From under-the-table to NIL: You just can't keep a good booster down

Hello. Sorry, I’m a little late today. I’m on West Coast time. It’s normal for me, but hours behind for you. 

Why don’t we jump right in?

Now that the Brendan Sorsby situation is over, I want to say something I think most people were thinking, but didn’t want to publicly bring up. The reason it was ridiculous to play him was because there was a decent chance that, despite Texas Tech’s best efforts, Sorsby would relapse. Addiction diagnosis aside, kids are kids, and they make the same mistakes over and over. 

Had Sorsby been an adult, that’s something we wouldn’t have had to worry about. Because when adults make mistakes, they learn their lessons, and they never do anything wrong ever again. 

Which is why I see no problem with a school welcoming an individual with a troubled past back into the fold, even after an entire conference and a state attorney general’s office said that person should not be with the team. 

Texas Tech ain’t the first place where something like this has happened. 

I’ve been writing about big-time donors a lot lately. I think it’s really important to know who is funnelling gobs of money into this sport. As one very influential one showed last week, they have a lot of sway. They’ll do anything to win football games. 

And because schools need the money, there isn’t much incentive to say no to their checks.

I’ve covered boosters at Texas and at Texas Tech, and one school I didn’t name, using them to paint a larger picture of the sport’s thirst for dollars.

But I can’t vaguepost for too long. I got loads of records back from the University of Washington’s “Go Big” fundraising initiative, which aims to raise $300 million from the school.

It’s been a great success. In the first year, the school brought in $123 million. Which led them to raise the target by another $50 million. As you know, it’s never enough. 

Included in the records was a list of over 4,000 prospects, which makes up a fascinating slice of America’s upper crust. Three have a giving capacity of over $100 million. Unfortunately for Washington, those options all suck. One is a corporation, Wells Fargo. I don’t know why the bank was on the list. It’s given less than $40,000 in 30 years. 

The other two are individuals. The first is Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle. His daughter attended the school. And while he’s donated over $700,000 to the athletic department, he’s extremely unlikely to truly bankroll it. Boyle is an Oregon alum, and he sits on the Ducks’ board of trustees. 

The other whale didn’t go there, either. It's Steve Ballmer, the world’s tenth-richest man. He’s worth over $100 billion, but the entirety of his giving to the athletic department is just $25,600. Garbage. 

In his defense, he has donated $149 million, but only for not fun things like learning. 

It’s an issue one booster was keenly aware of, telling the Wall Street Journal in 2013, “We don't have that one crackpot eccentric CEO that puts his money where his mouth is.”

That’s not quite true in 2026. The school’s athletic department is propped up by one very big business: Nordstrom. All three children of the department store’s founder attended business school at the University of Washington. The family’s various heirs have put over $82 million into the athletic department.  

So if you’ve ever shopped there, you’ve been accidentally helping the Huskies thrive. The school has other CEOs and founders as well. If you’ve signed a lease with DocuSign, you’ve indirectly put money into the program. Shop at Costco? Part of that bulk paper towel purchase went to Washington

Further down the list is James Kenyon. He ranks 30th in lifetime donations to athletics (at least of people on this spreadsheet). Across three decades, he’s given a little under $2 million.

It might be a little more than that, though. That figure doesn’t count cash given to players under the table. 

In the early ‘90s, the Huskies were a powerhouse, winning two straight Rose Bowls. Their 1991 victory in Pasadena capped an undefeated season, and they were part of a split national title with Miami, finishing first in the Coaches Poll. 

In 1992, they made their third straight Rose Bowl. But a week before the game, the Los Angeles Times dropped a massive investigation that shed light on the cadre of boosters surrounding the team.

The story alleged that Kenyon, a California real estate developer, was one of a few individuals giving no-show jobs and cash handouts to players. He reportedly kept the fertile recruiting ground of Southern California flush with Husky cash. It was a system that went on for nearly a decade. The school’s coach, Don James, was accused of being aware of it, too. 

Kenyon responded in a manner that would make Cody Campbell proud, proclaiming that while he played by the rules, everyone else did not. 

“I can tell you right now, I know of a lot of improprieties at other schools, because I used to see [such activity] all the time … but I’ve played by the book.”

His staunch denial did not land. The PAC-10 came down hard on the school. Washington was put on probation, lost scholarships, and was given a two-year postseason ban.

James, who was about to coach his 18th season, resigned immediately, issuing a histrionic statement of persecution. 

“I have decided I can no longer coach in a conference that treats its players and coaches so unfairly,” he said. 

The day before the sanctions dropped, the university reportedly tried to distance itself from the boosters. The Times said that the Washington state attorney general’s office informed Kenyon that he was banned for an indefinite period of time. 

You’d think that secretly paying players, violating the NCAA’s most sacred (at the time) rule, would be enough to keep someone away from a program permanently. A school could very easily refuse to welcome them back. 

But no. That kind of morality is only reserved for players. It doesn’t apply to adults with money.

According to the documents FOIAball received, Kenyon has now given to the school’s athletic department for 28 consecutive years. Which means the Huskies started taking his money again in 1997, just four years later.

It’s not like he admitted fault and pledged to clean up his act. He was the booster bemoaning the school’s donor class to the Wall Street Journal. In that article, two decades later, he called the PAC-10 investigation a “witch hunt.” 

Washington isn’t keeping him at a distance, either. Kenyon later got an award from the Tyee Club, the school’s fundraising arm. And, to his credit, he embraced a slightly more legitimate way to pay players. 

According to the records, Kenyon’s most recent event with the athletic department was a $25,000-a-plate dinner in 2024 for the school’s NIL venture, Montlake Futures. The speaker? Bill Belichick, whose son Steve had just been hired as defensive coordinator. 

It’s also a wild example of how much the sport has changed. That year, according to Montlake’s IRS filing, it gave out $8 million in appearance fees (read: money to players). In 1993, the no-show jobs Kenyon was accused of hiring players for paid $10 an hour. 

Right or wrong, I imagine he was a hoot to talk to that night. 

I’ll see you next week!

Dubs by Steph Chambers / Staff; Money stack by JESPER KLAUSEN / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY