Announcement from CU AD:
Thank you for your investment in the lives of our 350+ CU student-athletes. Your recent support has ranged from the Sustainable Excellence Initiative (SEI) Drive for $105M, which resulted in the building of the UCHealth Champions Center, our Crawford Family WHOLE Student-Athlete Program, scholarship endowments, planned gifts, and season ticket purchases. This proves if we stand shoulder to shoulder, we can accomplish anything.
College athletics is in a very delicate place right now. The landscape is changing at a rapid pace and the issues that are prevalent today weren’t even topics a few years ago. The intersection of the transfer portal with name, image and likeness has created an unstable dynamic. While I’m disappointed to see the number of football student-athletes we’ve seen enter the transfer portal in the past few weeks, we are not unique to many teams around the country. As it stands today, there are over 1,700 FBS student-athletes in the transfer portal (average of 13+ per institution). One can speculate as to why this is occurring, but rest assured, our #1 priority is the student-athletes at CU, and we will continue to stand committed to educating, investing in, and providing them a world-class experience.
I am, and will always be, proud of what we do for our student-athletes at the University of Colorado. What we provide in student-athlete support is unmatched around the country. We want student-athletes that want to be at the University of Colorado as this is an incredible institution. We have the best coaches and staff in place across all our sports in my tenure and I’m excited about what the future holds for CU Athletics.
Thanks to your generosity, investments into the AD Excellence Fund have allowed us to recently act upon the NCAA vs. Alston et al decision. This means we will now provide up to $2,000 to all academically eligible scholarship student-athletes each semester. In addition, we will provide up to $990 to all student-athletes who participate in five or more advanced educational courses per semester (i.e. career development, diversity, equity & inclusion, mental health, etc.). In total, we expect to provide $1.7 million in new educational support directly to our student-athletes annually.
Moreover, I am excited to announce our approach to further assisting CU student-athletes with their name, image and likeness (NIL). I am pleased to share details on our new program called the Buffs NIL Exchange. This exchange will serve as the official marketplace for all businesses, individuals, and collectives to engage with our student-athletes on their NIL opportunities.
Should you consider partnering with our student-athletes on their NIL, please register your information using the link below. The passion of our Buffs Family is unmatched, and I am excited to bring this opportunity for you to support our student-athletes in this new world of college athletics.
Go Buffs!
Rick George
