By Timothy R. Olsen ’09, MBA ’18

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The game has changed.

What was true in college athletics five years ago is no longer true now. In fact, what was true one year ago has changed significantly. There’s a decent chance some of the things in this article aren’t as true as when it was sent to print.

Such is the nature of college athletics these days.

This past spring, as a Boeing 737 made its way from Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City, a man leaned over to Brad Mortensen and asked if he was Utah State University’s president. Mortensen responded in the affirmative, and the man then informed Mortensen that his daughter was a first-year art history student at USU and loved being part of the HURD — the university’s renowned student section.

That conversation turned into an extended dialogue about college athletics, NIL, the transfer portal, and funding models. The man was curious how Utah State is going to keep pace in the current college athletics landscape. Mortensen confirmed the university is doing what it can in that realm but also reminded the father that he needed to make sure his daughter gets her art history degree too.

And therein lies the current dilemma facing universities, their administrators, their passionate alumni, and their donor base — especially for institutions that fall outside of the NCAA’s four (though, let’s be honest, it’s really two) power conferences.

“Aggie Athletics is so important to folks that not having it be successful is really not an option… You just feel how much pride it gives people,” Mortensen proclaims. “But, at the same time, we can’t sacrifice our academic and research missions just to try to do that. … We have too many other responsibilities to just focus on athletics. But do I want our teams to be successful? Absolutely!”

And Utah State’s teams have, unequivocally, been successful.

During the 2025–26 year, the Aggies combined for nine regular season and tournament championships. The men’s basketball team, women’s volleyball team, women’s gymnastics team, and men’s tennis team each won both the Mountain West regular season and conference tournament titles, while the women’s soccer team won the conference tournament title for the third consecutive year.

The nine combined titles were comfortably the most by any Mountain West team, but as of July 1, Utah State will officially no longer be a member of that conference. The Aggies are jumping into their Pac-12 era, and while the reimagined “Conference of Champions” — so nicknamed for 500-plus national championships in its storied history — may lack the prestige of previous iterations, it’s also a bit of an unknown with a unique opportunity.

In the past two decades, only three teams from the West have reached the men’s NCAA Tournament national title game. Gonzaga in 2017 and 2021, and San Diego State in 2023. That’s the list.

Both of those teams are joining the new-look Pac-12, and while that’s only one sport, it’s a glimpse at the unique opportunities Utah State’s new home could provide. That is, of course, assuming the university can keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, while not losing sight of its academic mission as well.

“We want all of our sports to be able to compete for those championships, especially in a new Pac-12 environment, which could be a little more challenging” Mortensen says. “I don’t have all the answers, just a commitment to try and figure out the right balance.”

A NEW REALITY

Name, Image, and Likeness … or NIL if you prefer.

Revenue sharing.

The transfer portal.

The sound you just heard was the collective groan of millions of college sports fans.

Both Bobby Wagner and Jordan Love were 2-star recruits who only received a single Division I offer — from Utah State University. Due to those circumstances, it’s not a surprise they ended up as Aggies.

But what if their 2-star selves came to USU now? It’s almost a certainty neither would finish their college career in Logan.

Wagner was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in the second round of the 2012 NFL draft, is a 10-time Pro-Bowler, Super Bowl champion, and a surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer. Though a free agent at the time of this issue’s printing, the reigning Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year will likely end the 2026–27 season as the NFL’s all-time leader in tackles, surpassing Ray Lewis.

Love was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in the first round of the 2020 NFL draft, just the fifth player from USU to go in the first round and the first since Phil Olsen in 1970. In 2024 he signed a four-year, $220 million contract with the Packers which, at the time, put him into a tie for the highest-paid player in NFL history.

“If Jordan Love comes [to Utah State] now and has a breakout year … it’s going to be really hard to keep him,” says Carter Young, USU’s new Deputy AD and Chief Revenue Officer.

That doesn’t mean the university is sitting idly by, accepting its “Group of 6” fate. For those unfamiliar, that moniker refers to the six conferences that fall outside the college football oligarchy.

While Utah State’s move to the Pac-12 doesn’t change USU’s G6 label, university leadership does feel it positions USU in the best place possible — both for the current state of college athletics and future iterations.

“It’s huge. You have to continue to evolve in today’s landscape. You have to continue to push to be better,” exhorts Young, who says he likely wouldn’t have jumped from a position at Tennessee without USU’s conference move.

“We feel really good about the direction of the Pac-12 … we feel that it’s going to be a very competitive league that has a chance to push for the College Football Playoff every year and be a multi-bid league for the NCAA Tournament. I think it’s the next step in the evolution for Utah State.

“[USU] has a lot of successful programs, the nation just doesn’t know it. Moving into the Pac-12 gives us more of a chance to tell our story, our history, and also write our future. I can’t say enough. I think the Pac-12 is going to be a really, really positive thing for Utah State.”

PAY TO PLAY

Imagine college athletics as a large farming operation. Under the previous model, the NCAA owned the farms and provided its “workers” with a place to live, food to eat, and the ability for on-the-job training. Meanwhile, the owner was reaping all the rewards of the proverbial harvest.

In 2020, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the NCAA challenging its restrictions on athlete compensation. In June 2025, a federal district court approved a settlement agreement on that case, collectively referred to as the House settlement.

Because of this settlement, the NCAA owed $2.8 billion in back-wages to its workers dating back to 2016. And going forward, they would also be required to share some of the farm’s profits with its employees. For every bushel of wheat sold — think ticket sales, TV contracts, sponsorships — about 22% of the revenue is put into a separate “revenue sharing” bucket.

That bucket is capped at roughly $20.5 million per farm (university) per year, with the money being directly distributed to athletes. There’s now less of a focus on a shiny new weight room or major stadium upgrades, since money can now flow directly to players.

Large universities that reach the $20.5 million cap have other, somewhat more complicated, avenues to spend beyond that. Smaller farms, universities like Utah State, do not (currently) have to worry about eclipsing that number, which somewhat simplifies the process.

“I think Utah State has always been a place where they’ve punched above their weight in terms of resources and competing for conference championships with one of the lower budgets in the Mountain West,” says Ike Ukaegbu, USU’s new Deputy AD and Chief Operating Officer. “But the way the landscape is changing … it is going to be very, very difficult to continue to have success if we’re not somewhat competitive in the NIL space.”

And while Aggies often take pride in what their teams, coaches, and administrators can achieve with limited resources, one can only punch above its weight class for so long. According to Young, USU is coming into its new conference second to last in total budget. That gap, from eighth in the conference to the top, is a tall mountain to consistently climb.

“You can do it every once in a while, but we need to be in a position where we’re sitting three or four, and then we can punch to one,” Young says. “Like it or hate it, it’s here, and revenue has never been tied closer to winning in college athletics than it is today.”

Dalton Forsythe is the university’s assistant AD for NIL. It’s a position he morphed into last year after the House settlement. Prior to that he’d been working as director of the Blue A Collective which had been created just a couple years prior by former USU football coach Gary Andersen and longtime donor Jim Laub to help Utah State in the emerging NIL landscape.

The House settlement created an avenue for the work being done by the collective — things like working with coaches, athletes, and agents to make sure rosters are recruited and players are paid on time — to be folded into the university’s revenue sharing bucket.

Initially through the Blue A Collective, men’s basketball players were the first to receive funding at Utah State, followed by football and women’s volleyball. Now, Forsythe says roughly 65 student-athletes across multiple sports received money from USU’s revenue sharing bucket during the recent fiscal year. He expects that number to climb significantly for the 2027 fiscal year, potentially nearing 100.

And, while the university isn’t disclosing how full it’s $20.5 million bucket is for competitive purposes, there are some nuggets of information out there. Former men’s head basketball coach Jerrod Calhoun says the Aggies were “the lowest-budgeted team to get an at-large bid” for the 2025 NCAA Tournament with an “$800,000 team.” He says USU tripled that number this past season, which resulted in a trip to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

“We tripled it this year, and we need to probably triple it again,” he proclaimed prior to accepting the head coaching job at Cincinnati. “It’s a frantic pace keeping up with it, but it’s the market for college athletics.”

And tripling that budget again to something in the neighborhood of $7 million may not even be enough.

According to an April article in The Athletic, a $10 million roster is projected to be the low end necessary for teams wishing to be in the running for a national championship. The analytics site evanmiya.com, run by Evan Miyakawa — a college basketball Ph.D. who’s articles have been featured in various national platforms — digs even deeper. Miyakawa created a tool he calls the Front Office Suite, currently used by roughly 30 teams, which “is specifically designed for coaches, GMs, and ADs to obtain NIL evaluations for players, based on their analytical profiles.”

According to his research, the NIL market for Division I players has gone up 65% from last year. Want a borderline high-major starting caliber player? The bidding will begin at $1.5 million. A solid high-major starter below the all-conference level? How does $2.5 million sound?

Despite Calhoun’s departure to Cincinnati, the Aggies were able to retain senior guard Mason Falslev, as well as do-everything forward Karson Templin. And while neither the players nor the university have publicly disclosed the NIL deals it took to keep those players in Logan, Falslev told the Salt Lake Tribune in March that he “took a big, big pay cut to be here” when he returned to the Aggies for his junior season.

It’s safe to assume the offers incentivizing the reigning Mountain West player of the Year to abandon the Aggies only increased from last year. In fact, the Sky View High School product is the first MW Player of the Year to return to the same team the following season since USU’s Sam Merrill won it as a junior in 2019.

“It’s not really until the portal opens that you get to figure out, how much does it cost to bring in a new player, and essentially, at that point, how much does it cost to retain your existing rosters,” Forsythe explains. “After going through the most recent portal cycle and moving into the Pac-12, we probably need to triple our [previous year’s] investment to compete for a conference championship in men’s basketball.”

FILLING THE BUCKET

So, how does Utah State fill its revenue sharing bucket, and where does its NIL budget come from?

Almost the entirety of USU’s NIL budget stems from donors, but it’s important to note that not all donations come in the form of philanthropic giving, like the $2.5 million and $1.5 million donations recently received.

“When you throw around words like direct institutional support or NIL, that can get kind of confusing,” Ukaegbu explains. “I think [it helps] making the delineation that philanthropic giving is true donor giving, but ticket sales, [sponsorships], and other forms of revenue, in a way, is kind of institutional support.”

From the university’s Show Me campaign, to an updated seating arrangement for men’s basketball, to hosting concerts and other events at university venues, USU’s new athletic administration is exploring myriad options to help the Aggies increase the fill line in their bucket.

“We’re looking at 100 things,” Young says. “We’re looking at almost anything you can imagine right now to see, ‘Are we doing this effectively?’ and ‘How can we be better?’”

And despite the rising cost of college athletics, that doesn’t mean the bill for all of those increases falls on the consumers. One of Utah State’s changes for the 2026 football season was to actually decrease the cost of season football tickets — at least in certain areas. Fans can now get $99 season tickets on the east side of Maverik Stadium, which is a little more than $16 per game. A five-ticket family-pack option is even slightly cheaper at $450 for the season.

“I would ask you to go find another Division I NCAA football program that has a $99 season ticket. I’m not sure you’ll find one,” Young says. “We said, ‘Let’s make sure we have affordable seating so that our fan base — our communities that have three to four kids and need a cheaper ticket option — can get in.’ Let’s make sure we have season ticket prices for everyone.”

As for how that bucket is divvied out to the individual programs and athletes, that information is kept close to the vest. However, Young did confirm the university’s revenue generating sports — football and men’s basketball — receive the bulk of the pie. Though, he was also quick to point out that while a handful of student-athletes receive a lot of compensation, that’s not the case for the majority.

The reality, Young says, is that most of the student-athletes receiving funds use them to cover tuition costs, and help with room, board, and food, rather than making a bunch of money. It’s essentially an enhanced scholarship, with less stipulations on how the money has to be used.

“It is a big impact on these kids’ lives, and part of what you need to do as an athletic department is try to set them up for the best success in the future,” Young explains. “NIL plays a part in that, in all of our sports, but everyone only ever wants to focus on football and men’s basketball, which I get, but there’s a much bigger piece. There’s a much bigger impact for our student athletes that no one ever thinks about within NIL.”

MORE THAN A GAME

On February 13, 1995, the Utah State men’s basketball team lost a heartbreaking double-overtime home game to New Mexico State, 104–100. That contest between then-Big West rivals, a rare nationally televised game for USU at the time, tipped off at 10:05 p.m. and finished in the wee hours of the morning. It was a wild and raucous affair. Milk cartons were thrown out onto the court.

It’s a core memory for Mortensen, who was working on his bachelor’s at the time and was in attendance.

“That builds community. Even if you don’t know the names of the people you’re standing next to, you feel this strength and alliance together,” Mortensen explains. “It’s a great advantage for us to have that positive community at Utah State, and something we want to figure out how to leverage and build upon. Not just for how it supports our teams in winning, but for how it can elevate the community and connection across the university.

“It’s a huge asset, and the potential there to build bridges and make connections is unlike very few other things that the university has. So, we want it to be successful. We want it to thrive, and we want to do it in the smartest way that we can.”

So, as the college athletics world continues to shift, throwing haymakers at programs like Utah State, the Aggies are doing what they do best — standing in the ring, gloves raised and ready to put up a fight. Like Rocky Balboa, USU just keeps coming, punching above its weight class.