How much does UConn pay its men’s basketball players? A lot.

As BYU freshman A.J. Dybansta scored bucket after bucket against the UConn men’s basketball team earlier this month, some fans may have wondered why the Huskies couldn’t have brought Dybansta, a Massachusetts native, to Storrs.

The answer: Maybe they could have… for the right price.

Dybansta and his family reportedly asked for $5 million, possibly more, from any program serious about recruiting him. Whether the five-star forward would have fit the Huskies on the court, signing him would have eaten up much of the program’s budget for bringing in new players and retaining its existing ones.

And so Dybansta wound up at BYU, keying a second-half comeback in what wound up a narrow UConn win.

This year, UConn’s athletic department will spend about $20 million in what is effectively salary for its athletes, not counting any endorsement deals players may receive. 

In the era of NIL — or name, image and likeness — a competitive college basketball team doesn’t come cheap. The recruiting outlet 247 Sports reports at least eight men’s college basketball programs are spending $10 million or more on their rosters this season, and CBS Sports recently named 10 programs said to be in that range.

UConn isn’t believed to be at the top tier of spenders but likely isn’t too far behind. CBS Sports reports based on industry sources that the Huskies were part of a group that could spend $8 million, or possibly more, if necessary to build a roster.

Multiple sports attorneys, consultants and other experts interviewed by CT Insider said that figure sounds about right for the No. 3 nationally-ranked team in the country.

“For those that are in the upper echelon really pushing to compete, I think that’s probably where you need to be,” said David Weber, a University of Oregon law professor who has closely studied NIL in college sports.

Where does the money come from? Under a recent legal settlement, schools are now permitted to pay players directly from their own budgets, though in practice the money often comes from wealthy supporters who are invested in a program’s success. 

In Connecticut and elsewhere, public policy has aided this surge of cash. As part of the state budget adopted this year, lawmakers created a new tax credit for donations to UConn athletics, maxing out at $500,000 per taxpayer and $5 million total.   

Connecticut Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Tuesday the program wasn’t intended specifically to help UConn pay players but acknowledged that is part of the budget calculation for any athletic department.

“I think legislators are trying to find ways to capitalize on (UConn’s) popularity, their ability to raise private funds,” said Ritter, a UConn Law alum and proud fan of the Huskies’ basketball teams.

Earlier this year, UConn athletic director David Benedict told CT Insider the school planned to pay athletes the maximum allowed under the rules of a recent legal settlement, currently $20.5 million. It’s unclear exactly how much of that money will go toward each specific program, though Benedict said in April that every UConn athlete would receive at least some payment.

Through a spokesperson, Benedict declined to be interviewed for this article or to answer written questions about NIL and revenue sharing at UConn.

For decades, athletes, advocates, school administrators, sports commentators and even politicians argued fiercely about whether college players should be paid or whether a scholarship was appropriate compensation for the millions they generated for schools. 

Today, that argument is over. Pay-for-play is here, and the only question for schools like UConn is how to manage it.

Over the past five years, college sports have changed seismically, first with new rules permitting athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, then with a new revenue-sharing model that took effect this summer.

Schools paying players went from strictly forbidden to technically against the rules but functionally commonplace to fully allowed and encouraged under the recent House v. NCAA settlement.

UConn, for its part, has worked to keep up at every step of the process, adopting an NIL policy, partnering with a third-party platform called Opendorse to help manage NIL, establishing a new collective to facilitate deals for athletes and pursuing additional revenue streams to prepare the school to funnel more money toward top players.

To compete for top athletes, experts say, schools must maintain a multi-pronged approach to NIL. Opendorse breaks down NIL spending into three categories:

• Merchandise sales, autographs, sponsorship deals, video game licenses and other traditional endorsement opportunities. This category will generate nearly $300 million for athletes this school year, according to Opendorse.
• Money given to booster groups supporting college sports programs. Whereas these collectives previously paid players directly, moving forward they are expected to function more as marketing operations.
• Direct payments from schools to athletes. This now accounts for the bulk of athletes’ income, totaling about $1.5 billion this school year, according to Opendorse.

Because the House settlement caps direct spending to athletes at $20.5 million per athletic department, schools must choose which programs to prioritize financially. Opendorse reports athletic departments across the NCAA’s 10 football conferences spend an average of $13.1 million on football players, $4.3 million on men’s basketball players, $1.6 million on women’s basketball players and $1.5 million on all other athletes.

With direct payments capped, endorsements play an important role as well in attracting athletes, particularly in sports where revenue-sharing money is harder to come by. Azzi Fudd, Paige Bueckers and other UConn women’s basketball players, for example, have endorsed a number of a products in recent years, including national brands like Gatorade, Bose, Chipotle and Nerf.

Though many of those major deals were likely negotiated independent of UConn, in other cases a school or its NIL collective might seek to arrange endorsements for athletes, which don’t count under the $20.5 million annual revenue-sharing cap.

“If you have a (program) that feels like we’re not getting enough from the cap, that might lead them to explore other opportunities,” said Braly Keller, director of collegiate services and insights at Opendorse.

Hundreds of current and former UConn athletes — including 10 active members of the Huskies’ women’s basketball team and nine members of the men’s team — are currently listed on Opendorse for anyone to solicit for social media posts, videos, appearances, autographs and more.

Want a volleyball player to post something on social media for you? That’ll cost you somewhere between $10 and $22, depending who it is. Want the football team’s backup quarterback to appear at your event? That’s $80. A video from, say, basketball player Carolina Ducharme? That’s $59. 

Meanwhile at the NIL Store, a platform for athletes to sell their own branded gear, you might find a Fudd-branded sherpa blanket for $99.99, a Skyler Bell hoodie for $64.99 or an Alex Karaban “holiday festive” T-shirt, for $39.99, among dozens of other items.

In October, the NIL Store announced UConn had four of the five best-selling women’s college basketball players over the past month.

For top athletes, though, experts say revenue from those T-shirts and Instagram posts is fairly trivial next to the real money coming directly from schools.

“It’s a nice little extra for some athletes, but it’s not where the bulk of the money is coming from,” said Weber, from the University of Oregon. “The bulk of the money is still coming into these programs from the collectives, the boosters, that are providing the vast majority of the NIL value to athletes.”

In a way, experts say, UConn and other basketball-first schools could have an advantage in the revenue-sharing era.

Bill Carter, an NIL consultant and professor at multiple universities, estimates many power-conference schools spend at least 80% of their $20.5 million revenue-sharing budget on football, leaving only about $4 million dollars to spread across all other sports. As a result, he said, men’s and women’s basketball coaches at those schools are boxed out of the market for top-ranked (and highly paid) stars.

UConn, on the other hand, has a mid-major football program that likely only pays a few million dollars for its roster. This creates financial challenges for UConn, which lacks the massive payout schools in major conferences receive, but it also leaves plenty of cash for the basketball programs to spend under the revenue-sharing cap.

Of course, whereas some basketball-focused schools might go all-in on men’s hoops, UConn is seeking to sustain a national powerhouse women’s team as well. Top-ranked women’s recruits don’t typically generate quite the same bidding war as top-ranked men’s prospects, experts say, but nonetheless may cost a school hundreds of thousands of dollars a season, if not more.

If a typical school, according to Opendorse, spends $1.6 million on its women’s basketball roster, a titan like UConn almost certainly commits far more than that.

Other UConn programs likely receive at least nominal revenue-sharing money as well. In the interest of spreading the revenue around, Benedict pledged earlier this year, before the House settlement was finalized, that every UConn athlete would receive at least some payment.

“We’re going to do the absolute best we can for all of our sports,” the UConn athletic director said at the time. “It is our plan that we would do something for every student-athlete at UConn.”

Though it’s unclear if UConn has followed through on that promise — the school declined to say this week — Carter called the idea “really cool and probably pretty progressive.”

“Even if they’re doing $1,000 to (each player), that’s a meaningful amount of money to most student athletes,” he said.

When possible, Connecticut’s legislature has sought to aid UConn in maintaining competitive sports programs, whether through allocating funds to renovate facilities or through passing a bill legalizing NIL even before the NCAA permitted it under its rules.

Earlier this year, lawmakers slipped a provision into their 745-page budget bill creating a new tax credit for gifts to UConn, with the understanding the program would be used for athletics. The idea, which never received a public hearing and drew little attention amid the broader budget conversation, came at a time when UConn’s athletic department has doubled down on fundraising in attempt to keep up with major-conference schools.

Under the new program, taxpayers who donate to UConn athletics or agree to endorsements or sponsorships with the school can receive a tax credit equal to 50% of their contributions, up to $500,000 a year. A $1 million gift to the athletic department, for example, would reduce someone’s state tax bill by $500,000.

The program is capped at $5 million per calendar year, meaning it may generate up to $10 million annually for UConn athletics.

“This innovative program creates a win-win opportunity for our supporters and our athletic programs,” Benedict said in a statement in September. “As the landscape of collegiate sports continues to evolve and become increasingly competitive, this tax credit program provides our loyal fans, corporate partners and interested businesses with a meaningful way to help UConn continue competing at the highest level while receiving significant financial benefits.”

Ritter, the Connecticut Speaker of the House, said the idea for the program emerged out of conversations with UConn athletics administrators about the current college sports landscape and the school’s desire to remain competitive across numerous sports even without a big-money football program.

“Look, UConn does not have the same revenue from a conference perspective right now that other schools have,” Ritter said. “This hopefully leverages the ability to raise private funds.”

Helping UConn athletics through a tax credit instead of an increase to the school’s block grant, Ritter said, satisfies legislators “who’d like to be helpful but are also mindful of all the other priorities in the state budget.”

What would he say to someone wondering why the state offers special tax credits for donations to UConn athletics but not for, say, donations to a soup kitchen?

“A competitive UConn means a competitive state,” Ritter said. “So yes, you can always pit priorities versus one another. But am I proud to help our flagship university? Yes, and I’ll never be apologetic about that.”

Weber, from the University of Oregon, wasn’t surprised to learn of Connecticut’s new tax credit. He cited other states that have passed other measures intended to benefit their local schools, such as a Missouri law allowing high school athletes to profit from NIL only if they commit to in-state public universities.

“When you have this patchwork of 50 different states and 50 different sets of laws, you’re going to get individuals who are trying to create the most advantage for their home institutions possible,” he said.

Several major questions still loom over the revenue-sharing landscape.

One concerns Title IX, the federal statute that, among other things, requires schools spend equally on men’s and women’s sports. To this point, elite colleges have proceeded as though Title IX does not apply to revenue sharing, paying far more to men’s athletes than to women’s athletes, while knowing legal challenges could change that in the future.

“That is a situation that is still most unresolved, whether or not Title IX should govern these NIL payments,” Weber said. “Right now, every university — at least every one that I’m aware of  — has taken the approach that Title IX does not apply to these NIL direct compensation payments.”

As a result, says Darren Heitner, a Florida-based sports attorney, even the best women’s basketball players probably earn about as much as “the fifth best player or the backup point guard” on a men’s team.

The argument against Title IX applying to revenue-sharing payments, experts say, is that schools aren’t discriminating against athletes on the basis of their gender, they’re simply responding to market forces.

Carter, who teaches classes on NIL at Boston College and the University of Vermont, offers what he describes as a minority opinion in his field: that it’s obviously wrong to pay male athletes more than female athletes.

“I cannot believe we’re seriously having a discussion as to whether Title IX should be applied,” he said. “Of course it should be applied.”

Though UConn almost certainly does not pay female athletes as much as male athletes, its focus on women’s basketball means it’s likely a bit closer than most other schools. If courts rule that Title IX applies to revenue sharing, UConn would likely be better positioned than competitors to adapt, though the Huskies could also then face more competition for top recruits.

Another unresolved question concerns what exactly constitutes a “real” NIL deal. Though all endorsement deals are required under the House settlement to serve a “valid business purpose,” schools looking to evade the revenue-sharing cap may seek to arrange dubious sponsorships for athletes as a way of funneling them extra money.

“That’s a conversation that is occurring on every college campus every single day,” Heitner said. “It’s non-stop.”

The newly formed College Sports Commission will be responsible for monitoring and approving NIL agreements, but it remains to be seen how effective the commission will be at snuffing out illegitimate deals. Asked in April how he expected revenue-sharing to play out, UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma said he expects schools to push the boundaries as far as they can.

“You think anybody in their right mind is going to stick to 20.5?” Auriemma said. “That might be what’s on the books. But that ain’t going to be the final number.”

Further complications are almost certain to arise over the coming months and years. All the experts interviewed for this article agreed the college sports landscape is far from settled, that changes will likely continue and schools will have to adapt further.

And whereas some observers figured the spending cap would reduce the amount of money for athletes, it now appears the implementation has led to more money paid to players, as major-conference schools see $20.5 million as effectively the cost of business.

“I’m not seeing any signs of slowdown,” Heitner said. “The only thing that the settlement may be doing is causing people to be more creative about how money flows to the players.”

Includes previous reporting from Mike Anthony, David Borges and Maggie Vanoni.