Is the BYU-Utah football rivalry plagued by tampering? Here’s an inside look at the ‘dirty business’ of the transfer portal.

Last spring, Bill Lomu received a text message with an offer that bothered him.

He’d been contacted by a person who told him that his son, University of Utah star lineman Caleb Lomu, could have $1.5 million wired to his bank account if he transferred to in-state rival BYU.

The father said he immediately reached out to Utah’s offensive line coach.

“You need to get a hold of your guys,” Bill said he texted the Utes’ Jim Harding.

“He hit me back with a panicked text. And he was like, ‘Holy sh--, it’s all of our guys.’ … It turned out, BYU was targeting all of our top guys,” Bill said.

Only it wasn’t BYU. It was someone claiming to represent the football team’s interests, Bill said. He said he also heard from other people allegedly working on behalf of Washington, USC, Arizona State, Oregon State and Texas A&M during both of last offseason’s transfer portal windows.

“To be very clear,” Bill said, “we’ve never heard from one actual employee or coach of a school.”

What they did hear were lucrative offers from agents, NIL collective boosters, family friends with connections to other schools, and third-party recruiters who have added another layer to the chaos of the NCAA’s transfer portal era.

“BYU came the hardest with the most money and the most aggressively,” Bill said. “They were basically saying, ‘Take it now. It’s on the table for 24 hours.’”

Utah defensive back Smith Snowden also said he was contacted by agents who tried to convince him to enter the transfer portal for a bigger payday at BYU or another program earlier this year.

“BYU wasn’t the only school, you know what I’m saying?” Smith said at Big 12 Media Days. “It’s kind of what the name of the game is — right? — with the transfer portal. I wouldn’t say that it was any tampering type thing.”

Tampering is easy enough to define. By NCAA rule, school officials and associates cannot contact a player directly unless the student has already put his or her name in the transfer portal. But it is harder to identify and enforce in reality, athletes and their families say.

“Would I call it a dirty business? Yes, 100%,” said Will Snowden, Smith’s father and a former BYU football player who now runs a high school recruiting agency. “College football has gotten to a point where I don’t know what’s up from down anymore.”

‘Is that tampering?’

Before ultimately entering the portal and leaving Utah for BYU in the offseason, star defensive tackle Keanu Tanuvasa and his father, Shawn, planned to meet one of Shawn’s friends — a person with connections to the Cougars — for lunch.

Some of Utah’s coaches found out, and Shawn received a call from one. “What are you guys doing, man?” Shawn said the coach told him.

The meeting was then called off.

“That was our only exposure to a possible meeting with a possible recruiter from BYU, but we canceled it,” Shawn said.

Shawn said neither he nor his son ever heard from any member of BYU’s coaching staff or athletics administration before Keanu entered the portal. He also said he ignored any calls from agents seeking to coax him to enter the portal and ask for a raise.

“So, is that tampering? When it’s just a friend of mine that is an alumni from BYU? Tampering is a weird way to define this when you have such interconnections between these two programs.”

The NCAA’s bylaws say tampering is when “an athletics staff member or other representative of the institution’s athletics interests” makes contact with a student-athlete or one of their associates to discuss recruiting “without first obtaining authorization through the notification of transfer process.”

In some cases, a violation is straightforward. Southern Utah University was penalized after head coach DeLane Fitzgerald contacted two recruits before they entered the transfer portal in 2024. Fitzgerald was suspended for two games, while the NCAA handed down a one-year probation and a $5,000 fine to the school.

But some cases are much harder to regulate, experts say.

The millions of dollars now paid to college athletes — thanks to name, image and likeness (NIL) deals and the $20.5 million schools can now offer athletes in revenue sharing — has created an industry of agents and intermediaries who want to drive up prices and take a cut in the process.

According to NFL rules, agents aren’t allowed to make more than 3% from a player’s earnings. Agents in today’s college football landscape will sometimes take 10-20% of transfer deals, athletes’ families and industry insiders told The Salt Lake Tribune.

“The agencies are shopping the player around and the player doesn’t even know it,” Brent Blum, the executive director of Iowa State’s WeWillCollective, said.

The same could also be true for proxies who claim to be representing a school.

“It’s hard because if everyone’s doing it, there’s going to be a hesitancy to really come down and drop the hammer on someone,” said Callan Stein, an attorney who has represented multiple athletic departments on NIL and NCAA compliance matters.

Blum doesn’t think any “real enforcement” will happen without federal legislation or until more programs pursue litigation.

This summer, Wisconsin sued Miami for “tortious interference” after freshman defensive back Xavier Lucas joined the Hurricanes without entering the portal. The ongoing lawsuit was believed to be the first of its kind, as the Badgers attempted to enforce the terms of an NIL contract.

Offers from everywhere

At times this offseason, Bingham Fano had to shut his phone off.

The father of Utah star offensive tackle Spencer and defensive end Logan Fano said he received “dozens” of messages from agents trying to lure his sons away from the Utes.

Spencer, one of the best offensive tackles in college football, received multiple seven-figure offers, his father said.

“I’ve just been bombarded at times,” Bingham said. “At the same time, I have to vet each one and do my due diligence to make sure that I provide my boys with all the information they need to be able to make an informed decision.

“The [claims are] like, ‘Whoa. Is this for real, or are you just playing games here?’ But the more and more we got into conversation, the more I realized that they were for real.”

Bingham said his sons considered the massive offers that were promised elsewhere.

“We’re just trying to maximize that window of opportunity,” he said. “Because it has an expiration date, and that’s been my philosophy the whole time.”

But, ultimately, Logan and Spencer stayed with the Utes because, their father said, they trust the coaching staff to get them into the NFL, where they could see an even bigger payday.

“They did take a discount to stay home,” Bingham said. “But at the same time, we felt, as a family, that Utah has taken good care of them in terms of NIL.

“They felt they got what they needed.”

In Smith Snowden’s case, his father said his son is making a “good amount” with the Utes. But, he said, agents speaking for other programs offered Smith as much as $500,000 more to leave Salt Lake City.

And the offers came from far beyond the in-state rivalry between the Utes and the Cougars.

“Of course, BYU is going to have investors who want to bring in top talent,” said Will Snowden, who runs Alpha Recruits, a player agency to help high school athletes connect with colleges.

“I get the war between Utah and BYU. And do I think BYU would love to sign my son if he was in the portal? Of course,” Will said. “The point is: A lot of schools would come after my son. If they think it’s an upgrade, they’re going to try to get him.”

Bill Lomu said he used one winter portal offer to get a raise from the Utes, even though Caleb had no intention of leaving.

The agent offered the projected NFL first-round pick $1.2 million to move to Washington for his sophomore year and $1.5 million more if he returned to Seattle as a junior. They also offered a $50,000 family-travel package, Bill said.

The Lomus never heard from Washington directly. But the offer was enough for them to take it seriously, the father said.

“What they’re doing is shady, but you kind of have to [use it] because it would be a disservice to Caleb for me just to hang up,” Bill Lomu said. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t say, ‘Hey, this is what the offer was.’

“We were actually able to get Utah to double their offer.”

Looking toward the future

Changes might be coming to mitigate these practices in college football.

The NCAA recently adopted a single 15-day portal window (Jan. 2-16), which could reduce the number of times programs and players renegotiate contracts.

“[It will] cut down on the tampering and renegotiations and that type of thing,” Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham said. “Then you know what you have, what your roster is. You don’t have to wait until after spring ball to know who you got on your team.”

Programs like Utah have also started to sign some athletes to multi-year revenue-sharing agreements in hopes of keeping them from transferring.

“We’re just starting, so it’ll be interesting to see,” Utah Athletics Director Mark Harlan said this fall. “But there’s language in these contracts that talks about possible loss of value if they leave. We’re just all going to play it out.”

In the end, though, the NCAA may not have the resources to effectively monitor potential tampering on its own, said Stein, the NIL and compliance attorney.

“Less restrictions equals more transfers, equals more opportunities for tampering. I think you’re going to see more incentives to tamper, quite frankly, from all the schools,” Stein said.

For now, college football’s big-money, wild west will likely stay as it is.

And the phones will keep ringing with offers.

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