NIL
How Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes sees transfer portal, NIL
Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes nearly shuddered.
The question posed during the Volunteers’ annual Big Orange Caravan stop in Memphis on April 29 — this year at the Memphis Botanic Garden — was hypothetical in this case.
How would you handle rebuilding a roster almost from scratch, given the current climate of college athletics, where the number of players in the transfer portal tops several thousand each year, and the amount of money being paid to many of those same players is several hundred thousand dollars — in some cases, millions?
The mere thought of having to do it, especially now at the height of the NIL era and at the dawn of the revenue-sharing era — nearly gave Barnes the chills.
“I don’t know what it would feel like to have to put together a 12-man roster right now with the numbers that are being thrown around,” he said.
But it is a stark reality for many people in his position, including Penny Hardaway. The eighth-year Memphis basketball coach might have just one player (Dante Harris) back from the 2024-25 season.
Part of that depends on what All-American guard PJ Haggerty decides to do. He entered the transfer portal recently and is reportedly seeking at least $4 million to play somewhere next season. Another part of it depends on whether the NCAA will grant all-conference big man Dain Dainja’s waiver request, which was recently submitted, multiple sources told The Commercial Appeal on April 29.
If neither Haggerty nor Dainja are back, though, Hardaway would be living what Barnes desperately hopes he’ll never have to. It’s a situation he and his program work hard to avoid. He credits his coaching staff for scouting the right players, not only from an athletic standpoint, but also a personal fit.
Barnes is also a firm believer in setting and sticking to a strict standard.
“We have a limit we’ll go to,” he said in reference to how much money Tennessee basketball will spend on a player.
Most often, Barnes never has to find out what would happen if his team and a prospective Volunteers player can’t come to an agreement. But it has happened, he admits. Recently, as a matter of fact.
“It’s happened this year,” he said. “We’ve been involved with guys that truly wanted to go to the University of Tennessee, but they were looking for more money than we were able to provide.
“We know how far we’re willing to go with each prospect and that’s the cutoff. If someone else offers them more, we would say, ‘Hey, good luck. We just can’t get there.’ I’d like to think we’d never put ourselves in a desperate situation, to where we feel we have to overspend in areas that we shouldn’t.”
What Rick Barnes said about UT-Memphis basketball series
The Tigers and Vols have not met in men’s basketball since December 2020.
It was the second game of a three-game agreement. The first was played at FedExForum in 2019, while the second was in Knoxville. Tennessee won the first game, Memphis the second.
The rubber match was set for 2021 in Nashville, but it was called off prior to tip-off because of positive COVID-19 tests within the Memphis program.
Barnes has not minced words when he has said he does not plan to schedule Memphis in the foreseeable future, and he maintained that stance April 29.
“We haven’t talked about that in a couple years. It’s nowhere being talked about now,” he said. “With the changes, new teams coming into our league (the SEC) — we just came out of playing historically the hardest, best conference ever. So everything we do will be based on where we feel our league is and what we need to do.”
Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com, follow him @munzly on X, and sign up for the Memphis Basketball Insider text group.