By: Samuel Petosa
It is Prime Time in Boulder, but if one former assistant coach had his way, it would be Riyadh Season. In August 2023, Trevor Reilly resigned as the Colorado Buffalo’s special teams coordinator after confirming he met with representatives from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) in December 2023. Reilly highlighted this meeting in his resignation letter, stating, he “even went to Saudi Arabia and got a meeting with the Saudis, who were interested in pursuing business.”
Reilly’s meeting occurred in the wake of Saudi Arabia’s growing emergence on the global sports stage. The PIF enables the Kingdom to use its sovereign wealth to bolster the Saudi economy through tourism promotion and global image-building. Since the PIF’s inception, there are few areas a sports fan can turn without some form of Saudi Arabian attachment. In golf, there was the establishment of the LIV Tour in June 2021, a PIF-backed professional golf league that poached top talent from the established PGA tour. In soccer, PIF-backed Saudi club Al Nassr offered Cristiano Ronaldo an unprecedented $75 million annual contract. Even in Mixed Martial Arts, Riyadh Season UFC Noche celebrated Mexican Independence Day with an event in Las Vegas.
No sport seems immune to Saudi influence. With the NCAA’s decision in July 2021 to allow college athletes to utilize their name, image, and likeness (NIL), top college programs may attract players with financial incentives from major backers. Global corporations like Nike have partnered with top programs, providing resources for NIL-based benefits to the athletes. Reilly’s meeting with PIF representatives aimed to secure a long-term partnership where the Kingdom could leverage Colorado’s brand and their athletes’ NIL rights in return for considerable financial backing. The University publicly disassociated itself from Reilly’s efforts, halting any Saudi-based partnership for now. But is the inevitable just being delayed?
Colorado has been at the forefront of NIL development. Since hiring NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders in 2022, the Buffaloes have established themselves as a national brand, drawing an average of nearly five million viewers per game in 2024. Colorado boasts two of the top athletes in the nation in terms of NIL value: quarterback Sheduer Sanders (Deion’s son) along with do-it-all extraordinaire Travis Hunter. The duo is valued at $5.8 million and $3.3 million, respectively, making them the top two NIL earners in the sport.
The duo has propelled Colorado’s revolution to national relevancy, with Hunter even being featured on the cover of EA Sports’ College Football ’25. However, their success has not trickled down to the rest of the program, as the Buffaloes finished 4-8 in 2023 and sat near the bottom of the 2024 high school recruiting ranks. Reilly, recognizing the Buffs’ cultural resurgence since the arrival of “Coach Prime,” saw the PIF as an opportunity to expand the school’s lucrative NIL earning beyond Shedeur, Sanders and Hunter. He believed that, under Sanders’ leadership, the school’s national reach provided “a serious deal to be made” with the Saudi’s.
On top of the school’s public disassociation, a spokesperson for Blueprint, a sports agency that raises NIL funds for schools like Colorado, disavowed Reilly, stating he did not have the authority from the school’s fundraising initiative (known as a “collective”) to advocate on their behalf. But what if he did have that authority? Could the PIF be a viable partner for student-athletes to profit from their NIL? Corporations like Dr. Pepper, with significant financial resources, have secured partnerships with players and collectives since the NCAA’s decision in 2022. So, how is a partnership with the PIF, a sovereign wealth fund, any different?
For one, there are ethical implications of using money from the PIF. Saudi Arabia has been no stranger to geopolitical controversy. In 2021, the CIA released a report confirming that the former prime minister of Saudi Arabia approved the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist who had been critical of the Saudi official. Additionally, the Kingdom imposes government-instituted restrictions on women’s rights, speech, and homosexuality. NIL collectives strike deals for entire athletic departments, not just football teams, which includes female athletes and those who may identify as LGBTQ+. It presents an ethical catch-22 to accept NIL funding for a women’s team from a fund associated with a regime that does not want those same women playing sports in the first place.
Another key distinction is that the PIF is a sovereign wealth fund, not a large corporation. To date, no NIL endorsement deals have been made with any sovereign entities. A deal between Colorado and the Saudis would have been first of its kind-not just with the PIF, but with any government-affiliated entity. In 2024, the NCAA passed Bylaw 22, the first piece of administrative legislation outlining NIL in college sports. According to the Bylaw, NIL refers to “any activity that involves the commercial use of an individual’s name, image or likeness to advertise or endorse the sale or use of a product or service.” It remains to be seen how broadly the NCAA will construe the term “service.” If interpreted broadly, tourism could be considered a service, meaning an endorsement promoting tourism in Saudi Arabia in exchange for PIF-backed payments might fall under the Bylaw’s provisions. However, this cannot be definitively determined until the NCAA is faced with such a scenario.
All the Bylaw requires is that NIL compensation (1) involve a quid-pro-quo, (2) not be contingent on enrollment at a particular institution, and (3) not be tied to athletic performance or achievements. Again, the NCAA will be left with a critical decision in determining if an endorsement from the PIF constitutes a valid quid-pro-quo. For example, Hunter could receive a six-figure payment from the PIF in exchange for posting on Instagram, where he has 1.5 million followers, promoting tourism in Saudi Arabia. Hypothetically, this would meet the quid-pro-quo standard-financial compensation in exchange for endorsement of a service. Yet, how the NCAA would rule on such a matter remains uncertain.
At present, nothing in Bylaw 22 explicitly prohibits foreign investment in return for product or service endorsement. In fact, the Bylaw explicitly gives the schools themselves power to “provide assistance and services” to student-athletes seeking NIL endorsements. This could potentially open the door for institutions to negotiate with a foreign entity like the PIF, provided it acts in accord with the rest of the Bylaw.
Institutions like Colorado may avoid such partnerships for now, but one day Reilly’s vision could become a frightening reality. College football is the biggest crowd puller in American sports, and cash is king. Schools are locked in a NIL arms race and could take drastic measures to come out on top. The PIF is a near-unlimited fund that could change a school’s NIL landscape overnight. Will any school take such a chance? It will be crucial to watch whether any of the Federal NIL proposals being introduced in Congress will provide a guardrail against funding from a foreign entity like the PIF, or whether ethical considerations will be instituted. If not, college football fans may as well get used to Saudi Saturdays in the fall.
