The Washington State football team is ranked No. 18 in the country and will be in the conversation of College Football Playoff hopefuls if it wins the rest of its games.
The future might look bright, too. Much of that, though, will depend on the Cougars' ability to keep their best players, and that is where the Cougar Collective, and the money it raises, comes in.
In this new era of college football, where players can earn money through NIL (name, image and likeness) deals, the Cougar Collective is working to raise money for Cougar athletes through NIL deals and doing it differently than other big programs.
The Cougar Collective, run entirely by volunteers, has focused on getting many small donors, and now is also raising money with beer and coffee, and soon, it hopes, wine.
"Just like anything with the Cougs, you've got to be crafty, creative and always chasing," said WSU football coach Jake Dickert. "You love to see them staying ahead of it and doing different unique things. That piece of it has been a huge positive."
The Cougar Collective has evolved greatly since former WSU and NFL football players Jack Thompson, Robbie Tobeck, Paul Sorensen and Jed Collins joined a handful of other Cougar alums in founding it in 2022. Its purpose then was to help lure quarterback Cam Ward to Pullman.
They were successful, with Ward playing at WSU for two years before moving this season to Miami, where he reportedly has NIL deals valued at more than $2 million. But the priority of the Cougar Collective now is player retention and not recruitment.
"Cougars need to step up so that we can make an offer that's significant enough to make them pause," said Tim Brandle, a founding member of the Cougar Collective and its co-chair with Luke Wetzstein, about WSU countering offers players might get elsewhere. "Can we step up monetarily, to truly make it a hard decision for them? That is our goal."
The Cougars were pretty successful in retaining their top players this past season, losing just two players of great significance, Ward and receiver Josh Kelly (Texas Tech) to other programs.
That's a low number in this new era, but there will be a new crop of players to retain after this season, starting with quarterback John Mateer. Sorensen said on his Old Crimson Podcast on Tuesday that Mateer already has a $1 million NIL offer from another program.
Tobeck said, "Cougar Nation needs to realize we have a golden opportunity in front of us."
"We have this new conference that we're building, and conference championships and potential playoff runs are right in front of us, and now is the time to capitalize and invest," he said. "If we say, 'We're not happy about it, we want the old Pac-12 back, and I'm going to keep my hands in my pocket because I'm not happy about how things have gone,' then we're going to miss this golden opportunity to build a program, a winning program that we've always wanted.
"It's right there in front of us. These other schools, they're moving forward and they're going to invest big time. We need to do the same. We have a chance to be the leaders of this new conference, and that's what's got me excited."
Because WSU athletics doesn't have a huge donor like Oregon's Phil Knight, or the corporate backing that many big-time programs have, the Cougar Collective got creative, starting with the 1890 club (named after the year WSU was founded).
Members donate $18.90 per month to the Cougar Collective, and the number of monthly donations is about 2,200.
In addition, the Cougar Collective has partnered with Pike Brewing on 'Ol Crimson Lager, with an undisclosed portion of the proceeds from each beer sold going to Cougar Collective. It has also partnered with Indaba Coffee on Ol' Crimson Coffee, with some of the proceeds from each bag sold going to the collective.
"I think we've doubled (the revenue from the Cougar Collective) every year and this will be our first year of seven figures," Dickert said. "And that's just scratching the surface of where you need to be. At this level, when you get a special player, you've got to be able to keep them and reward them."
Thompson is determined to make that happen.
"We've come a long way, but we've got a long way to go," said Thompson, college football's all-time leading passer when he finished his WSU career in 1978. "That 1890 club, candidly, needs to get 30,000 and we need to sell more beer and coffee."
A team approach
Wetzstein, the co-chair of the Cougar Collective, said he wouldn't give the dollar figure of what the organization has raised this year because he said that could put WSU at a competitive disadvantage if other programs had that information.
"In our minds, to be competitive and equip coaches across all sports and not just football, it should be in the $2 to $3 million range (annually)," Wetzstein said. "Ideally it would probably be $3 to $4 million."
The Cougar Collective works closely with the WSU athletic department's Nick Garner, assistant athletic director for student-athlete experience, on what the department's needs are.
Garner said an amendment to the state's ethics law in June has "allowed university employees to be better advocates for NIL in general, whether that's supporting our student-athletes in different ways, or supporting the Cougar Collective and the great work that they're doing."
Garner joked that he talks with members of the Cougar Collective as often as he talks to his mom.
"We discuss idea generation, different fundraising opportunities and the execution of some of those things," Garner said. "Sometimes they'll need help connecting with a student-athlete or with a coach. Really, it's trying to make their life easier so that they can focus on raising funds for the Collective, and providing true, NIL deals with our student-athletes."
The Cougar Collective also works with the general manager of football, Rob Schlaeger, and men's basketball assistant coach Donald Brady, letting them know what their budget is from the collective.
Who that money goes to is a decision made by the programs.
"It's like they're dealing with a salary cap," Wetzstein said. "We don't get involved in the analytics at all. That's their job, and we trust them to do that. We don't want to meddle in that."
Once it is decided which players will be given money, they earn the money in NIL deals negotiated with the collective.
Among the things players will do for NIL money are autograph signings, appearances at events and social media promotions. Businesses and individuals can go through the Cougar Collective to negotiate an NIL deal with a particular athlete as well.
"It's an open conversation, and we don't ever want to ask athletes to do something they're not comfortable with," Wetzstein said. "We know the demands of practice, workouts and class, so we're sensitive to their time, and we try to do stuff that's pretty light and easy. Obviously, you want it to be publicly visible, and we get guidance from the university."
A groundbreaking concept
The 1890 Club has been steadily growing since it began in July 2022.
Brandle said it was a groundbreaking concept.
"From my research, we were the first to do it in this granular, monthly subscription model," he said. "Everybody else is operating on corporate sponsorships and targeting large donors, the quote-unquote whales, for support. Truthfully, this crowdsource model is the most sustainable model in the entire NIL space. And we were the first to do this, to go for smaller donors."
How much can it grow from the couple thousand donors it has now?
Brandle points out that there are about 23,000 WSU license plates in the state. What if those people also were members of the 1890 Club?
"It's about getting the message out," Brandle said. "We still have an issue with people not understanding the gravity and the necessity and the urgency of this situation."
As an incentive for people to donate, a group of WSU alumni recently agreed to match up to $200,000 in donations, and that number is close to being achieved.
Those who donate to the Cougar Collective have the option to choose the sport they would like their money to go to.
The priority is clearly football, and then men's basketball, but the Cougar Collective would also like to do more for female student-athletes.
"Women's soccer, women's volleyball and women's basketball are important," Wetzstein said. "We're just getting our feet wet with those, but they're on the list."
It all comes down to money, and now there are more ways for Cougar fans to help, including drinking Ol' Crimson Lager, which was launched in May and is available in 12-ounce cans at retailers across the Pacific Northwest and on tap at the Pike Pub, Pike Fish Bar and Pike Taproom Summit.
Wetzstein said terms of the contract does not allow him to divulge how much the Cougar Collective gets from each beer sold, "but I can say we're really happy with the early returns."
"And I think it will continue to grow," Wetzstein said.
Ol' Crimson Coffee launched a couple months ago, and Wetzstein said the Collective gets about $7 from each standard bag that is sold (currently on sale for $25).
As far as wine goes, Wetzstein said it's still early in the process but they're looking at potential partners.
"It's got to be multifaceted," Dickert said. "From the subscription model, to the one-time payments, to the match fundraisers and to the beer, the coffee, and hopefully the wine -- we've just got to keep expanding it."
"If you want a winner, you've got to be involved"
Tobeck said it's simple to explain why he helped found the Cougar Collective, and why he still supports it while retired in Florida.
"Ultimately, I don't care about anything else, other than my team winning, and my team was Washington State University," he said. "The new normal is NIL deals and competing on multiple fronts that way. And so if you want a winner, you've got to be involved."
Dickert used Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty, a Heisman Trophy contender, as an example of how rewarding players who do well can make a major impact.
"Where would Boise be without Jeanty?" Dickert said. "They came together and gave that guy a huge, huge payday. So we've got to find ways to utilize our tools, our resources, our alumni base. Because at the end of the day, it's a unique era of college football as a booster or a supporter, where you can say, 'I was the one to help keep Player X for the next year.'"