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Burman Updates UW Trustees on Football, State of Wyoming Athletics
LARAMIE, Wyo. - Wyoming Athletics Director Tom Burman spoke about the state of Wyoming athletics while speaking to the UW Board of Trustees on Thursday. Football was on his list.
While Burman pointed to plenty of positives throughout the athletic department, he said football is a different story right now.
“The challenge that we're facing right now is: how do we get football on track?” Burman said. “Football is the one entity of our 17 sports plus two rodeo teams that when it's bad, when it's not performing, the fan base, the public views Wyoming in a negative light. So we have to address that.”
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Head football coach Jay Sawvel has an 8-19 record overall since taking over the program in 2024. Wyoming is 1-2 after last Saturday's 24-10 loss at Central Michigan. The Cowboys return home Saturday to face Hawaii.
Burman said turning things around starts Saturday as Mountain West Conference play begins.
“We are going to start by Saturday and get that moving in the right direction,” he said.
Does it mean the pressure is increasing around the program? Burman did not say that. He did, however, make clear that he believes Wyoming football needs to improve and specifically pointed to Saturday as the place to start.
While wrapping up his comments to the trustees, Burman brought up the football program again.
“Football's gonna - we're gonna get it figured out,” Burman said. “So just bear with us.”
The comments came as Burman updated trustees on the athletic department overall, with many positives.
He pointed to men's basketball reaching the NIT last season, wrestling finishing 12th nationally, and strong performances from several other Wyoming programs.
“Our women's cross country team is probably the best women's cross country team we've had in a decade, so there's a lot of positives,” Burman said. “We've just got to figure out how to bring football up to those other sports.”
Burman said Wyoming athletics is in a good position overall, but isn't where he ultimately wants it to be.
“As a whole, I would say we're in a good place, not a great place, but we will get to a great place sooner than later,” he said.
Money was also a major focal point of his presentation.
Wyoming had been distributing a little more than $2 million in revenue sharing to athletes in football, men's basketball, women's basketball, volleyball and wrestling.
“That was inadequate,” Burman said. “We were not able to recruit or retain at the level we need to.”
Wyoming has more than doubled its revenue sharing number.
“We are going to be close to $7 million in rev share going forward, which will put us in the upper half of the Mountain West Conference for rev share and make us much more competitive as we go forward,” Burman said.
Not all of those contracts are complete, Burman said, with some expected to be finalized during the winter.
He used men's basketball as an example of the challenge Wyoming faces in keeping players.
Per Burman, five Cowboys had opportunities to leave after last season for significantly more money than Wyoming offered.
“We would not have retained five players,” Burman said. “They all had offers to leave that were significantly greater than what we were able to offer.”
Burman also discussed the transfer portal and potential federal legislation that could change how often athletes can transfer without sitting out, including proposed legislation in S.4668 - The Protect College Sports Act of 2026, currently being worked on in Washington, DC.
He said limiting unrestricted transfers would help programs like Wyoming because of the school's history of developing players. Free agency each year makes things difficult.
“What we're good at here is developing players in any sport,” Burman said. “Doesn't matter if it's volleyball or football, we do a really good job in developing athletes. Right now, we're having a hard time keeping them.”
Tom Burman's statements clearly show he's closely watching football.
Editor's Note: We need to give Shea Foster of Wyo Nation credit for sharing the broadcast on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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