LARAMIE – Wyoming coaches are leading the Pokes into the new era of revenue sharing with the goal of competing for Mountain West championships.
 
Cowboy head football coach Jay Sawvel donated $125,000 of his salary to help retain key staff and players and acquire impact transfers for the 2026 season.
 
Recently, an anonymous donor matched Sawvel's donation and The Cowboy Joe Club has started the Step Forward campaign to raise an additional $250,000 before the conclusion of spring practice on April 25.
 
"I love this place. I love Wyoming. I want to see us succeed — and I want to see the entire university succeed," Sawvel said. "With what we have returning, and where we are positioned as a program, I felt we had an opportunity to take a meaningful step forward. Sometimes, that takes a little extra push."
 
UW men's basketball head coach Sundance Wicks is a member the Cowboy Joe Club's 7,220 Society – supporters that have pledged to donate $7,220 or more per year for five years – who donates at least $50,000 per year.
 
"We're going to give what we've got to give to make sure we have the best chance possible at success," Wicks said. "If everybody thought like that, then guess what? You would have a powerhouse. Not everybody thinks like that and that's OK. But the more people that do think like that, that care like that, I'm telling you what, man, that's the stuff that rallies universities, that rallies programs and all of a sudden now you're competing at the top of the league versus trying to survive."


 
Alumni, boosters and fans understandably have questions about revenue sharing, which stems from the House Settlement and allows NCAA member institutions to enter name, image and likeness agreements with student-athletes.
 
I caught up with Peter Prigge, the Senior Associate Athletic Director for Compliance/Olympic Sports, to help clarify the challenges the Athletic Department is facing in navigating this new era.
 
Thorburn: Can you explain what the House Settlement is and why Wyoming needed to opt in?
 
Prigge: The House Settlement is the combination of multiple lawsuits against the NCAA relating to things like NIL, backpay, cost of attendance dollars. All these lawsuits combined into one and it all came under (lead plaintiff) Grant House (v. NCAA) and the House Settlement as it is termed now. The three main parts that came out of it where backpay for former student-athletes, roster caps and roster management strategies with unlimited financial aid within those caps and the last one is specifically revenue sharing, which is the important one for us and allows institutions to share revenue to a capped number per the settlement of $20.5 million per year with whatever sports you deem appropriate.
 
Why this is important from the University of Wyoming standpoint is the House Settlement has moved the needle as far as what's next for college athletics. I think the best way to describe it is the train is leaving the station and if we're not on it, we're going to get left behind. It's part of the revenue sharing aspect, the facilities you offer, scholarships and the amount of scholarships and all that information. If we are not doing everything possible – offering a football player a scholarship alone today is not a thing. We will get zero recruits if that happens from a transfer portal perspective. So, we decided we need to be as aggressive as possible, especially moving into a new realm of the Mountain West where we can hope to sit atop that group from a revenue sharing standpoint and how we approach our student-athletes.
 
Thorburn: I think something people get confused with is the difference between name, image and likeness and revenue sharing because when these changes started the idea was for figures like Caitlin Clark to be able to do State Farm ads, which is true NIL. Now it's revenue sharing and not every athlete who is going to get revenue sharing has the fame to get true NIL. Can you explain the differences between NIL and revenue sharing?
 
Prigge: When NIL came out on July 21 of 2021, it was, hey, this is the new thing in college athletics and there's going to be great opportunities for student-athletes to make money towards selling products, endorsing businesses and things of that sort. It started off great. The gymnast from LSU, Livvy Dunne, jumps in, the Cavinder twins jump in, you have a couple quarterbacks that have good (deals). The concept of name, image and likeness stemmed from guys like Johnny Manziel and Tim Tebow, you're talking about the top 1% of college athletes that would have opportunities to do things with Gatorade – Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, those high-level student-athletes. Then it kind of pivoted to revenue sharing and basically NIL became a thing where boosters became involved and it was, 'Hey, I'll pay you $1 million to tweet once about my company.' Then there were discussions about market value and there were no regulations at that time as far as you can't tell the market what to set for somebody. When people said that it's unfair that Alabama is paying somebody $1 million for a social media post, Alabama is saying, 'You can't tell us what to do, it's a free market.' …
 
So, the concept of NIL still exists. The original framework it was set up with is entirely gone. Now revenue sharing is basically the term that is utilized under the House Settlement to allow us to pay student-athletes. The way that it happens for us specifically at Wyoming and at most institutions across the country is via NIL agreements. Now we're saying you don't need a third party to pay you NIL because we will do it in house. So all the things we used to do for free – we're going to put Student-Athlete A on a billboard to sale tickets in Casper or down in Denver or we're going to put a student-athlete on a radio hit or a radio show on Wednesday nights with Coach Sawvel, it used to be all for free, all promotional. Now essentially, we're paying for their name, image and likeness to do those things for us, to promote Wyoming Athletics, the Cowboy Joe Club, their respective sport under the guise of we're utilizing your NIL to support our programs. Revenue share is directly paying student-athletes now and NIL, while it still exists and there are some athletes still doing true NIL deals with Gatorade, with car dealerships, etcetera, the concept of NIL itself has very much gone to the wayside.
 
Thorburn: The One Wyoming Collective started to do those true NIL deals. It has been shuttered and the Cowboy Joe Club is where donated funds can lead to revenue sharing. (UW Athletics Director) Tom Burman has said that's better for Wyoming because the athletic department is good at raising money in house. Can you explain how that works if someone wants to get involved in revenue sharing through the Cowboy Joe Club?
 
Prigge: First a huge thank you to Mitch Edwards, specifically, and also Jason Tangeman, Steve Gosar, Jason Roesler. That crew came together when we needed them to step up (to form the One Wyoming collective) and help us with the NIL aspect. Big shout-out to those guys. It has now switched to in-house, and the collective is no longer operating. The in-house donations from a Cowboy Joe standpoint are helpful because they are a tax write off. What we saw was that most collectives across the country began to have issues from an IRS standpoint because all they were doing was accepting money and then giving out money. The IRS came back and said, hey, that's not a thing. So, donations to the Cowboy Joe Club are all tax exempt for our donors. They can make sport-specific donations that they want to for NIL-related purposes. If somebody said, hey, we think a quarterback is necessary or we need a point guard or to play off Sundance's recent comments in the media about we need a double-double big man and I'm willing to pay $500,000 for him, you could donate that directly to the Cowboy Joe Club because all of the private dollars that we are raising are creating a pool of revenue sharing dollars that allow us to enter revenue sharing agreements with our student-athletes to get them paid.
 
Thorburn: One concern fans may have is donating and then seeing a student-athlete leave. How do the revenue sharing agreements work between the student-athletes and the University?
 
Prigge: The way our agreements are set up at the University of Wyoming is we must be flexible. We're in Laramie, Wyoming, and Denver is two hours away; it's not a major market. We need to be known as a place that gets people paid but at the same time we need to protect the University of Wyoming's interests. The way the contracts are structured, let's say hypothetically we were sharing (revenue) with a men's basketball player, and we were giving him $10,000 for the 2025-26 academic year. The way we set up our contracts is based on eligibility and retention, and then we typically backload the contracts to protect our interest after the transfer portal window closes. If a donor wants to say, I want to make sure Basketball Player A is taken care of but I'm worried he will go in the portal, with that specific donation we can make sure we backload that contract so if they decide to leave that money can stay there or we'll work with the (donor) individually. Payments generally start right at the start of the academic year to get them off on the right foot. Let's say for the $10,000 example we gave you $3,000 at the start of the year. The next payment goes out February 1. All your fall sport portal windows – football, volleyball, soccer – have closed. At that point in time student-athletes don't have the ability to leave, so they come back, they're enrolled in classes; they need to be NCAA eligible February 1 and that second payment hits. Let's say that's $2,000. Then the last payment comes in here on June 1 for us and what that does is they've finished the spring semester and if there's a spring portal window now those windows have all passed, so that's your spring sports. Volleyball still has a spring window; football no longer does, but your wrestling, basketball, etc. Typically, they are back in summer school classes and working out here, so we say, you are committed to Wyoming, we are committed to your NIL payment at that point in time.
 
If somebody were to leave, we terminate the agreement. It's all set up via general counsel and outside legal counsel that we would basically recoup $5,000 on a $10,000 player if they decided to leave and enter the transfer portal. It protects the University of Wyoming long term.
 
Thorburn: In the NFL there is a salary cap, and you know what amount of the cap Josh Allen takes up for the Buffalo Bills and the Bills have the same cap as the Los Angeles Rams. That structure is not the same in college athletics, and you don't know the actual numbers for each school, but do you feel Wyoming is position to compete with its peers in the new Mountain West?
 
Prigge: I do. Our senior administrative team believes that as well from our conversations that we've had with teams that are coming into the league and what we're aware of. Long term there are going to be reports available because all this stuff under the House Settlement has to be documented and reported through the system. That's everything from your revenue sharing agreements to your Alston (education-related financial aid) to your scholarships. We should be able to get a good snapshot of how much UTEP is spending, how much Northern Illinois is spending and even the teams that are leaving the Mountain West – where is Boise State? Where is Colorado State? How do we line up? We definitely feel like we're putting ourselves in position to be atop the new Mountain West as we grow into this new league.
 
Thorburn: For passionate Pokes fans with the means to donate, do you think they can look at this era as an opportunity? You see schools like Indiana, which had a bleak history in football, suddenly they're at the top. I'm not saying Wyoming can be Indiana, but can Wyoming be the Indiana of the Mountain West level if there is the right alignment?
 
Prigge: It's an incredibly important point to make that at Wyoming we know who we are. We are not Texas, we are not Ohio State, we are not Indiana, etcetera. But you never know from a donor standpoint what moves the needle. If we're close to the top and somebody has the means to donate $1 million towards revenue sharing, that really moves the needle for us. It's not like the Texas Tech's where you are pumping in $50 million; they essentially, if you want to look at it that way, bought their way into the College Football Playoff spending between $35 million and $50 million. That's entirely fine if a booster wants to do that. We need to pick our battles. We know who we are and from a Mountain West standpoint even if it's a $20,000 donation or a $50,000 donation, those can be needle moving donations as far as what we are with revenue sharing with athletes specifically. …
 
We don't need a $20 million donation. That would be awesome. But from our donors, anything we can get moves the needle as far as us trying to help our student-athletes and be successful with our retention efforts.
 
Thorburn: Speaking of moving the needle, Jay Sawvel recently donated $125,000 toward this endeavor and now the Cowboys Joe Club has started the Step Forward campaign to build on that commitment. Jay said he made the donation because this needs to start happening now. How important is the Step Forward campaign to get the needle moved in the right direction entering the new Mountain West?
 
Prigge: I think you are going to see aggressive fundraising campaigns. Utah State just launched one in the last month, Nevada launched one last weekend, we have obviously launched the Step Forward campaign. It's the space that we're in right now so we must be aggressive. Coach Sawvel starting that process and an anonymous donor matched his donation to get the ball rolling here. Every dollar counts like I mentioned. When Jay puts in $125,000 of his own money, he knows that moves the needle and really helps his retention effort to keep a lot of his football guys here.
 
The big picture on Jay's side of things, we saw the first year (of revenue sharing), hey, these are our numbers generally speaking and we go back and forth and set up our contracts and things like that. This last transfer portal everybody has an agent in some capacity, which is inflating numbers. That number is going to continue to move and, again, it's not $20.5 million. We are not in that space of a lot of these Autonomous Four conference schools, but the more money we have available the more aggressive we can be in offers. …
 
Coach Sawvel putting in the money he did and the match starts to move the needle for us. It's super important for us to be aggressive in this campaign as we move forward to make sure we are doing right by our coaches and our student-athletes to try to make aggressive retention efforts. The portal window for basketball is coming, so Sundance Wicks is about to go through it just like Coach Sawvel did. It's a different world.
 
Thorburn: Most conference media deals will expire at around the same time in about five or six years. Teams like North Dakota State and UNLV in the Mountain West, Boise State in the new Pac-12, want to position themselves for whatever is next. How important is it for Wyoming to be successful over these next five years?
 
Prigge: When you look at the potential options for college athletics long term, you hit the nail on the head. We need to position ourselves to be in the conversation long term. Again, we're not Ohio State, we're not Texas, but we need to keep up with the mid-tier Joneses, i.e. the Boise States and the San Diego State's and the UNLVs. Their budgets may be higher but obviously results speak for themselves. If there are decisions on if they're going to break away or do some type of relegation, which they've talked about, whether it's collective bargaining with student-athletes, all these things we need to continue to put ourselves in the conversation to be a part of that.
 
People discuss the drop down to FCS and why can't we be like Montana and Montana State? It's not even comparable from a financial standpoint. There's a reason that North Dakota State is paying to get into the Mountain West, there is a reason Sacramento State is paying to get into the MAC. The FBS needle moves. We need to continue to put ourselves in a good position and be successful on the field and on the court so when they start talking about what this is going to look like long term with more potential league shifts or combining, we must be in those conversations. It's too important to the state of Wyoming and this place for us not to be there.
 
Follow Ryan for more stories on Wyoming athletics on X at @By_RyanThorburn on Facebook at Wyoming Athletics and Instagram at wyoathletics. Also follow him at Pokes Insider at Gowyo.com/pokesinsider.
 
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