How Much Will it Cost Built Bar to Cover the Tuition of Every Walk-On?

Author:
Casey Lundquist
Updated:
Aug 12, 2021 8:48 PM EDT
Original:
Aug 12, 2021

On Thursday, BYU entered an agreement with Built Bar "to support the Cougar football program, while also pioneering separate innovative multi-year NIL agreements with individual members of the football team."

The agreement included "compensation to all members of the team, including compensation to all walk-on players in the amount comparable to the costs of tuition for the academic year."

The story has reached national heights. As of the time of this article, the video of the announcement has over 512k views on Twitter.

Today, let's figure out how much it will cost Built Bar to cover the tuition of every BYU walk-on.

Assumptions

Before we dig into the numbers, below are the assumptions I made to arrive at the final numbers.

1. There are 36 walk-ons on the roster. According to the announcement, walk-ons will be paid "the amount comparable to the costs of tuition for the academic year."

2. There are 85 scholarship players on the roster who will also be paid. How much? According to Jarom Jordan, Built Bar will match the tuition number of the scholarship players.

3. The players will receive money for the full academic year, not just one semester.

4. BYU charges $3,060 per semester for those students that are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For those that aren't members, BYU charges $6,120 per semester.

How much will it cost?

To cover the tuition of 36 walk-ons, some of which are not members of the church, Built Bar will pay approximately $240k for the 2021-2022 academic year.

For the 85 scholarship players, I conservatively assumed that Built Bar would pay the lowest amount ($3,060) per player per semester, totaling $520k for the full academic year.

In total, the deal will cost Built Bar approximately $760k this year. However, the press release called the deal with Built Bar a "multi-year agreement." If Built Bar agrees to the same deal in future years, it will cost Built Bar the same amount per year, approximately $760k per year.

Update: ESPN wrote a detailed report about BYU’s deal with Built Bar. According to that report, each scholarship player will receive $1,000 to represent Built Bar instead of the tuition amount. In that case, the total cost would be $325k per year.