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SALT LAKE CITY — Dressed in gym shorts and a Utah hoodie — his "business attire" — Utes football head coach Kyle Whittingham addressed a small crowd in the Layton Field House in the sound end zone of Rice-Eccles Stadium on Friday afternoon.
For the last 19 years, Whittingham was been the public face to a football program that has continued to grow during his tenure as the head coach — from its success in the Mountain West Conference to its gradual climb in the Pac-12 where the team is reigning back-to-back champions. The program continues to rise under Whittingham.
And it's not done there, at least if you believe the crowd that gathered.
On Friday afternoon, Whittingham was there to thank and kick off the efforts of those who came together to create a university endorsed name, image and likeness initiative called the Utah Crimson Collective. The collective, which was founded by Matt Garff and chaired by Colorado Rockies owner Charlie Monfort, was created to support members of the football program though NIL.
The collective, which is independent of the university and is a nonprofit organization as a 501(c)(3), allows fans of the program to donate to the organization, which in turn can be used to further NIL efforts for members of the football team.
Whittingham described the creation of the collective as "exactly what we need as a football program," especially as the coaching staff goes out on the recruiting trail and prospective players ask about the university's NIL opportunities. The coaching staff can now talk about the concerted effort made by the Crimson Collective to help athletes once enrolled at Utah.
"Recruiting is the most important thing to succeeding in college football over anything else," Whittingham said. "Hands down it's the most important thing we do every single day. Every single day of the year our staff is recruiting in one way, shape or form; it just doesn't change. The biggest way to gain an advantage in recuiting is NIL resourses, without a doubt. It's the No. 1 thing that moves the needle that allows you to obtain a roster, recruit the guys into your program."
The collective is not the first organized around University of Utah athletic programs — the Utah gymnastics program had the first female-centered collective called Who Rocks The House, and the football program has had others that weren't university endorsed — but it's one that gets the backing of the university for the football program.
"Today was another huge step forward for us with the launch of the Crimson Collective," Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said. "It's really going to supercharge all those efforts. And to be partnered with Matt Garff and his vision for this, and the other incredible people in the community, is going to give us a real separation, I believe, to be the very best in the space. So I'm really excited about what's ahead."
While focused just on the football team, the hope for the organization as it grows is that it will be an all-encompassing collective for the various athletic programs at the university. But that time remains a distant dream.
Harlan said the university has seen about $4.5 million go toward its athletes for NIL over the last two years, but believes that having a standardized way of approaching the NIL world through a university-partnered collective will increase the efforts to attract prospective athletes to the university and allow the fans to interact through community events with the athletes they support.
"When our coaches are recruiting they can speak of this collective and the kind of opportunities that are here if these young men come, but most importantly with the students that are here and how they're going to benefit from it," Harlan said. "We've got incredible programs that they currently have, and this will just add more to the experience of being a student-athlete at Utah."
But the university didn't want to partner with just any collective out there that is used by big donors who attempt to attract the top talent in the sport with their money. From Harlan to Garff to all others involved in the creation of the collective, the message was the collective needed to be done the "Utah way."
"The way it's structured is to give our players many, many opportunities to give back to the communities — a community-based collective — and so that allows our players to get out in the community and integrate and do things and then give back," Whittingham said.
"The first thing is it's doing it the right way," Harlan added. "That it has substance to it, not just style. We want this to be an opportunity for the students to earn, but also to learn. And then the connection to the community — the idea that they will support charities — is something that I think that they can take with them when this experience is all over. So it's going to be an authentic approach, and that was something that I was insistent on, certainly, the Garffs were insistent on, and so it's all come together in that manner."
The goal of the collective is to raise around $5 million every year to "help the team survive and thrive today," but it also has an "audacious" goal, according to Garff, to raise $50 million. Doing so, he said, will keep the football team competitive with many of the top programs in the country.
But the initial goal to hit $50 million, Garff stressed, is to make the collective one that's sustainable and not subject to the ebbs and flows of the ever-changing landscape of college football.
"That's a big, big number, but what that money then becomes is the driver behind reoccurring revenue," Garff said. 'And if we can have reoccurring revenue coming in every single year, now that $4 to $5 million can become $10. And so not only are we competing with 90% of the rest of the country at that point, now we're truly competing with all the big boys, we are one of the big boys at that point.
"We want to be better than the rest of the country," Garff said, while adding that most collectives around the country are trying to raise around $3 million per year.
So while the collective can have an impact today, there's a lasting impact to be prepared for whatever changes may come about — whether its conference realignment or some other mechanism to change the sport.
"There's also going to be, in my estimation, some major realignment in the not too distant future, and we want to make sure we're on the right side of that line in the sand when we do draw that line," Whittingham said. "And having a strong NIL is going to be a huge component in factoring in that."
