From Fireball to Ol' Crimson: How Washington State Is Using Alcohol to Fund Its NIL Revolution
Somewhere between Pullman's wheat fields and Seattle's Pike Place waterfront, Washington State University's scrappy NIL infrastructure has quietly pulled off one of college football's more creative fundraising plays. While programs at Alabama, Ohio State, and Texas are writing nine-figure checks to keep their rosters intact, the Cougars have taken an entirely different route — building a consumer beverage empire from the ground up, powered entirely by alumni loyalty and the universal truth that Cougar fans love a cold drink. It started with a lager. Then came coffee. Then a vodka cocktail. And the blueprint all along was inspired, in part, by the mass-market cinnamon whiskey model that Fireball pioneered — proving that a mid-shelf spirit can move enormous volume when the branding is right and the fan base is thirsty enough.
The story of Washington State's alcohol-fueled NIL strategy is equal parts financial innovation, regional pride, and a hard-nosed acknowledgment that the Cougars can't outspend the big boys. They've chosen instead to outlast them — one can, one pour, and one alumni donation at a time.
The NIL Landscape That Made This Necessary
The House Settlement Changed Everything
Finalized in June 2025, House v. NCAA lets opted-in Division I schools pay athletes directly, capped around $20.5 million per school for 2025-26. It also created the College Sports Commission and NIL Go, a Deloitte clearinghouse, to review all third-party deals over $600. For a program like Washington State, that cap is both a ceiling and a challenge — because getting anywhere near it requires pulling cash from somewhere, and the Cougars don't have the endowment or the television revenue that the sport's biggest powers enjoy.
The sport is littered with hundreds of Washington States and Nevadas and Idahos that must re-establish their niches in a system where athletes can now go to the highest bidder. The transfer portal has accelerated that dynamic dramatically. Washington State Cougars quarterbacks John Mateer and Cameron Ward, who celebrated a touchdown run together in 2023, both left Pullman for multimillion-dollar NIL contracts. The message could not have been clearer: the Cougars' most talented players were being poached, and the program needed money it didn't have.
The Cougar Gap
Tim Brandle, a WSU graduate who later earned his law degree from Gonzaga University, is one of the central figures in the school's NIL response. He teaches sports law and ethics in Gonzaga's master's in sport and athletic administration program, and he also founded and now volunteers as the treasurer for the Cougar Collective, which was the original organization set up to provide NIL contracts to WSU players.
Brandle has been remarkably candid about the program's financial gap. "Unfortunately, for a lot of cases… schools of WSU's size and stature, it's become a keeping up with the Joneses scenario; that we have to be creative," Brandle said. That bluntness matters. Rather than pretending WSU can compete dollar-for-dollar with the SEC or Big Ten, the Cougar Collective has leaned into creative, grassroots solutions. As of September, the school's Cougar Athletic Fund had about $4.5 million to provide for NIL contracts, according to then-WSU athletics director Anne McCoy. Compare that to programs like Texas, Ohio State, and LSU, which are bringing in more than $20 million — an enticing draw for the nation's top talent.
WSU President Betsy Cantwell has been blunt about what's at stake: the school needs an additional $20 million a year in NIL and revenue sharing just to compete in the rebuilt Pac-12 that kicks off this fall. With that kind of financial mountain to climb, selling beer and cocktails isn't just a novelty. It's a survival strategy.
How the Alcohol Strategy Was Born
Looking Sideways at the Competition
The Cougar Collective didn't invent the idea of NIL alcohol fundraising. They borrowed it, studied it, and refined it. Wetzstein said the Cougar Collective noticed other NIL collectives introducing beers, particularly Iowa State and Boise State. Boise State's collective had already generated measurable returns from a branded golden ale. The Swarm Collective CEO Brad Heinrichs said the collective generated $30,000 in the first month alone of The SWARM Golden Ale sales. That kind of number, for a volunteer-run NIL shop with limited overhead, is genuinely significant. Brandle's team took note.
"We'd be idiots not to do it, especially with our fan base and alumni base," Wetzstein said. That fan base matters. WSU carries roughly 250,000 living alumni, a number that dwarfs most of the other schools in its new conference. The question wasn't whether to launch a product — it was which product, with which partner, and how fast they could move.
Ol' Crimson Legendary Lager: The Flagship
On a Tuesday in May 2024, Cougar Collective announced a partnership with Pike Brewing to create a new beer that would support their NIL efforts around WSU athletics. The choice of Pike Brewing was no accident. The Cougar Collective had searched the state for a beer partner since the previous fall, but ultimately ended up striking a deal with Pike Brewing after connecting with Seattle Hospitality Group founder and CEO Howard Wright, a WSU alum and former member of the WSU Foundation board of trustees. Seattle Hospitality Group owns a significant stake in Pike Brewing and Wright serves on the company's board. This is the connective tissue of Cougar Nation at work — alumni finding alumni, deal built on shared identity.
The beer itself was built to match the audience. Ol' Crimson Legendary Lager is a classic American lager brewed with Washington-grown Lyon Pilsner malt and Cashmere hops from the Yakima Valley to create a clean malt body and a light, refreshing hop finish and an approachable 4.8% ABV. This is not a craft snob's hazy double IPA. It's exactly the kind of accessible, crushable lager that goes down easy in a B-Lot tailgate at 11 a.m. before a noon kickoff in Pullman, and that's entirely the point. Ol' Crimson is just 4.8% alcohol-by-volume, offering Cougs the chance to polish off more than one in a sitting without losing major motor functions.
The launch was given star power courtesy of one of Washington State's most beloved alumni. The Cougar Collective introduced Ol' Crimson to the public on May 7 with a hype video starring a jorts-clad Gardner Minshew walking through a wheat field. In the commercial promoting Ol' Crimson Legendary Lager produced by the Pike Brewing Company, Minshew — who had recently signed with the Las Vegas Raiders after a 2023 Pro Bowl season with the Indianapolis Colts — was shown carrying the famous flag through a grassy field. The ad leaned into WSU's resilience narrative, the idea that Cougar fandom had survived conference realignment, roster upheaval, and institutional turmoil, and was still standing. "Our film crew only had about 20 minutes with Gardner to film," Brandle said. "He's obviously a busy guy. But they made it work."
A portion of the proceeds of all beer sales goes directly to the Cougar Collective to provide NIL support to WSU athletes. The financial projections were encouraging from day one. A source who requested anonymity said they expected Ol' Crimson Lager sales to exceed sales for Horseshoe Collective Golden Ale, the beer launched by Boise State's program. That would represent a meaningful monthly contribution to a collective that was, at the time, running on less than $5 million in total NIL capacity.
Expanding the Bar Tab: Coffee and Cocktails Join the Lineup
Building a Full Brand Portfolio
Beer was the headline, but it was never meant to be the whole story. WSU football coach Jake Dickert has been unusually involved in the NIL fundraising conversation for a sitting head coach, and his vision for it is broad. "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." Coffee joined the Ol' Crimson lineup as a branded product, giving non-drinkers and morning tailgaters another way to put money into the collective's pocket every time they run a pot.
Then came the spirits play — and this is where the Fireball comparison becomes most relevant. In August 2025, Cougar Nation got a new way to raise a glass for Washington State athletes in addition to the Ol' Crimson beer and coffee, when Paddock Spirits, an award-winning ready-to-drink cocktail company founded by WSU alumni, teamed up with the Cougar Collective and Ol' Crimson Booster Club to launch Ol' Crimson Legendary Cocktail, a vodka-based blackberry and pomegranate blend.
The choice of a ready-to-drink vodka cocktail format echoes the playbook that made cinnamon whiskey products like Fireball so enormously successful in the American market — accessible, flavorful, approachable, and built for social occasions. The idea isn't to stock the back bar at a Michelin-starred restaurant. It's to be in the cooler at the grocery store, in the hands of fans who can feel good about what they're buying. "This is a creative, unique way to raise money for NIL," Cougar Collective co-founder Luke Wetzstein said.
Paddock Spirits, founded in Pullman, has quickly made a name for itself in the competitive spirits industry, winning multiple gold medals and a "Best in Class" award at the prestigious San Francisco World Spirits Competition. That credentialing matters when you're asking consumers to choose your product off the shelf over an established brand. The cocktail is not a gimmick product cooked up in someone's garage — it's a legitimately award-winning formula wearing WSU colors. The cocktail began distribution through Odom and Northwest Beverage in Washington and Idaho.
Why the Fireball Analogy Holds
The comparison to Fireball Cinnamon Whisky is more than just a surface-level observation about flavor profiles and mass-market appeal. Fireball's ascent from relative obscurity to a billion-dollar brand was built almost entirely on community virality — dive bars, tailgates, college towns, and social rituals. It became the shot you ordered because your group was ordering it, and it kept circulating because the price was right and the taste was recognizable. Washington State's Ol' Crimson product line is attempting the same kind of community-driven flywheel effect, except the profit motive isn't going to a spirits conglomerate — it's going back to the athletes. NIL laws prevent athletes from promoting gambling, tobacco, or alcohol, meaning no current players can be seen promoting the collective's beers or alcoholic beverages. However, that doesn't stop former athletes like Gardner Minshew from appearing in promotions that will filter funds back to players through NIL agreements. It's a technically elegant workaround — former stars sell the product, current athletes collect the proceeds.
This is hardly the first time collectives have produced a beer or branded alcohol to raise awareness, and most importantly, funds for NIL collectives. Other collectives have created their own brands of alcohol, including Volunteer Club Vodka supporting The Volunteer Club at Tennessee. But Washington State's version is distinguished by its integration of multiple product categories, its use of genuine alumni-owned businesses in the supply chain, and the sheer sincerity of the pitch. "While other schools' NIL collectives rely on billion dollar donors, we had a better idea; beer!" That line, which appears on the Ol' Crimson website, is funny — but it's also a real strategic statement about how Cougar Nation is choosing to fight this war.
The Buyout Clause Backstory: When Players Still Leave
The alcohol revenue stream is creative and growing, but it exists within a broader NIL infrastructure that has had to harden its edges over time. The Cougar Collective has learned the hard way that creative fundraising means nothing if players pocket the money and transfer out before the season ends.
"The Collective has put buyouts in place to ensure that funds are recouped in the event a player were to breach an NIL agreement," a representative of the Cougar Collective who asked not to be identified said. "These are standard practice across the country. We first implemented them this year, and enforced it with multiple players who left after football season." The structure is now standard across the country. Examples of recent contracts include a Big 12 school requiring an athlete to pay 50 percent of remaining compensation if transferring before the deal ends. An ACC school required the athlete to pay back 100 percent of his earnings if he transferred before Jan. 31, 2026. A Big Ten player's contract required liquidated damages if he transfers.
The John Mateer situation put this tension in sharp relief. Washington State quarterback John Mateer had a $1 million offer to play next season at another school, according to Paul Sorensen on the Old Crimson Podcast. Mateer's total NIL compensation that season at Washington State was "probably starting to approach $400,000," according to a source close to NIL matters on the West Coast. Mateer had recently added two notable NIL pieces to his haul: a free lease of a truck through Valley Buick GMC, and a promotions deal with Northern Quest Casino widely estimated at between $100,000 and $200,000. In the end, the offer from elsewhere won out. The math simply doesn't lie at that level of compensation discrepancy, and no amount of Pullman loyalty can overcome a $600,000 gap.
Coach Dickert has spoken about this tension with the kind of unvarnished honesty that fans respect even when the message is uncomfortable. "In today's world, you can no longer just say passion and spirit is gonna get you by anymore," Dickert said. "It's just completely real, that the NIL matters. And the facts are Washington State, we're way behind." That admission — from the head coach himself — is what gives the beverage fundraising strategy its moral weight. This isn't window dressing. It's oxygen for a program that needs it.
Washington State Law and the New Freedom to Fight
For years, the Cougar Collective operated in a frustrating legal gray area. For years, WSU operated under NCAA interim policy and its own school rules instead of state law. That changed meaningfully in 2024. The current relevant law is Senate Bill 5913, passed in 2024. It cleared out state ethics restrictions that had previously blocked public-university staff from helping athletes with NIL. Now coaches and compliance officers at WSU can legally make introductions, advise on specific deals, and use university resources to support athlete branding — not just give general education.
The practical effect was immediate. The legislation allows WSU Athletics, including individual programs and employees, to support organizations out in the open. WSU football wasted little time, posting a statement from football coach Jake Dickert and tagging Cougar Collective's social media account with the caption "hey @CougCollective" on June 6. What had been a back-channel relationship between coaches and collective organizers could finally be conducted in daylight. "We have relationships with some of the coaches, mainly football, I would say in the past, but it was more behind the scenes, off the record," Wetzstein said. "Now it can be as public and as transparent as we need it to be."
The Volunteer-Run Model and Its Ceiling
What makes the Cougar Collective genuinely unusual in the NIL landscape is that it runs on volunteer labor. In this new era of college football, where players can earn money through NIL deals, the Cougar Collective is working to raise money for Cougars athletes 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 hopes to add wine. The 1890 Club, the Collective's recurring donor program, asks fans for $18.90 a month — a number chosen as a nod to the university's founding year. The Collective has nearly 2,000 monthly contributors. That doesn't include one-time contributions, which pushes that total close to 2,400, and the $350,000-plus the Cougar Collective raised for the WSU men's basketball program earlier this year.
Brandle has been remarkably transparent about the challenges of scale. A group of WSU alumni agreed to match up to $200,000 in donations, and that number is close to being achieved. Alumni matching programs, subscription clubs, a beer, a coffee brand, a ready-to-drink cocktail, and now the prospect of a wine launch — each individual piece is modest, but the aggregate tells a more interesting story about what a sufficiently motivated fan base can build without a billionaire in the room.
Still, the honest reckoning is that the model has a ceiling. Brandle sees the current free-market sports system as a great opportunity for WSU despite its continued status as a program that doesn't have the kind of financial support as those schools in the Big 10 or Southeastern Conference. The Cougar Collective was built to be creative precisely because being competitive in the traditional sense was never fully on the table. He pointed out that WSU has more living alumni, about 250,000, than all of the other schools in the new conference. That alumni base means clout. "Look, we are the muscle of the new Pac-12. We just have to flex it," Brandle said.
What This Means for Enthusiasts and the Industry
A New Category of Fan Engagement
For American sports fans — particularly those who follow college football and have a taste for the products that go with it — the Cougar Collective's model represents something genuinely new: a direct financial link between what you drink and what happens on the field. It's not a sweepstakes. It's not a charity auction. It's a branded product in the grocery store cooler where your purchasing decision has a measurable downstream effect on whether a linebacker stays in Pullman for another season.
Nationally, NIL deals are projected to exceed $1 billion per year, according to Opendorse, an NIL endorsement platform. As that number grows, so does the pressure on mid-major programs to find funding channels that don't rely on a handful of wealthy boosters. The alcohol model — low barrier to entry, recurring purchase behavior, strong brand loyalty among alumni — solves several of those problems at once. It democratizes the act of supporting your program. You don't have to write a $50,000 check. You can buy a six-pack.
The Spirits Industry Takes Note
For the distilled spirits and craft beverage world, the NIL alcohol fundraising movement represents a genuinely new partnership model. Paddock Spirits winning multiple gold medals and a "Best in Class" award at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition shows that these aren't vanity labels poured into existing products. Award-caliber spirits are being purpose-built for NIL fundraising contexts, which creates a legitimate on-ramp for smaller regional distillers and brewers to align with major university fan bases.
For Pike Brewing, the Ol' Crimson partnership connects a Seattle institution to a statewide audience of 250,000 potential brand loyalists. Pike Brewing Company, a Seattle staple since 1989, has been at the forefront of the craft beer movement in Washington State. The brewery's commitment to community engagement and social responsibility has been a hallmark of its operations. The deal works for the brewery too — distribution into Cougar-owned bars, grocery store placement, and the kind of organic word-of-mouth marketing that no advertising budget can fully replicate.
The Road Ahead for the Cougars
Washington State enters the rebuilt Pac-12 as perhaps the conference's most interesting competitive experiment. Brandle sees the current free-market sports system as a great opportunity for WSU despite its continued status as a program that doesn't have the kind of financial support as those schools in the Big 10 or Southeastern Conference. This season, the old Pac-12 holdovers, Washington State and Oregon State, are joined by Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Utah State and Texas State. The new conference is designed, at least in theory, to be a more level playing field than the old money-soaked version of the Pac-12. Whether that's true in practice will depend almost entirely on which programs can sustain NIL funding at meaningful levels.
For WSU, the beverage strategy isn't a long-term solution to a $20 million annual funding gap. But it's a real contribution to a real problem, and more importantly, it's a cultural signal. Every time a Cougar fan picks up a six-pack of Ol' Crimson Lager or cracks open a canned cocktail from Paddock Spirits, they're participating in the program's survival. That's a different kind of fan engagement than putting on a jersey or watching a broadcast. It's tangible. It's recurring. And it scales with the fan base in ways that gala dinners and booster luncheons never will.
"Ultimately, I don't care about anything else, other than my team winning, and my team was Washington State University," one collective co-founder 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." That's as clear a statement of purpose as the NIL era has produced. In Pullman, involvement now comes in a can, a bottle, or a bag of ground coffee — and every unit sold moves the Cougars one step closer to keeping the next great player from packing his bags for the transfer portal.
