. Enjoy it when your team is playing great and hope the down times end quickly.

To BYU fans, I say “Enjoy the ride!” It won’t last forever as we Utah fans know.

As a Utah fan I can comfortably say that “annoyed” translates to jealous 99% of the time in this situation. Hopefully our basketball team will be a surprise. But in a good way. Unlike football. 😂

Thanks for coming over .. NIL imo is a big reason we’re failing this year ; entitled kids .. like anything else. Take the NBA for example the minute you pay a big contract to any player their production goes down .. in the past these kids were playing to get drafted into the NFL, so you were getting the best out of them . Now you’re paying a 18 year old kid a million + straight out of high school , unproven, immature, and as a coach you have to balance giving him the playing time that he’s doesn’t deserve yet you’ve paid top dollar for. Takes a different type of coach to figure that out

Are Ute Fans really that bent on the Smith’s and BYU NIL? Or is it just what Twitter Ute fans are reacting to? I honestly don’t hear much from Ute fans outside of Twitter on the issue and Twitter Ute fans are both an extremely small percentage of us and they are the worst fans of any fans of any team any where.

Smith can do what he wants, its just us taking pot shots at your program. However, I do feel p**sed that the owner of three local professional franchises supports your team and not ours. It does make me like the Jazz, UHC and Real less. If he would donate some (and maybe he does) to the Utes it would make me swallow my disgust for his blue passion and support those teams full heartedly. Garff’s do some sponsoring of BYU. I see it as smart business, keep both fanbases happy that you are spreading the love.
Also, I had a random thought the other day, specifically regarding this NBA prospect the Jazz are hoping to get next year. Could Ryan Smith be torn between offering him NIL money to transfer to bYu next season instead of entering the draft? Lets say the Jazz don’t get the 1st pick. Could Smith, offer him 20million to come play for byU instead of going pro and entering the Nba draft the next season when the Jazz have the 1st pick? I see it as a potential parking space for Smith and a slight conflict of interest as unlikely as it is to happen.

NIL is an issue for all teams, but I believe some teams are more equipped than others to handle poorly appropriated NIL money, (i.e. players that were promised big $ but don’t pan out). I honestly don’t think it can go on much longer the way it is currently constructed. I would also venture a guess that half of the BIG and SEC cannot continue to function in this environment.

You bring up some interesting points.

First of all, I try to tell myself that in life, things are never as good or as bad as they seem. However, right now, I’m pretty discouraged about my beloved Utes. We are going to finish in last place in both football and basketball. Things really seem to be hitting us pretty hard the last few years. I don’t know if this is Harlan’s fault, Whit’s fault, Coach K’s fault, or something completely beyond our control. But this is definitely a low point in Utah athletics, imo. Have you been to a basketball game? It’s beyond sad that we only get about 3500 fans out to a place that used to be one of the toughest places to play in the entire country.

On the flip side, BYU has so many built in advantages with so many millionaire donors that are willing to donate to BYU that it has completely ruined my outlook on the Utes going forward. I have completely stopped listening to sports radio, reading blogs, or even watching ESPN. The thought that Ryan Smith (and several others) can just buy any player they want and can, in turn, buy BYU a championship, just seems so wrong to me. I also don’t like Phil Knight being able to do the same thing with Oregon. Maybe I’m just being naive and you bring up a lot of good points that maybe Utah has had some pretty big advantages over BYU for 15+ years and maybe this is just the universe balancing things out a little bit. I don’t know. I just know that I sold my tickets to the BYU game and I am going to miss a Utah game for the first time in over 35 years. I’ve never seen Utah look this bad in football since the Jim Fassel years.

Maybe I’m overreacting but things are really bad right now for Utah. We can’t get a first down to save our lives and I doubt the basketball team wins more than 2 or 3 conference games. How a once proud university could have fallen so far, so fast is beyond me.

I really liked your post and you seem like a decent guy, but I think you’re underestimating how much money is being poured in to BYU right now. And at the same time, how little money is coming in at Utah. Very few universities have the alumni that can compete with Ryan Smith. I heard a stat that Utah’s total NIL for basketball is $1.5 million. That’s for the entire team. If the rumors are true, Ryan is going to pay >$4 million just for one recruit next year! Ryan Smith will cause irrevocable damage to amateur sports that this probably will be the end of college football and basketball as we know it.

For this reason, I’ve completely ignored the Utah hockey club and Jazz this year. I used to watch every Jazz game I could and would rarely miss a game. All that is different now. I can’t, in good conscience, support the Jazz if the money is just going to get funneled into BYU. I’m LDS. It has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with why I loved college sports to begin with. I hate that scumbags like Ryan Smith can just buy their way to a championship. It just doesn’t seem right.

The last thing I want to bring up is I wish someone at a reputable local news source would do an deep dive into our NIL situation and how the local teams are doing compared to other universities. It seems that no one wants to talk about it. I know a few former athletes and all of them HATE Harlan with a passion. I would love to see Harlan’s opinion on NIL and what he’s doing to keep Utah relevant. All I know is Chris Hill took a midlevel WAC / MWC team in the 1980s and turned into back to back PAC12 champions. Since Harlan has been here, Utah has fallen to the bottom of the conference in both sports, and our rival is spending millions of dollars more than us every year.

I’m sorry to be such a downer. Maybe Scalley will clean house and bring in enough firepower next year so that we can try to compete and maybe even score a couple of touchdowns against the mighty, mighty University of Houston or University of Arizona. But I’m not holding my breath.

Utah has old money that they have to beg for.

BYU has a new money donor that has openly said the Athletic program will want for nothing financially.

If Smith runs the Cougs the way he’s run the Jazz so far I’m not worried.

BYU fan, I can sympathize and agree with your view point for the most part. However, the only thing I found hypocritical was when the Utah state legislature comprised of some BYU alum occupying legislature seats launched an audit a few years ago on Utah’s NIL program obvious to the fanbase and to local and national media that tracked the story and knew what it was truly about. While they do have a responsibility as government officials for a checks and balances, the timing and manner of the audit for the most part was Utah public universities, specifically Utah, as NIL was growing in popularity. Now that BYU has some Big12 money rolling their way and a billionaire donor to support both basketball and football, regardless of their “private” school status, should BYU get audited the way Utah was to hold BYU accountable for how they’re using their NIL program? Just saying.

You bring up some great points byufan. I wish we had a sugar daddy to bring the BB program back to life. Before BYU was winning and we were losing cougarboard went after the Garffs saying boycott their dealerships.

It’s funny both fan bases complain about any advantage the other has and condemns it until they start winning then it’s ok. Ryan Smith can do anything he wants with his money. I quit watching the Jazz because of the bad product and the NBA new style of play.

Congrats on a great year in FB and I hope we can bring you back to earth Nov. 9.

I’ll just post something similar to what I did in the other thread discussing it. Let me preface this by saying I’m not LDS.

I think BYU is playing by the rules that have been laid out by the NCAA. You have no arguments from me there. I wish we had a Ryan Smith bankrolling a lot of these big dollar moves, or a Phil Knight.

The issue here…. I’m trying to take my bias as much as I can out of the conversation. So I would argue that BYU is a representation of the LDS Faith. I don’t think there’s an argument they aren’t. Now, here’s where it gets a little morally questionable if you’re a religious institution. Whether it’s the institution itself or boosters, it’s not a great look going out and potentially paying any player millions of dollars just to play for your university. In the grand scheme of things, sports should be almost a complete afterthought for a religious institution. When you’re talking about paying a basketball player potentially 4.5 million dollars even as a booster, an outside observer might say cynically, it’s good that they have their priorities straight with everything happening in the world currently…. Even if it’s not BYU paying the player, you can see how that would cast the religion in a bad light. Especially when at the end of the day, basketball, football, or any other sport are just silly games when compared to the actual religion’s stated purpose. So even if they believe it’s good that their sports spread the faith and or awareness of the faith, there’s going to be some negativity around spreading that too if that kind of money is being spent on sports and not actual charitable ventures. Somebody like Smith or a BYU fan might argue I can do both…. To some extent, sure. You’re still giving a basketball player 4.5 million that you could’ve added to a charitable donation total. It’s really just a bad look.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

I agree with this thought- you can do whatever you want with your money, but there are consequences- people will be turned off by the spending and high level spending that seems to be moving forward at byu- I’m a L.ds, and know many non LDS who are turned off by the amount of money that is spent on the temples. You can try to explain what they mean, what winning and exposure means, but it can always be argued ya but what else could you do with that money. Would Jesus pay someone 4 million dollars to put a ball in a hoop? Just a thought.

Will be interesting to see how the high-profile well-paid athletes playing in the Marriot Center perform. On paper they look so strong, but can the newcomers all play together as the best team?

Utah’s (and BYU’s) greatest teams making deep runs in March over the years were groups of players who had many years together. But it is a whole new situation nowadays.