Record $4 million UW athletics deal hits as Trump orders NCAA overhaul

The University of Wyoming Athletics announced Monday the largest corporate investment in program history — a five-year, multimillion-dollar jersey patch partnership with Tallgrass, a Colorado-based energy infrastructure company that operates thousands of miles of pipelines across Wyoming. The deal, facilitated by Learfield’s Wyoming Sports Properties, places the Tallgrass logo on football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball jerseys.

“This is the largest corporate investment in Wyoming athletics history,” Rob DeSoto, general manager of Wyoming Sports Properties, told Cowboy State Daily. “Over the five-year window, it’s over $4 million invested to Wyoming athletics.” DeSoto said the partnership reflects a shift in how corporate sponsors approach college sports in the revenue-sharing era. Director of Athletics Tom Burman said in a statement the commitment “will have an immediate impact on our ability to recruit and retain our best and brightest.”

The UW-Tallgrass announcement arrived three days after President Trump signed a sweeping executive order titled “Urgent National Action to Save College Sports,” using the federal government’s contracting and grant authority to pressure universities into compliance with NCAA rules. The order cites a financial crisis driven by football and basketball spending, with one major athletics program closing fiscal year 2025 with $535 million in athletics-related debt and another carrying $437 million.

Among the order’s most significant provisions is a call to reinstate a version of the one-time transfer rule, under which athletes would be allowed one transfer with immediate eligibility during a five-year window. The order also directs the NCAA to cap eligibility at five years and to bar professional athletes from returning to college competition. Under the order, any payment to a student-athlete that exceeds what the athlete’s name, image and likeness would command on the open market would be classified as a “fraudulent NIL scheme.”

At a March 26 Board of Trustees meeting, football coach Jay Sawvel told the board UW’s football program funded its roster last fall on roughly $700,000 and has since grown that to about $2 million, but said it is not enough to compete for conference titles. “When you’re looking at where we will need to be to be a championship program in the new Mountain West, truthfully, it’s going to be at $5 million,” Sawvel said. “That’s where our top-of-the-line competitors will be.”

When Trustee John McKinley asked Burman for a total across all five revenue-sharing sports — football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball, and wrestling — Burman put the number at $8 million. “I think you have to be at $5 million in football quickly. I think you have to be at $2 million in men’s basketball quickly. And the rest — you wouldn’t add up to a million bucks. So $8 million quickly,” Burman said.

DeSoto said the executive order addresses a problem the industry recognizes. “Right now, we live in the Wild West, and we say that regularly — not just because we live in Wyoming, but because that is what college athletics is,” DeSoto said. “It is the Wild West when it comes to rev share and NIL.” He said the order’s transfer restrictions and eligibility caps, if implemented, would help conferences like the Mountain West reach competitive balance. “Investments like this from businesses allow our coaching staff and athletics department to go and say, ‘Hey, here’s how we can go help you retain these student athletes,'” DeSoto said. “They’re helping us add dollars to that bucket of revshare that allows us to compete with bigger schools.”