College Basketball Coach Says ‘Agents Have Taken Over’ Thanks to NIL

The Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) era of college athletics has its upsides and downsides.

To one Big Ten basketball coach, one of the downsides is agents.

In a recent interview with On3Sports.com, one Big Ten basketball coach — who was quoted anonymously — talked about the money and mindset of players in the NIL and transfer portal era.

He pointed out his biggest surprise of this era, which is barely five years old. It’s the money, but not quite in the way that you think.

“The biggest surprise is for me is the money for sure,” he said. “A player averages six points a game or is a 35-percent or above three-point shooter, and that can get you a million dollars. If I were an agent, I would tell my kid not to take threes after they got to a certain percentage. The agents have taken over college basketball.”

If the House vs. NCAA settlement is approved — and that is an open question as of this writing — the revenue shared with student-athletes will be in the form of full scholarships. Men’s and women’s basketball teams will get 15 scholarships each and those will be fully funded.

The House settlement is held up by judge Claudia Wilken, who wants the NCAA and the power conferences to address grandfathering in athletes that will have to be cut for each team to reach roster limits set for each sport. For instance, football will have a 105-player roster limit.

But NIL isn’t going away. Players can still strike deals to leverage that, though there will be a new process that much be observed.

Any NIL deal worth $600 or more will have to be approved by a third-party and must meet market-value standards that are yet to be agreed upon.

But even before the House settlement is approved, some programs are accumulating vast amounts of NIL money to bolster their rosters now before the NIL clearinghouse becomes a part the process. The logic? If the deal is done before the settlement is fully approved, previous deals will have to be grandfathered in.

There’s no real evidence that will be the case, but since the power conference commissioners will have greater oversight over NIL review, they could simply add it to the by-laws.

Several basketball programs reportedly have more than $10 million to spend when it comes to NIL money this recruiting cycle.