Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
If you’re a fan of the little guy upsetting the big school in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, your days are numbered. These days, it is entirely about numbers.
The days of Dayton, Loyola Marymount, Princeton, Miami of Ohio, Tennessee Chattanooga, and Richmond shocking the Big 10, ACC, and SEC are over. We’ll never see the Banana Slugs knocking off the Buckeyes or Fighting Illini in the opening round or any other upstart teams advancing to the Round of 32, much less the Sweet 16 or Elite 8.
For that matter, the odds of Utah or any Mountain West Teams are slim, and as the adage goes, “The odds were slim and none, and slim died.”
The reason is another set of numbers. Not enrollment, unless you count enrollment in a 401K, but simple cash. Dollars for players, that’s it.
Of the final four teams, Duke, Houston, Florida, and Auburn, the Blue Devils top the ranks, spending $21.4 million in Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) money on their men’s basketball team.
Cooper Flag, a freshman forward at Duke, takes a quarter of the NIL money, a whopping $4.8 million, just to play basketball. Yes, it is insane.
The Kentucky Wildcats spend more on men’s basketball than any other team in the nation, $24 million total. Duke ranks third.
Auburn dropped a lot of cash on their men’s team, too, $16 million total. Houston and Florida are practically paupers in comparison with the Cougars, spending $11 million, and the Gators, just $8,000,000.
In comparison, the Wyoming Cowboys spend $4,108,859 total on all sports, with the most going to the football team.
Auburn has an NIL fund of $122 million, Florida has $124 million, Houston, is close to the Wyoming Cowboys with “just” $22 million to entice football and basketball players. Wyoming has a pool of $18,676,631 and spent almost a quarter of it last season.
What do all these numbers mean? It means the top teams have the best players money can buy.
Gone are the days of the undersized, 6-5 forward taking a scholarship at a mid-major university, working hard to improve his skills, and becoming a driving force in the NCAA tournament.
We will never see a Wally Szczerbiak from Miami of Ohio, breaking onto the national stage with precision 3-point shots and driving layups again. If a kid shows promise as Szczerbiak did, he’ll be scooped up quickly by one of the Power 5 Conferences.
The SEC, Big Ten, ACC, and Big 12 have hundreds of millions of dollars, the SEC over a billion (yes, with a B) to spend on athletics. They toss a little to women’s volleyball and basketball, a bit to track and field, and a pittance to wrestling, but most of it goes to football and men’s basketball.
You get what you pay for in the modern world of NCAA athletics.
Duke doesn’t release their total NIL budget. With their billionaire alumni, the Blue Devils are one of the nation’s richest schools in NIL funding, but they work hard to not allow that to be made public.
NIL was created with the idea of eliminating illegal recruiting through unscrupulous donors and money-grubbing coaches and athletic directors. They missed the mark by a little bit with the NIL and its equally poisonous partner, “The Portal.”
Pay for play is the name of Division I athletics. If you can make the university a little money in ticket revenue, or better yet, televised events and corporate endorsements, you work for the best deal you can get.
We get frustrated when a Cowboy football or basketball player leaves the program for greener pastures, but the kids are just playing the game.
Gone are the days of Jim Brandenburg’s boys going to class, graduating on time, and being solid citizens on campus. Now, most of us don’t even bother to learn the players’ names since they’re only in Laramie to make a few bucks and then hop a flight for better deals the next season. It’s tough to build a fan base when the players are only mercenaries.
In the old days, the coaches made outrageous amounts of money in endorsements, equipment deals, and public appearances; they still do.
The players in those days received room and board, along with tuition and books. That was it. They were in college to get a degree, and athletic skill paid their way. They couldn’t get part-time jobs or help in any way from donors, or they risked losing their scholarships, and the team could face probation.
That came with a wink and a nudge.
An old joke shared across the NFL by head coach Hank Stram of the Kansas City Chiefs in a pre-season team meeting goes like this. “Rookies, we’ve got a new rule: you’re all getting the league minimum,” the quirky, energetic coach said. “I realize to you guys from SMU (Southern Methodist) that this represents a pay cut.”
In 1987, the Mustangs of SMU were the first team to receive the NCAA “Death Penalty” for illegal recruiting. They suffered reduced games, a limited number of scholarships, and were banned from bowl games. It sent a strong message.
Now, the infractions committed by the Mustangs are the rule of law across the entire NCAA.
The players were abused financially by the old system, but now they’re abusing the universities they supposedly attend. There has to be a happy medium.
The NIL and Portal have eliminated the mid-major programs such as Wyoming and the entire Mountain West Conference.
It’s all about the Power 5 Conferences. That’s why you see the idiocy of Stanford and California, just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean, competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Rival schools “only” 3,000 miles apart.
If it sounds ridiculous, it is. The only reason teams this far apart would become conference schools is money.
If a university is willing to foot the bill for millions in travel expenses and millions more in paying for players, what are the limits? And where does it stop.
There will be no more upsets. The big conferences and the big schools inside them will take all the talent, pay it well, and then cheer on their “amateur” teams’ success.
It is the end of college football and men’s division one basketball. They’ve become the equivalent of Triple A baseball.
If you ever use the term amateur with a DI football team, or a men’s basketball team, it had better be in a joke.