What's driving the rising costs in the transfer portal? College basketball confidential (2024)

Two years ago, reports that transfer guard Nijel Pack signed a two-year deal with Miami worth $800,000 triggered an uproar across college basketball. Paying that amount to a player who averaged 17.4 points for a losing team the previous season seemed preposterous to many coaches and fans.

Today?

“Just double it,” a high-major assistant told The Athletic.

“That deal would probably be a median income of a fourth or fifth option on a Power 5,” one high-major coach said.

A lot has changed since NCAA restrictions on name, image and likeness rights were lifted in the summer of 2021. Nearly all Division I schools, even the smaller ones, now work with collectives — third-party groups affiliated with schools that essentially collect money from boosters and distribute it among the athletes, usually at the coach’s discretion. Whether this system is technically allowed under the rules depends on whom you ask, but most of college basketball operates as though everything is allowed at this point.

“I’m not sure there are any rules,” another coach said. “That’s the thing that I think at some point there’s got to be a handle on. I have no idea what the rules are.”

Instead of rules, coaches primarily concern themselves with the size of the NIL budget at their disposal — a number that more than anything else could dictate their success. Coaches are spending more time than ever on fundraising for NIL, and to put into perspective how far the market has come in two years, let’s circle back to Pack.

As part of The Athletic’s broader survey of college basketball’s adjustment to NIL and the transfer portal, in which all participants were granted anonymity for their candor, 19 coaches and collective representatives shared their NIL budgets. A $5 million budget topped the group, and a select number of schools around college basketball are believed to be operating within that range. Because a men’s basketball team can have only 13 players on scholarship, compared to 85 in football, player salaries are higher on average. A $5 million budget for basketball would make the average salary of a scholarship player $384,615 — nearly equal to the salary Pack received that dropped jaws two years ago.

Still, there’s a wide discrepancy between what high-majors are spending and everyone else, according to the numbers we collected from three low-majors, three mid-majors, five mid-major pluses and eight high-majors.

(Low-majors were designated as schools in conferences in the bottom third of Division I, using KenPom’s strength of league metric; mid-majors are in the middle third plus the Missouri Valley; mid-major pluses are leagues seven through nine — the Mountain West, Atlantic-10 and American — and high-majors are the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, ACC and the Big East.)

With more men’s basketball transfers entering the portal every year — a record 1,962 this season, per analytics expert Evan Miyakawa’s tracking — will spending continue to rise, or will donor fatigue curb it? Are some of the reported salaries — which include at least two players receiving $2 million deals this offseason — inflated? We asked 36 people across the sport — coaches, NIL collective reps, players and agents — what the landscape looks like in 2024 and what’s next.

Quotes have been lightly edited.

Rising budgets

Mid-major plus coach 1: There were some schools that were really ahead of the NIL game. … Well, now everybody has that money.

Agent 1: There are some top basketball houses that are operating with $5 million. …. Then there’s a lot of schools that are top-tier in the $3.5-4 million range, and then there’s a glut of good schools in the $2.5-3.5 million range. I don’t really deal with many schools that have less than that.

Mid-major coach 1: We’re low threes (meaning $300,000). Last year my roster was $84,000.

Talking to these collective agents, at our level to be good, I think you need like $300,000. To be really good, $500,000. And I think at the Power 5 level, you need like a couple million.

Collective rep 1: It’s a moving target. The rumor was (rival school) didn’t have any money to get (a top transfer); they didn’t until they did. If you have a target and some clarity on what you need the money for, that number can change quickly. So “budget” is a very loose term. …

Are you fielding an entire team, or do you just need two guys? Do you need to take care of your experienced guys, and how on board are they already with coming back? Was your culture horrible and now you’ve got to fight to keep these guys from leaving, instead of it just being a formality of paying them a little bit more money to stay at a place they already love? There’s just so much to it.

Mid-major plus coach 2: I’ve heard of coaches told by their administrators they have one number for NIL, and two weeks later, their collective guy will say, “No, that’s not true.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars less, and they’ve already promised out the money. Now they’ve got to figure out how to raise it.

ADs are telling the coaches to offer more than even what the collective’s got. “We’ll figure out how to pay for it later.”

We’re upside down!

High-major coach 1: Our collective won’t contract any amount that we don’t have either 100 percent fundraised, meaning it’s there in an escrow account or it’s backstopped by a reputable member of the collective. … I think a lot of collectives pretty much are issuing out all these contracts in hope that they’ll raise the money throughout the next year — which is also called a Ponzi scheme.

I asked during the interview process of one job I was interviewing for, “What’s the baseline?” They’re like, “Whatever you need.” … There’s no baseline? Is that a real thing?

Mid-major coach 2: I don’t worry about how good the coach is. I worry about how big their NIL budget is. It used to be, oh s—, if this guy gets the job, they’ll do a hell of a job. They’ll recruit great, and he’ll coach well. Now if a guy gets a job, I just hope he doesn’t have a $500,000 NIL budget.

Where is the money coming from? And will it last?

Collective rep 1: We have around 3,000 fans donating now (for all sports at the school, but men’s basketball donors are “a large chunk of that”). I think crowd-funding is the way to go long-term. If you can get everybody to chip in, people have seen, “OK, I can do this small amount each month, and it is adding up to make a dent in this thing.”

Collective rep 2: Our focus is on the high-end donors, and there are probably 15-20. Every collective I’ve talked to that is sort of crowd-sourcing it says, “I wish we’d never done this.” Because you don’t get very much money and all people do is complain. I heard a coach say, “Some guy who gives me $10 is going to think he runs the program.”

Collective rep 3: We do have a group of folks who have helped pave the way, but nothing even of the magnitude where anybody creeps over $200,000 a year. So we have to rely on our strength in numbers.

The House v. NCAA settlement, if approved, will add to what schools likely will spend because now the school — not the collective — will be permitted to distribute around $22 million to its athletes. No one knows yet how that money will be dispersed.

Collective rep 1: If you’ve got $20 million and your competition has $20 million from a revenue-sharing standpoint that the school can actually put out there — all SEC schools are going to hit that threshold because of the TV money — that’s not going to be the problem.

But then it becomes how much of that $20 million are you going to send to each sport?

High-major assistant 1: You’d be surprised at how many ACC or Big 12 schools, because of the revenue distribution discrepancy, they’re gonna have to try to bring their collectives in-house to try to help get to $22 million. That $22 million all of a sudden, poof, has to exist. … The really big athletics departments — the SEC and Big Ten schools — will not have to bring their collectives in-house to get to $22 million. … Certain schools will fight like hell to keep their existing collective outside of the athletics department so that they can keep one-upping each other.

Collective rep 2: The biggest area collectives can thrive is working as an agent for the players. It will be less about who is the richest donor and more back to the traditional structure of what NIL meant.

If a kid is in the transfer portal, and he says, “OK, well, because all the schools have the same number in revenue sharing — and then one is offering me $100,000 and one is offering me $200,000 from the collective — what does that really mean? Can I play better here? Can I improve my stock?” And then the conversation includes, “Man, if I go to a blue blood, maybe I can get a deal with Nike or Powerade.” Because right now, no one is really focusing on those.

High-major assistant 2: Every fan base assumes there are all these donors out there dying to give to NIL — and that’s just not the case. The same donors are being hit up by the school, by the football team, by the women’s basketball team, by whatever other sports, by the university in general.

Mid-major plus coach 3: Let’s take the Big 12, for example. Everybody is putting in probably two and a half to $4 million in their collective, and somebody’s gonna finish 14th. How do they go back to those same people and say, “Hey, let’s put another $3 million in there?”

High-major coach 2: The money is probably gonna go to buy your ass out faster. You’re gonna start seeing coaches get fired — and we already are — in two years.

Collective rep 2: From last year to this year, the market value has pretty much doubled. And when you look at the stock market or real estate market, when the market corrects, it doesn’t go from 100 percent growth the previous year to zero. It kind of tapers, from 100 to 40 to 10, and then you kind of hit that point of capitulation where it starts to come back the other way. I just don’t think we’re there yet.

Collective rep 4: There are no signs of it slowing down. There’s always gonna be someone willing to give more than you gave, and that’s what drives the market crazy is that just because a handful of schools are willing to give more doesn’t mean that’s a realistic number or realistic value for you. But no coach wants to lose a kid because someone else offered more money.

Collective rep 2: One of the big things with NIL when it started was, “Hey, I get access or I get to do things with the team I’ve never gotten to do before.” That whole saying, “Never meet your hero,” well, once donors have done some of those experiences they go, “That wasn’t as great as I thought it was going to be. This guy’s just human. He’s also kind of an idiot.”

Mo’ money, mo’ problems for coaches

The lack of transparency in the market creates a world where coaches, agents and players try to use the information void to their advantage. As one coach said during a previous version of this reporting exercise, “There’s a lot of liar’s poker out there.”

Mid-major plus coach 1: Kid comes to visit us, and we offer him right under six figures. The agent we were dealing with calls a high-major who had inquired about him. They just lost their point guard. … So the agent tells him, “Well, (the mid-major plus school) offered him $175,000, but they just watched him play pickup with their guys, and he was killing. So they bumped it to $250,000. And so the offer is $250,000. He’s going to visit (another high-major school) this weekend. He’s got an offer for $300,000 from (that school). If you can match that, he’ll (come to your school).”

We only had three players on campus, so there was no pickup game. The offer never even got into six figures.

Mid-major coach 2: We had a guy who we were on his ass about something, like not playing hard. Wasn’t playing defense. We benched him, and he told the guys, “Coach is paying me $200,000, and he’s benching me.” We’re not paying anyone $200,000. He was actually getting $40,000. It had a very bad negative effect. He was just trying to manipulate the contract. His agent was calling our collective asking to renegotiate.

You can’t have a team meeting. “Hey guys, just so you know. He’s not getting $200,000.” … We’re gonna try to be better about it this year hitting it head-on. Meeting with each guy one on one and talk about it.

What’s the going rate?

We asked the coaches, collective reps and agents making the deals and the players receiving them what the going rate is for a quality high-major transfer.

Player 1: About $200,000.

Player 2: A lot depends — in terms of their social media presence, the school, the resources, the conference — but I’d say low ballpark average, give or take 200 grand. And I’m really low-balling it.

Player 3: I’d say like $400,000 minimum for a lot of guys.

Player 4: Six figures for sure. $300,000 to a million.

Player 5: I’ve heard north of $600,000 a year for a really good utility guy.

High-major assistant 1: The amount of guys in college basketball that are making a million dollars I think would shock the average fan. And that same guy two years ago was making $300,000. The speed that these numbers are multiplying is almost directly related to agents looking at this a little bit like in the movie “Casino” when Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci left New York and got to Vegas, like man, there’s no rules.

Agent 1: I’ve seen offers in the $1.5 to $1.7 (million) range, for one player, in guaranteed donor money. That particular player chose not to take that; the fit wasn’t as strong. So I would say in the $1.3 to $1.5 (million) range, is the highest signed deal I’ve done.

Agent 2: I’m embarrassed because I haven’t broken a million yet, and I feel like I should. Biggest deal I’ve done was one year for $785,000.

Player 6: You hear online about the amount of money that other kids are making … but I just don’t know how true that stuff really is.

Collective rep 2: The biggest number that’s been brought to us is $2 million for one year. Some of these schools have stupid money right now, and they’re desperate. The first time I got asked for a million dollars, I thought it was a joke. I said, “We might be out, but give me a couple days.” The next day, he signed with a school I’ve been told has three boosters who’ve basically told the staff, “You have a blank check.”

You start sniffing around and find out a lot of places are giving out $750,000, $1 million deals — or they’re just making promises, and they’ll never pay it. A lot of these schools are still operating the old way. Let’s say you’ve offered a kid a legitimate contract for a million; they go to the other schools and say give us $1.2 million. But what those schools are really doing is writing a $100,000 check to the AAU coach and $100,000 check to the high school coach, who are telling him, “You can trust them,” knowing the school ain’t giving the kid s—.

Negotiating in the portal era: ‘What’s your number?’

High-major coach 3: Players are walking in, and they’re saying they want to know what their value is, and they want to know how much I appreciate them. You can say, “I can’t wait to coach you next season,” but if there’s not NIL showing that, then they’re leaving.

High-major assistant 2: We keep coming up against $2 million for a guy. … So many agents have said, “Well, we have a $2 million offer — we haven’t taken it — but we have the offer.”

Why haven’t you taken it?

Player 4: There was one (offer) in particular that I was like, “That’s a crazy number.” It was over seven figures. But they told me that it was real. They were gonna show me a contract and everything. But I wasn’t considering that school.

Mid-major plus assistant 1: (One player they were recruiting had a coach tell him,) “We want you so bad that if you’ll commit, we’ve got a f—ing blank check for you. What’s your number?”

Straight from the head coach.

Did he go there? Nope. He thought it was bulls—.

High-major assistant 1: You end up negotiating against a rumor, and it’s impossible to get really good clear intel about what’s factual and what’s not.

High-major coach 3: It’s not just the crazy money offers, but sometimes a kid is like, “Well, I’m getting this and this and this and this from this other school. What can you do?” And you’re going, “Holy s—, that’s what they’re doing for you guys?” … That’s the thing I’ve heard about more this year than last year: perks. It’s the cars, the apartments, it’s travel vouchers, airline tickets.

Mid-major plus coach 4: One of our guys got $600,000, an apartment and an Uber account.

High-major assistant 2: We’ve heard a lot of stories about guys who have huge car deals. That seems to be the No. 1 thing for elite high school prospects.

Collective rep 2: As long as it’s in an NIL contract. Appearances, autographs, social media posts, private clinics — literally anything under the sun that the collective or the marketing group or whoever could monetize. … If these donors are putting this money in and they say, “My daughter has a birthday party on Dec. 14,” and you guys play at 7 but her party is at noon, guess what? Practice schedules are changing, and you’re going to the birthday party at noon.

Low-major coach 1: I remember when you could violate an NCAA rule for putting cream cheese on a bagel. Was there cream cheese or not?

High-major assistant 3: A guy called and said, “Hey, I can get you this guy for $150,000. He’s transferring from a high-level school.” The kid scored two points per game. I said, “You want $75,000 a point?”

Then I had an agent who called out of nowhere and said, “I can get you this guy for $125,000,” and we talked to the kid, and he said, “I’ve only talked to that guy once, and I’m not using him as my agent at all; he doesn’t speak for me.” The kid wanted to come anyway.

High-major assistant 1: It’s metastasizing off of each other, right? Like, high school kids are looking at last year’s portal class and starting their numbers there. And then portal class kids are starting their numbers based on what the high school kids got and started their numbers there.

Player 1: I think anyone who left (my previous school) has doubled, tripled, quadrupled. It was a huge sacrifice to cut the pieces of pie that go into winning, but I would put this into NIL, too. When you’re taking a smaller cut — like, say you’re in the pros and you take a smaller cut to win — and when it’s not translating to wins or success, that’s when guys have to go out and find things that work.

At the end of the day, kids are making money, and it doesn’t really matter the amount — and if kids don’t like it, move on and find your money somewhere else so you can’t complain.