Alex Taylor: Taylor Burman, UW still navigating NIL landscape

Mar. 29—For most professional sports, championships have always been bought.

The New York Yankees won their last World Series in 2009 with an MLB-leading $201.4 million payroll, according to CNN. The Golden State Warriors won the NBA title in 2022 with a league-high payroll of $179 million, according to Forbes.

The notion of money buying championships has been prevalent for more than a century. The same ideology has now trickled down to college athletics with the implementation of name, image and likeness dollars generated for student-athletes.

Tom Burman, who's been the University of Wyoming's athletics director since 2006, is still navigating the waters of NIL money in Laramie. While the school can have no direct contact with NIL fundraising, Burman knows how important it is for UW fans to donate to the 1WYO NIL collective that launched last summer.

UW student-athletes currently haul in roughly $300,000, according to Burman, and he wants to see that number grow to $750,000 for the upcoming academic year.

"We have to find a way," Burman said Tuesday. "Our fans have to embrace NIL. They have to embrace the collective, they have to embrace all the different methods that there are to give money that goes back to student-athletes. If we don't, it's going to be very difficult for us to maintain a roster, especially in men's basketball right now."

UW men's basketball coach Jeff Linder has had four players — guards Brendan Wenzel and Jacob Theodosiou and forwards Caden Powell and Jonas Sirtautas — enter the NCAA transfer portal since the end of the season earlier this month. While outgoing transfers isn't a problem unique to UW, the program also lost eight players to the portal a year ago.

"I don't expect anyone else to join the portal, but if it happens, it happens," Burman said. "Those four, we kind of thought there was a chance. We knew a couple were going to be in the portal — and coach did — but I think that'll be the end of it.

"... Jeff made great strides this year. He has to go through kind of the same transition (former UW football coach Craig) Bohl went through. I think he's figuring it out, but it is complicated, and it is ever-changing. I'm hopeful. I do believe this bubble's going to burst. I don't believe the money that is in there in the NIL packages that kids are getting promised are always being delivered.

"I think there's a lot of fraud going on right now in this industry, and kids will start to realize, 'I'm not getting what I was promised,' or, 'I'm not getting the minutes I was promised,' and hopefully, it slows down, because it's not good for the kids."

Linder bridged the gap from losing eight transfers last season by signing three graduate transfers with one year of eligibility left. Guards Sam Griffin and Akuel Kot and forward Mason Walters all played significant roles for the Cowboys this winter, but one-and-done transfers aren't a sustainable path for a school like UW going forward, Burman said.

"I hope not," Burman said about one-year transfers being the future of college basketball. "Our fan base is not going to embrace it like I'd like them to. They like to watch kids grow up a little bit, and one-year wonders are just not going to work, in my opinion.

"What I'm hoping is that we get high school kids, and we can keep them for a while — or for their duration — and we get transfers in who have two or three years of eligibility, so we can watch them grow up a little bit.

"We may get one or two (graduate transfers) this year, but last year's team, nobody knew who they were until February, and they were actually pretty fun to watch. I would say this about coach Linder and his staff this year: I think they got a lot out of the talent they had."

Linder has talked extensively about the disadvantages NIL creates in college basketball. Even in the Mountain West, UW has fallen behind bigger markets like San Diego State, Boise State and New Mexico in the NIL arms race.

Just like with the Yankees and Warriors, winning and money still seem to go hand in hand.

"(Linder is) going to have to get more talent," Burman said. "You look at the top of the league and what the league had this year, I mean, we weren't there. We're going to have to get more talent, we're going to have to develop more talent, and we're going to have to retain that talent.

"Partially, that falls on us as our fan base. We're going to have to help football and basketball over the next few years and find out how and figure out a way to generate the revenue to do this. People hate to hear that, but that's this world we live in in 2024. That is what it is.

"... It's time (fans) embrace. We can't wait any longer."

Scheduling struggles

The MW announced a shift from an 18-game league schedule to 20 earlier this month.

While a big deciding factor in the change was the conference's recent success justifying two additional league games, eliminating the headache of scheduling two nonconference games also played a part for some schools' administrators during the voting process.

For a school like UW, inviting a Power 5 team to make the trek to Laramie to play at 7,220 feet isn't as easy as it sounds.

"Football is different. You fly in on a charter. Most of the schools that we're going to play in basketball (fly) commercial, and they fly to Denver and then they bus. They just don't want to bus," Burman said. "... Then elevation, for whatever reason, seems to cause bigger angst in basketball than it does in football.

"... It's more about travel here in the middle of winter than it is about anything else. Elevation is part of it, but traveling here, teams (just don't want to do it)."

There's been plenty of push-back from fans and media — specifically from the San Diego area — about the league's recent scheduling change. The MW had a mostly poor showing in this year's NCAA Tournament after earning a league-record six bids.

The scheduling shift makes it clear the league is concerned about the well-being of all its league members, and not just San Diego State, which tried bolting to the now-decimated Pac-12 last summer.

"I've been pushing for (20 conference games) for 10 years," Burman said. "I'm glad it finally happened. The only reason it happened is the league got good enough where the data showed that playing an extra two games for the best teams wouldn't actually hurt them."

Attendance issues

The Cowboys were eighth in the league in average attendance at 3,937 this winter. UW also played the fewest home games of any MW team with 14.

While out-of-town fans commuting to the Arena-Auditorium for a two-hour basketball game is always a tall ask, the biggest problem this season was the lack of student turnout. The student section was too often vacant, specifically during weeknight games with late tip-offs.

"We're racking our brains trying to figure it out," Burman said. "I've met with four groups of university students, talked to them and bantered back and forth. There are no simple answers to complex questions. This stuff is complex.

"Now, in (War Memorial Stadium), we have one of the highest percentages of student turnout in America. We're like 38%, and the national average is like 13%. It's not like we're morons. (I met with a group of 100 students), and they basically said, 'If you play a Tuesday or Wednesday, I'm never coming. I'm not coming. I have intramural hoops or intramural football. I'm not coming.'

"So, we've gotta figure out a way that they don't say that."

Alex Taylor is the assistant editor for WyoSports and covers University of Wyoming athletics. He can be reached at ataylor@wyosports.net. Follow him on X at @alex_m_taylor22.