The Josh Allen Effect: MVP QB Keeps University Of Wyoming In National Spotlight

Josh Allen has become a seemingly endless publicity train for the University of Wyoming, bringing the university front-and-center media buzz and a national spotlight that money can’t buy.

A $2 million Super Bowl ad notwithstanding, Allen’s Cinderella story — and Wyoming’s role in it — has been winning unprecedented attention for UW across the nation.

Take third-year University of Wyoming student George Pollard as an example. 

When the junior mentioned where he was going to college after graduating from high school in western New York three years ago, his friends had all heard of UW and knew it was where Allen’s career had been made.

“It’s one of those things,” Pollard told Cowboy State Daily. “In western New York, the only reason people have actually heard of Wyoming is mainly because of Josh Allen.”

Every touchdown Allen throws and each new record he breaks becomes one more opportunity for the Wyoming backstory on Allen’s career to bubble to the surface again. 

Like the record Allen set Sunday night against the Pittsburgh Steelers, rushing for his 76th career touchdown, the most for a quarterback. That pushed Allen past former quarterback Cam Newton’s career total of 75 touchdowns, which Newton had achieved in 145 games.

Allen beat that part of the record, achieving his new record in 121 games. 

Allen is now one of just four players in NFL history to rush for at least six touchdowns in each of his first eight seasons. Notably, he’s the only quarterback of the four. The rest are all running backs.

Something To Prove

Everyone loves a great Cinderella/underdog story, and Allen’s is among the best. It’s also a story that’s closely intertwined with the University of Wyoming. 

While today Allen is widely recognized as one of the top professional football players in the world, he was rather infamously overlooked as a high school recruit before coming to Wyoming.

“He couldn’t run in high school,” his former coach Aaron Wilkins told ESPN in a recent interview. “I don’t know where he got his legs.”

Allen himself admitted in the same interview he was “so slow” in high school.

Allen seemed to have a lot of potential coming out of high school. But he had zero scholarship offers from Division I schools to show for it. Even his beloved Fresno State snubbed him, forcing him to start his football career at a junior college.

At Reedley College, he would throw more than 3,000 yards for 33 touchdowns, something Reedley’s offensive coordinator has described as “ungodly numbers.”

Yet still no love from Fresno State, which of all the possible Division 1 schools had been his No. 1 dream.

That left his choice at Wyoming, which was not only offering a scholarship, but told Allen it wanted him to be the face of Wyoming’s football program.

That was an emotional moment for Allen and his family.

He tried more time to draw interest from his dream school Fresno State. But when an offer didn’t materialize, Allen went all-in on UW, putting everything he had into whatever his coaches asked of him. 

That included an intense weightlifting program to build up his strength and drills to boost his speed and agility.

All of that dedication paid off. 

He would ultimately lead the Cowboys to consecutive eight-win seasons and consecutive bowl appearances in San Diego’s Poinsettia Bowl and Idaho’s Potato Bowl. 

After his junior season, his name popped up on prominent mock NFL drafts, leaving him with a decision. 

Should he try for the NFL now, or play one more season at Wyoming?

Ultimately, loyalty won out. 

“If I would have declared this past year, I may not have been ready,” Allen said in a Yahoo Sports interview in 2017. “Coming back, seeing more defenses and improving my decision making is going to help me in the long run. 

"And I also felt like I did owe these coaches something. They stuck their necks out for me when no one else did.”

Quantifying The Josh Allen Effect

Having so many people talking about Allen and the role Wyoming played in transforming his future is an undeniable benefit when it comes to marketing the University of Wyoming, Vice President of Institutional Communications Chad Baldwin told Cowboy State Daily.

“We’ve been able to shine a light, maybe a little more than we had previously,” Baldwin said. “And we’re very proud of our graduates, whether they stay in the state or go outside.”

The university doesn’t yet have concrete numbers for economic impact from the Josh Allen effect, but anecdotally speaking, enrollments are trending up Baldwin said. 

That includes the semester following the university’s $2 million Super Bowl ad, which aired in February in 25 markets across the nation.

“Where do legends come from,” the 30-second spot said. “Some start as dreamers even as they’re turned down again and again. But everyone deserves a chance to prove themselves.”

Allen then appears, talking about how Wyoming is “the place that gave me an opportunity to come here and play the game that I love.”

The ad wraps up with a direct pitch to future students. 

“We’re the team that believes you can do anything,” the ad says. “This is where underdogs come to shine.”

Not Just Allen

Baldwin said the college plans a formal assessment of both the Super Bowl ad and all the unpaid media attention it’s received in the wake of Allen’s many successes.  

“We’re hoping to put a dollar kind of figure on the value of all the media attention,” Baldwin said.

That assessment will include his Nov. 22 visit to Laramie and War Memorial Stadium, when Allen and his wife, actress Hailee Steinfeld, came back to Wyoming for a ceremony retiring his No. 17 jersey.

It was his first return to UW since he was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in 2018.

“And, certainly it helped that Josh has a very famous movie star wife who came here,” Baldwin added. “So, it was not just a sports audience that we were in front of this past weekend. It was a broader audience as well.”

While Allen has gathered the lion’s share of media attention, he’s not the only UW alumnus going out into the world and making an outsized contribution to UW’s success stories, Baldwin said. 

“The head of the American Trucking Association is a UW graduate,” he said. “And Carol Tomé, who’s the CEO of UPS, has had an amazing career. 

"She was the chief financial officer of the Home Depot for about two decades before she took this role at UPS.”

One student from Worland now works for NASA, while another more recent graduate has landed a spot with the Atlanta Falcons. 

“Kevin Rochlitz is a Powell native and UW grad who is a VP with the Baltimore Ravens,” Baldwin said. “He returns regularly to meet with students at UW.”

More recently, his daughter Riley Rochlitz, who graduated from UW as well, is now working for the Philadelphia Eagles. 

All of them are extending UW’s reach, along with becoming part of a story that Wyoming can tell about both its homegrown graduates and people who come from out-of-state.

“It’s a combination of people who, like Josh, have come here from out of state,” Baldwin said. “We give them a chance to shine and then they spread their wings and do amazing things. This is a springboard for both, (graduates) from within Wyoming and outside.”

No Regrets

Pollard says he didn’t choose University of Wyoming strictly because Allen went there.

One of the bigger points the college has going for it was the fact his mother had gone there for her degree. 

But he acknowledged the Allen effect did get his attention, and it was a “benefit.” 

“I’m a big football fan,” he said. “And so, the Josh Allen connection was just kind of like a cool thing.”

That cool factor helped ensure Pollard gave Wyoming’s program a close look, even if it wasn’t the deciding factor.

After getting his attention, though, it was still up to Wyoming to sell itself. 

Where Wyoming really won him over was affordability, as compared to his other choices. Those choices included a university in Kansas as well as the prestigious Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.

“(Embry-Riddle) would have cost my family over $100,000,” Pollard said. “Like, one year there would have cost all four years at UW for me.”

Pollard thinks UW probably can capitalize on the Josh Allen effect, particularly in certain communities. But the University of Wyoming will still have to work to convert the cool factor to actual enrollment.

Pollard, meanwhile, has no regrets about his own experience at UW.

“This has been fantastic,” he said. “It’s absolutely, like my expectations were washed away, immediately. It was just so much better than I thought it would be.”

During his time in Wyoming, Pollard has worked at Yellowstone and was a campus photographer for the student newspaper. 

He also interned with a newspaper in Douglas one summer, commuting there from Laramie three to four times a week.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.