There has never been more freedom of player movement in college basketball — especially with name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation, and as of December, unlimited transfers. It has become the worst nightmare for some coaches (who have long been able to move freely for other jobs): free agency every year. No sport has been impacted more than basketball.
A record 1,962 men’s players entered the NCAA transfer portal this spring, according to analytics expert Evan Miyakawa’s tracking. That’s more than five players per roster, on teams with only 13 scholarship players. The portal pool has grown by about 200 players per year since it was introduced in 2018, meaning the mark is trending to hit 2,000 players next season.
This is the third offseason that NIL has been a factor, and coaches know a lot more about their new normal. But they’re also constantly adjusting as players, coaches, agents and collective representatives get smarter about how to play the game.
For an insider’s look, The Athletic spoke to 36 people across the sport about how the transfer portal and NIL work in 2024 and what may be next. All participants were granted anonymity in exchange for their candor. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
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Players and coaches are identified by the level at which they participate. Low-major schools were designated as schools in conferences in the bottom third, 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.
New age of tampering
This spring, players officially were allowed to enter the transfer portal the day after Selection Sunday — but that doesn’t stop coaches and players from having “impermissible” contact weeks, if not months, earlier. Tampering in college hoops is nothing new, but it has taken on new forms.
High-major coach 1: Every one of my players except for the ones who went pro were tampered with during the year. Every one — by Christmas.
High-major assistant 1: I saw a list maybe four weeks before the season was over that had all the guys — not all the guys, but a good list — who were going to enter the transfer portal. I went back through at the very end, and I’d say 75 percent of that was accurate. … I don’t know how much of that is tampering, or how much of that is agents telling people, “Hey, these guys are about to come in.”
High-major player 1: If I wasn’t playing very much, or had a DNP, certain coaches would text my AAU coach or my dad and just try to get a temperature on what we were thinking because they can’t reach me. … Halfway through the season (around the new year) was really the first time some coaches started to reach out. My dad and my AAU coach would tell me if anyone texted them — which was really a lot. I’d say like minimum 20 people.
Low-major player 1: Nothing was direct — like direct contact with me. … At one point I stopped talking to the agent that was telling me the schools that were reaching out. It wasn’t that it was distracting, but I kind of felt that if I kept it going, that it could have become a distraction and I just didn’t think that was fair to do to my teammates or the coaches.
Agent 1: There’s this narrative that agents are shopping players during the season; I personally have never done that. Have I gotten calls from other coaches saying, “Hey, who’s going to be in the portal? Is this guy going in? What about that guy? Or that guy?” Absolutely. And then when coaches don’t get the answer they want, they run and cry that agents are making crazy demands or that agents are tampering. All the cases I personally have dealt with have been the coaches coming to us and tampering.
Agent 2: Coaches reach out to me on players at other schools that I don’t represent to see if I can reach out to them on their behalf.
High-major coach 2: You get all these calls: “Do you have any interest in (fill in the blank)?”
“Of course, the dude’s 6-10, 260 … Is he in the portal?”
“He’s not, but he already submitted his paperwork. He’s just not in yet.”
“OK. I’ll keep an eye out for when he’s in.”
Is that tampering? I mean I just said, “Oh, man, I’d love to have him. Oh, wait a minute. Is he in the portal?” You can’t even keep track because you get so many calls.
Agent 1: The shopping around without players’ knowledge is a very serious thing because it happens. I had it happen with a player who I’m very close to, who I represent, who he and the family are all high-character people. They had no interest in looking at other schools, and we made that very clear. I was handling that with the school, and then the school called me, “Why the hell are we getting calls that you’re shopping this player around?” And I said, “I’m not, I promise.”
Turns out, there was someone else claiming to be his agent, calling other schools, shopping him around — without any of our knowledge.
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Former mid-major coach: My best player had six agents reaching out to him during the course of the end of the year talking about, “Hey, you need to sign with an agent and transfer high-major. If you go back to (your school), you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.”
High-major coach 2: The hardest part is whenever you get like three different agents calling about one player, and you’re like, “Wait a minute.” Finally the third one, you ask, “Are you representing him?” And they say, “No, but I’m trying to. I’m in the mix.”
Agent 2: You operate under the assumption that if a guy’s an all-league player at a mid-major school, they’re going to enter. As far as high-major guys, you just have to work on intel and understanding who’s happy, who’s unhappy, who’s not being used enough. I think I move later than other agents. I think some people are pushing kids into the portal. I don’t push kids into the portal because I have relationships at all levels. It’s your job if you’re a good agent to have intel, right? You have to know. Information is king.
Floodgates are open
Due to recent NCAA legislation, players won’t be able to enter the transfer portal next spring until the day after the second round of the NCAA Tournament ends. But regardless of when the window opens, it’s a free-for-all the second it does.
High-major player 2: I put my phone in a different room and walked away; it was literally, I don’t know, 10 minutes later that it all flooded in.
High-major player 3: Upwards of almost 100 (called). If you don’t call back, they’re blowing your phone up even more. I had that for a cool two and a half weeks of just being on the phone all day long with different coaches and people calling my mom. In high school, I was a top-50 player, and this was way worse.
High-major player 1: I was taking every call — trying to see who it was, what the situation was like — and then we narrowed it down to about five or six Zoom calls. And then from there, we narrowed it to three visits.
High-major player 4: In high school, coaches are gonna say what they can to get you. They want to have you on their roster, but some people don’t really fit the schools that they’re going to.
But when you get older, you start seeing teams actually do kind of need you, and you do fit what they want. You believe them a little bit more and trust what they’re saying a little bit more, and you have friends that have played for them as well, so you also check in with them and see if they are real about what they say.
High-major coach 3: People beat up agents for messing with kids during the year, (but) if they don’t, they’re not going to get them. … Things just happen too quickly.
Agent 1: Anyone who builds their business on signing guys and trying to get them to enter the transfer portal is inherently not working in the best interest of their clients. They’re just playing chess and moving pieces around the board with these kids’ lives, and that’s their whole business — just trying to get kids to transfer. All the big, reputable agencies, their business falls apart if they don’t act in their kids’ best interest. …. If you’re not incentivized as an agent to be with someone for the long term, then you’re not going to work in their best interest.
High-major player 1: I’m with (an agency), so we would tell them all the schools we were looking at, and they’d call the coach, get a read on the situation, ask about the NIL department, get a number and get back to us about what it was. So they made the process a lot easier.
Mid-major plus player 1: I never talked NIL over the phone. I always wanted to talk in person. I didn’t want the coaches thinking that was going to drive me. I didn’t want to throw numbers around in case people say different numbers, and then coaches come back and say, “We got your number, but it’s a little steep.” Plus, it’s a business. It’s all about leverage and negotiation, and I didn’t want to give that leverage up early: before I actually got on a visit, before I got on campus to see if I actually liked being there.
High-major player 4: I didn’t know all the specific numbers. I don’t know the numbers now. My dad doesn’t want me thinking about all that.
High-major player 5: I had my representatives find out what my price was, what I was worth. … Obviously NIL plays a part, but I don’t think it was like a main contributor of where I chose I wanted to be. My goal is to play in the NBA, and I know there’s no kind of NIL money that you can give me to compare to what NBA contracts are, especially if you’re in the NBA to stay.
Mid-major plus assistant 1: It’s never the player (who brings up NIL first). Not one time has it been the player; it’s always somebody connected to the player. Right now, it’s probably eight, nine out of 10 have agents — or somebody acting as an agent. Somebody who knows the NIL world, knows how this works, but is not technically an agent. If they’re the one the kid trusts, they’ll call you and say, “What do you have for this guy?”
Mid-major assistant 1: Most coaching staffs are intelligently connecting them with the collective. Coaches aren’t supposed to talk specific numbers even though you know they are.
Collective rep 1: It’s just, “These are guys we want. Can you figure out the financial side of it?” From there, it’s just a matter of, “Yes it works,” or “Hey, we got a problem. If this is the guy you really want, this is the only guy you’re getting because this is a budget situation.” The coaches still do the recruiting, and they turn the financial piece of it totally over to us.
Low-major coach 1: A collective doesn’t know what the value of a recruit is. They don’t know the situation. They don’t know the roster. They’re not studying a basketball team’s roster saying, “This kid could be a potential starter, he’s worth $250,000.” They don’t know that. So someone has to tell them, whether it be the assistant or head coach.
High-major player 2: Another coach told me he couldn’t talk about it, but then some guy gives you a phone call and tells you he’s the collective director.
Low-major coach 2: They can say it’s the collective, but it’s the coaching staff who are negotiating.
High-major assistant 2: If it’s the other way around, then the collective is running the program.
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High-major player 1: They would tell us a certain number, and we’d compare to other guys that were in like my same situation and then maybe try to go up with that number or tell them what other schools were giving, and they could go up from there — or if it was a great number, you just stay there.
High-major assistant 2: When you get to that point, it’s offer-counteroffer. So it’s a little bit of a vetting process to see, is there a shakedown? Is the deal that they’re trying to leverage us with, is it real? And then from there, it’s just being honest with each other and being honest with yourself too. “I like him, but at what price point?” … If I’m signing him to be our fourth-best player, yet because he’s a transfer, he’s now our highest-paid guy, we got a problem. And I think understanding that dynamic is important. Don’t live in this world where, well, the other guys won’t know. Stop it. Stop it. Of course, they’re gonna know.
Mid-major plus coach 1: Even when a player commits somewhere, it doesn’t stop until the day they are enrolling in school. In the portal, there are no rules. They’ll say, “Why would you go there? We can give you double that or triple that.”
High-major assistant 2: Until May 1 or until your roster’s done, you feel like you are Jerry Maguire.
What’s next?
In February, a federal judge in Tennessee blocked the NCAA from enforcing rules prohibiting recruits from signing monetary deals with booster groups (like collectives) — and the resulting landscape is as unstable as ever. The House v. NCAA settlement, if approved, could lead to collective operations going directly through the schools, in addition to schools directly paying athletes as part of revenue sharing.
High-major coach 1: What I’ve seen is all bets are off. So I don’t know what “legally” is — what’s going to happen?
That’s why no coach is thinking about recruiting rules when it comes to NIL because nothing’s been done, nothing is going to be done, until these lawsuits go through — and I can’t wait for the moment it’s through the school because then hopefully we can have some actual rules.
High-major coach 4: These kids aren’t worth anything to any businesses. They’re worth money to the school — so the school should be the ones paying them. And so then if you do that, then it’s public record just like the other employees you’re paying, and then now there’s a level of transparency to it. It’s nonsensical to offload your payroll essentially to a collective.
High-major coach 2: The most logical solution is that the school will be paying these athletes as a marketing arm of the university, just like my salary or our women’s coach’s salary.
High-major coach 1: I would love it if we went salary caps by leagues. If you’re in this league, this is your salary cap. Right now, I feel like we’re Major League Baseball: There are some Yankees and Dodgers — and then there are some Royals.
High-major assistant 1: One of the hardest things in all of this is I feel like we’re constantly negotiating against imaginary numbers. When a guy has an NBA contract and somebody offers him a deal, you know what you’re up against. But now, all we ever hear is, (ACC school) is offering $2 million. Well, is that real? Is it not? … If they were employees, it would clean a lot of that up.
Mid-major plus coach 2: Weirdly enough, I know there’s people that are pushing really hard — outside people with their own interest. … They want revenue sharing; they want unionization. But to me right now? The players have it as good as you could possibly want it. They have nothing that binds on to anything other than a year. And so if they do decide to revenue share, if they do decide to take a little bit more of a professional model, then I think you’ll be able to see universities get back to where they can kind of hold some student-athletes accountable. Now you can’t hold them accountable because anything that you would try to do falls back on the antitrust.
Low-major coach 2: I don’t think either side, particularly the student-athletes, really understand what you’re signing up for. Because now you become an employee, your freedom of movement, your freedom of earning, it’s all set by the market. It’s not something that’s just a moving target all the time.
Mid-major assistant 1: They want to maintain this amateur status, and the reality is, there is no amateurism.
We have to get to a place where there’s some regulation. Just like in every professional sports market, there’s regulations. Then there has to be more collaboration, rather than just pretending like things don’t exist.
High-major coach 3: Where they messed up is they had such pressure to get (NIL and the transfer portal) going. This should have been handled a long time ago. But you just can’t throw this rule out into a pond, and yell swim and (expect) it’ll work itself out.
(Top image: John Bradford / The Athletic; photo: Mitchell Layton / Getty)
