Western Kentucky Director of Athletics Todd Stewart has enjoyed a smoother path than most in his position in terms of fielding a college football program.

In this era of constant roster turmoil with the advent of the greatly expanded NCAA transfer portal and the ability of programs to directly pay players and provide near unlimited Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) opportunities, the financial arms race among competing schools has led to something of a feeding frenzy as those institutions with greater resources routinely pluck away talent from those with less.

WKU, as a member of college football’s Group of Six conferences, has certainly not been immune to the chaotic year-to-year change. The Hilltoppers have routinely seen dozens and dozens of players enter the portal over the last few seasons, losing some while retaining others. Combined with the coaching profession’s constant churn in search of upward mobility and the challenge to field a competitive football program on a consistent basis has never been more difficult.

The Hilltoppers have something most of their peer programs have not enjoyed over the past seven seasons – remarkable stability, thanks to head coach Tyson Helton. While the players and much of his coaching staff continue to change year to year, Helton’s constant presence has been the unifying force in one of the most successful stretches in WKU football history.

“Times are different,” Stewart said during a news conference last week. “You can’t really evaluate programs today the way you did 10, 15 years ago because the rules aren’t the same. That doesn’t mean our goals have changed – they haven’t. But I just think Tyson deserves tremendous credit for what we have achieved because you look at his tenure here, particularly the last three to five years with the enormous roster turnover every year, a lot of coaching staff turnover every year — he is kind of the one constant. And year in and year out, he builds it and we’re still successful. I think that doesn’t happen unless you know what you’re doing. And there will be a day when he’s not our coach. He won’t be here forever, but I have a feeling when that day comes and there’s a new coach here the resume of whoever that person is it won’t stack up to what Tyson’s is. So I think we’re fortunate to have him, I’m thrilled that he’s here and I think he does a great job.”

The numbers bear that out – Helton has consistently kept WKU among the best programs in Conference USA, twice playing in the CUSA Championship while reaching a bowl game seven straight seasons. This past year, the Tops just missed out on a third CUSA Championship appearance, but still wrapped up a 9-4 season with a 27-16 win against Southern Miss in the New Orleans Bowl. Helton is 5-2 in bowl games at WKU.

Helton has maintained that consistent standard despite the constant challenge of replacing star players poached off the roster and finding new additions to a staff regularly raided by other programs looking to import some of the success WKU has enjoyed during his tenure.

Stewart said that of the 136 programs currently at the FBS level, only two G6 schools – WKU and James Madison have won eight-plus games five years in a row, while only four Power 4 programs have accomplished the same feat. WKU’s eight bowl wins since the advent of the College Football Playoff era in 2014 is tied for second among all FBS schools.

“I think Tyson deserves all the credit in the world,” Stewart said during a news conference last week. “I think he does a phenomenal job as our football coach. The success we have year in and year out in an enormously competitive environment is really remarkable with what he’s been able to do and the values that he instills in our players and our program. Western Kentucky University is fortunate to have Tyson Helton. I mean, we really are. You look at the success that he’s had over the seven years that he’s been here, and he’s still here. That level of loyalty … I mean, this was Willie Taggart’s alma mater and he left after three years. Bobby Petrino was here one year. Jeff Brohm was here three years.”

Brohm won back-to-back CUSA championships in 2015-16, the last time WKU has won a conference title in football. Helton has yet to accomplish that, with two runner-up finishes. Before Brohm’s two-year run, the Hilltoppers’ only conference titles in a 34-year span came at the FCS level — a 2000 Ohio Valley Conference title, then a 2002 Gateway Conference crown.

“Certainly our goals are always going to be high,” Stewart said. “And it starts with winning a bowl game, it starts with winning a conference championship. We always want to do well in nonconference play. And we haven’t won a conference championship in awhile, but we’ve come close. You don’t get trophies for coming close and I’m not trying to insinuate that you should, but we made the championship game in 2021, we made it again in 2023 and we were a field goal away from making it this year. But that in and of itself shouldn’t take away, in my opinion, from all that’s been accomplished. I know that sometimes the narrative makes it seem like we were winning conference championships left and right before Tyson was the head coach and that’s not true. I mean, from 1981 to 2014 – that’s a 34-year period (that) Western Kentucky football won two conference championships.”

Stewart sees no immediate end to the current chaotic state of college football, but he does have a few ideas of how to improve the landscape by providing some additional stability.

“To me there’s only two ways out of this, and both of them have been talked about,” Stewart said. “One is for Congress to pass nationwide legislation with the same rules for all 50 states. I’m not real optimistic on that happening anytime soon. I mean, that would require a level of bi-partisan cooperation that doesn’t seem to exist very much in Washington, D.C. And that would have to happen for this to happen, so I don’t know that that’s imminent. And then the other way that it could be resolved would be like the pro leagues have – have a collective bargaining agreement where there is rules and guidelines that everybody agrees to.

“But I don’t know that that’s imminent either because who would the representative be for each side? There’s not an individual or even a body, so to speak, that speaks on behalf of all the teams and all the leagues. The conferences work together on some things, but they’re enormously competitive in other things. And who would represent the players? Who would be the players’ spokesman? I mean, all that stuff would have to get ironed out and I don’t think that happens in the short term. One thing I do hope happens at some time, and we’ve talked about this before, but I do wish they would consolidate the TV deals. Every conference kind of undermines each other with their own TV deal.”

Providing some guardrails to the current unfettered transfer options for players would also help all college programs, not just WKU.

“It’s just too much chaos,” Stewart said. “I do think athletes should be allowed to transfer under some guidelines. To me, one thing that seems fair is that you get one. You get one transfer, you can use it whenever you want without sitting out, but when you use it, you use it. Right now, you have everybody agrees with the rules until they meet upon a rule that doesn’t benefit them and then they sue or they appeal or they file a waiver or something like that. And that stuff never stops. If everybody would agree that you could have one year that you could transfer without sitting out but there’s no more waivers or appeals or anything else, that would clean things up a lot.

“And then on top of that you could even add that any time your head coach leaves for any reason — if the coach is fired or if the coach leaves to take another job – then you get to transfer also because then you’re playing for a head coach that would be different than who you can for. It just seems like if you had those two criteria – you get one, plus the bonus of when your head coach leaves – that seems very fair. That would still give athletes a lot of freedom, but it wouldn’t have the unlimited chaos that we have right now.”

Having Helton, who has proven adept at finding talented replacements from all levels of football in the transfer portal to replenish his roster, has helped WKU endure the constant change that is now the norm in college football. But even that stability can only do so much when more than ever on-field success is tied directly to financial resources.

Stewart said WKU is competitive with peer programs, but must continue to see growth in the “three pillars vital to success financially” – individual, corporate and university support.

“I think right now we are in a good position,” Stewart said. “We’ve had a lot of private support within the community, which has really helped out a lot. That continues to grow every year. What I mean is the cost of players continues to grow every year because we have unlimited free agency. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who’s a big NFL fan and he was asking me what this is like, and he said it must just be crazy with all the players transferring. And I said well, can you imagine if every NFL player was a free agent every single season? And he said oh, that would be insane. And I said, that’s what we have.That’s where we are in every sport. It’s hard to navigate through that. It’s never been harder on coaches to manage a roster than it is now. Certainly, it comes down to finances.”