Editor’s Note: This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.

Midway through his junior season, Richie Saunders, a 6-foot-5 small forward at BYU, received an unexpected piece of advice from his head coach. Saunders was in the midst of a breakout season, which meant that endorsement offers were starting to surface. However, he worried about distractions, so he wanted to wait until the offseason.

That is, until Kevin Young, BYU’s first-year head coach, told him the financial component was worth prioritizing now.

“He’s kind of helped me see, for example, being a professional basketball player, you have to have these kinds of conversations during the season,” Saunders said in March, during the Cougars’ run to the Sweet 16. “And it can’t detract from your focus, but you need to have them.”

Until recently, a college basketball coach encouraging a player to pursue endorsements during the season would have been unimaginable. However, that was before the era of name, image and likeness (NIL) and the transfer portal.

The birth of paid players and de facto free agency has reshaped college sports in almost every way. It’s also challenged the traditional leadership archetype of a college basketball coach.

Once upon a time, the leadership style of a college coach was simple: intense, demanding, rigid, focused on detail and motivating with more stick than carrot. However, as the college game has become more professionalized, the result is a coaching model that is a little younger, a little more flexible and a little more in line with their NBA brethren.

The evolution has left coaches grappling with a big question: As college basketball players gain more money, more agency and more power, what is the best way to lead them?

In the early 2000s, Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist and science journalist, conceived a framework for leadership, identifying six leadership styles commonly found in the business world. They were, in order: coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching.

Each style included a detailed description, but Goleman offered a useful shorthand.

1. Coercive leaders demand immediate compliance.
2. Authoritative leaders mobilize people toward a vision.
3. Affiliative leaders create emotional bonds and harmony.
4. Democratic leaders build consensus through participation.
5. Pacesetting leaders expect excellence and self-direction.
6. Coaching leaders develop people for the future.

Through research and experience, Goleman maintained that the best leaders toggled between styles, utilizing each one at the appropriate moment, like different clubs in a golf bag.

The classic archetype of a college coach has often leaned on two styles, blending what Goleman called “coaching” leadership with “coercive” leadership. Perhaps most visible in coaches like Bobby Knight, Tom Izzo or Mike Krzyzewski, these styles emphasized discipline, rigid demands and high standards to prepare players for the next level.

However, that style, former college coach and NBA coach Lon Kruger said, is harder to employ in the pros, where players are grown men with lavish salaries and stars often possess more power than the coach. As a result, NBA coaches have usually prioritized other leadership styles, leaning more on Goleman’s “authoritative”, “affiliative” and “democratic” leadership styles.

“With NBA guys,” Kruger said, “it’s more of a communication thing than a challenging or demanding type of thing.”

When Brad Stevens transitioned from head coach at Butler University to the Boston Celtics in 2013, he found that the most difficult challenge in the NBA was creating a sense of purpose in a group amid the anticipation of roster turnover. If a player wasn’t sure if he would be back the following season, he was less likely to buy in.

The cyclical nature of college basketball has consistently led to roster turnover. However, the recent addition of unlimited free transfers has created a system with more turnover and more uncertainty than almost any level of professional basketball.

“I get a kick out of people when they say, ‘Man, you’ve got like pro rules,’ ” Izzo said in March. “I always say, ‘Which ones are those? We don’t have free agency. We don’t have a salary cap. We’ve got beyond pro rules.’ ”

Over the years, Izzo is among those coaches who have softened his most grueling methods. In his earliest days at Michigan State, he borrowed football pads from Nick Saban and put their players through the famous “War Drill,” a full-contact rebounding exercise. He eventually stopped using the pads, though not because he worried about his players.

“The lawyers would sue me,” Izzo said. “So I don’t do that anymore.”

Izzo, though, still feels like that drill is essential. When he studies other successful coaches, he sees similar values. Players need to be disciplined, tough, accountable and connected. The difference in the era of NIL may lie in the ways coaches communicate their standards and values to players.

“We go too far to the right or too far to the left when we’re making adjustments,” Izzo said. “And that’s why I vowed that I’m going to do what I believe in.”

Michigan State, which advanced to the Elite Eight last season before losing to Auburn, has retained much of Izzo’s foundational program culture. However, the portal, coaches say, has put more pressure on coaches to create bonds and connections before each season.

“You feel like you can skip steps when you really can’t,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “You have to start from ground zero every summer.”

For years, Scheyer says, the Duke program ran on the idea of empowering players to lead, passing down the culture to the next generation.

“Players teaching players,” Scheyer said.

That changed, in part, with the emergence of one-and-done freshmen, which led to increased roster turnover. And it changed even more as the portal wreaked havoc on continuity. So last offseason, the Duke staff embarked on an unofficial summer class: Duke Basketball 101.

“We went back to the basics this (last) summer of just how to build this team from the ground up, build the connectivity, teach the standards, hold them accountable to what the standards are,” Scheyer said. “And that’s something I know we’re going to have to do each year going forward.”

Duke coach Jon Scheyer knew he was only going to have Cooper Flagg for one season. (Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)

When Alex Jensen became the head coach of Utah in early March, he surveyed the landscape of college basketball: player movement, money, negotiations for what amounted to year-long deals.

For Jensen, previously an assistant with the Dallas Mavericks, the system resembled one of his former stops: head coach in the NBA’s G League.

“The college game, I think it’s becoming more and more professional,” Jensen told reporters at his opening news conference. However, Jenson said he thinks most players are still the same.

“They want to know if you care and two, if you know what you’re talking about,” Jensen said.

Jensen, who played at Utah, was the latest NBA assistant to land a Power Four college job (Florida State also hired Luke Loucks, a former Sacramento Kings assistant). The coaches were comfortable with the transactional nature of professional basketball.

In some cases, Jensen says, “it makes it simpler if that makes any sense.”

“That chaos has been my reality,” Loucks said in March. “My reality as a professional coach and a professional player in Europe is constant roster turnover, constant ego management. One player is on a $300 million contract, and the other one is on minimum wage. Minimum wage in the NBA is like $1.2 million, but … there’s egos involved.”

What Loucks learned during his years as an NBA assistant was not that coaches should lower their standards or be overly deferential to players. It was that trust and respect were paramount in building relationships. To lead players at the professional level meant understanding who they were and what motivated them.

“You never want to be friends with your players,” Loucks said. “But you need them to trust you. Or all of your words and all of your teaching, all of your coaching is in one ear and out the other. And it has to be authentic. If you don’t build authentic relationships, you have no chance.”

The trend has not been limited to head coaches.

In May, Kansas hired former NBA head coach Jacque Vaughn — a program legend — to fill an assistant coaching opening, while Duke hired Evan Bradds, a 31-year-old assistant with the Utah Jazz. In announcing the hire, Duke touted Bradds’ “player development and NBA coaching experience.”

Meanwhile, Kansas coach Bill Self said that Vaughn “brings immediate credibility to guys that want to be pros out there.”

When Kruger coached in the NBA, he often heard the phrase “players’ coach.” Its definition was always elusive, depending on the source. Still, he came to this conclusion: A player’s coach was a good communicator, honest and empathetic, who always provided a clear path forward.

“My style was not to yell and scream,” Kruger said. “Which I think certainly doesn’t work in the NBA. You have to communicate on a more peer basis rather than saying, ‘I’m the coach and you’re the player and disregard everything else.’ ”

College coaches may soon resemble their NBA counterparts, Kruger says, but the secrets of leading basketball players remain the same, no matter the level: You need to be able to adjust. You need to embody different styles. You need to build relationships.

In other words, you need to be an effective and consistent leader.

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Andrew Wevers, Alex Slitz / Getty Images)

A new yet strangely familiar disturbance took place in college football last weekend.

Texas Tech celebrated Independence Day with one of the biggest recruiting wins in program history. Five-star offensive tackle Felix Ojo — No. 1 recruit in the state of Texas and top-10 national prospect in the 2026 class — committed to the Red Raiders. Ojo chose Tech over Texas, Ohio State and just about every other power conference school, a coup for the program.

Just as startling was the financial news that soon followed. As college sports embark on a new revenue-sharing voyage under the House settlement, it was reported that Ojo would be going to Tech on a three-year, $5.1 million revenue-share agreement, setting the market just days after the new system went into effect July 1. Or maybe it’s three years, $2.3 million. Depending on the source.

Either way, the dollar figure itself isn’t a new thing. Since name, image and likeness compensation was introduced in 2021, money has become an increasingly standard part of the recruiting conversation. And within the rules. But this situation was different. The timing of Ojo’s decision makes him the highest-profile recruiting commitment of the rev-share era, when the dollar figure attached to him will be coming fully and directly from the university as part of a capped annual revenue-sharing pool.

Within this fledgling framework of college sports, the money is now more relevant than ever. As conflicting reports on Ojo’s revenue-share agreement trickled in over the weekend, distracting fans from their star-spangled revelry, social media buzzed with folks marveling at the price tag while also debating whether it’s a wise investment.

This is new territory for college football. But it feels a lot like the NFL.

A blue-chip five-star such as Ojo is a boon for any college program, but especially Texas Tech, which beat out the in-state Longhorns and a slew of elite programs. Tech emerged as a legit recruiting force in recent years thanks to its oil-dipped resources, led by billionaire boosters Cody Campbell and John Sellers. The alums and self-made oil magnates led the charge on funding Tech’s big-money NIL efforts, but the House settlement and revenue-sharing system alter that calculus.

The settlement aims to rein in an unregulated NIL landscape and put some guardrails in place with direct revenue sharing capped at $20.5 million per school in Year 1 and roughly 75 percent of that going to football at most power conference programs. Jury’s still out on whether it works as intended, but Ojo’s commitment — and contract — is an early indication the Red Raiders will remain a force to be reckoned with.

And yet, the bigger-picture takeaway from a blockbuster recruiting weekend was how college football is speeding faster and faster toward an inevitably NFL-ized future.

ESPN first reported the $5.1 million deal via Ojo’s agent, Derrick Shelby of Prestige Management. Shelby confirmed those details to The Athletic on Saturday, and that the entirety of the deal would be from Tech’s direct revenue share. However, multiple Texas Tech sources rebutted the specifics, telling The Athletic the agreement is for $2.3 million, with a verbal agreement that the total value could be renegotiated into the $5 million range depending on future circumstances.

A lack of clarity on contract details isn’t uncommon. NIL deals were not required to be made public under the old way, and there was plenty of incentive for agents to inflate the dollars on behalf of their athletes and for booster-led NIL collectives to keep their budgets confidential. (And for the schools to feign ignorance.) It’s long been similar in the NFL with free agency and re-signings. Agents leak the highest feasible dollar figure to media insiders; fans celebrate, opposing fans chirp back that the player is overpaid, and the salary-cap wonks implore those on both sides to “wait until we find out about the guarantees.” There’s no requirement for NFL contracts to be made public either, but eventually, the details usually come to light, offering a fair amount of transparency to the process.

That hasn’t been the case in college football. To this point. With no “salary” cap — no NIL guardrails at all, really — there was little impetus for transparency. Most insight was either dodgy or surprisingly voluntary, such as Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork’s publicly stating that the Buckeyes, who went on to win the national title, had a $20 million roster in 2024. A willingness and ability to shell out NIL dollars gave a sense of which schools were contenders, but so much of it was (and still is) half-truths and whispers. And like the good ole days of the bag man, it was largely unregulated.

Now the stakes have changed. There’s a revenue-share cap and reporting requirements, with a new enforcement arm in place to oversee it. It’s not entirely clear how the various details and clauses of these rev share agreements will hold up if challenged in court (along with other aspects of the settlement), but the universities seem to be taking them seriously until convinced otherwise.

The public still won’t be afforded that transparency — the revenue-share agreements will be kept behind the curtain — but how schools and their individual programs build out and balance rosters within the cap will be crucial to success. Much like it is in the NFL.

Yes, there will still be over-the-cap NIL deals for the elite programs, and maybe even some loopholes. But cap management and roster building are the next frontier. Which teams are most efficient with their rev-share money? Who has to overpay for big names and premium positions? How will position, recruiting rank and experience shape the compensation ranges? Who tries the “Moneyball” route? Who tries to develop and retain a young roster? Who opts for signing the established, veteran mercenaries out of the transfer portal?

Who will be the Philadelphia Eagles, and who will be the Cleveland Browns?

This is not exactly music to the ears of college football fans. Many dread the sport’s becoming a Diet NFL. And it’s not simply about the money; most operating in good faith believe, or at least concede, that college athletes should get paid. It’s more about how the money has gradually stripped the sport of its tradition and regionality — of its soul — realigning the college football map into bloated power conferences and super conferences. The House settlement only perpetuates that shift into a smaller-tent professional model.

You could feel it Friday in the wake of Ojo’s commitment. Texas Tech celebrated accordingly, and rightfully so. But even beating out Texas was a little less sweet with the Longhorns no longer a conference foe, and so much of the broader coverage was about a multiyear contract, disputed dollars and guarantees and cap considerations — all for a soon-to-be high school senior. It was a Saturday-afternoon moment dressed up in Sunday-morning discourse.

How this rev-share era unfolds is still to be determined, but it won’t slow college football’s inescapable drift. Fans can rage against it, but the fact the NFL is America’s most popular and lucrative sport won’t help in that fight.

The truth is, college football has been on this NFL trajectory for a while. Last weekend’s biggest recruiting headline was just a brand-new reminder.

(Photo of Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire: John E. Moore III / Getty Images)

Alverno College is seeking dynamic leader to serve as the head athletic trainer. The head athletic trainer is a full-time position responsible for overseeing the prevention, evaluation, treatment, and rehabilitation of injuries and related illnesses for all student-athletes on 7 intercollegiate athletic teams. AC is a growing, competitive athletic program and is a member of NCAA DIII, the NACC.

Principal Responsibilities include but not limited to

1. Provide and manage athletic training services for the Alverno College Department of Athletics, including scheduling and coordinating sports medicine staff coverage for all team-related events, sports medicine budget oversight, emergency care, patient education, and all administrative duties as Head Athletic Trainer.
2. Schedule coverage for practices, home contests, and selected away contests, ensuring adequate medical support for student-athletes at all times.
3. Supervise and manage all athletic training staff, including any contracted or outside athletic training personnel.
4. Approve the strength and conditioning plan for intercollegiate athletics in collaboration with the strength and conditioning department, focusing on the development and implementation of flexibility, strength, and conditioning programs, and proper exercise techniques.
5. Educate coaches and student-athletes on student-athlete health and well-being, including injury prevention, concussion protocols, nutrition, hydration, and the philosophy of athletic training services.
6. Oversee the compilation, organization, input, and maintenance of all medical records for College student-athletes, and ensure the security of student-athlete insurance policies and medical records in adherence to College, HIPAA, and FERPA guidelines.
7. Arrange and maintain working relationships with appropriate medical personnel, including local physicians, specialists, and team medical consultants, for the evaluation, treatment, and care of injured student-athletes.
8. Serve as the primary liaison to all medical consultants, specialists, medical service providers, and the Alverno College Wellness Center.
9. Coordinate and schedule medical referrals and mental health evaluations for student-athletes, determining return-to-play status in collaboration with medical professionals.
10. Coordinate and facilitate any Department of Athletics drug testing programs in accordance with College, conference, and NCAA policies.
11. Serve as the designated NCAA Health Care Administrator for the College.
12. Oversee the organization and administration of the College’s Exposure Control Plan for Bloodborne Pathogens in compliance with OSHA medical safeguard regulations.
13. Update and maintain the Emergency Action Plan for the Department of Athletics on an annual basis.
14. Ensure full compliance with NCAA, conference, Title IX, Department of Athletics, and Alverno College rules and regulations related to athletic training, student-athlete health care, and sports medicine services.
15. Oversee inventory management and tracking of all sports medicine equipment and supplies.
16. Develop plans for program enhancement and professional development for the sports medicine team.
17. Maintain the athletic trainer’s yearly calendar of coverage and ensure appropriate staffing levels.
18. Participate in department meetings, committees, and official College functions, as appropriate.
19. Support and model Alverno College’s commitment to a balanced and healthy lifestyle, including the Seven Dimensions of Wellness: Career, Emotional, Environmental, Intellectual, Physical, Social, and Spiritual.
20. Perform other tasks as necessary to support the mission of the College.

Qualifications

1. Bachelor’s degree with significant experience organizing and supervising an Athletic Training program
2. Preferred Master’s
3. National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) certification
4. Licensed and/or eligible for licensure in the state of Wisconsin
5. Requires current certification in CPR / First Aid or the willingness and ability to become certified
6. Knowledge of NCAA and NACC regulations
7. Knowledge of the skills, techniques, and rules of athletic training
8. Ability to work in a team setting and work effectively with a variety of audiences and departments.
9. Ability to balance student needs and take on an institutional perspective
10. Requires the ability to work with and maintain confidential information
11. Requires strong communication skills including the ability to communicate and respond to both internal and external customers professionally and in a timely manner. Must have the ability to read, interpret, write and complete documents. 
12. Requires strong problem-solving skills including the ability to calmly respond to emergency situations
13. Requires the ability to work in a variety of weather conditions for extended period of times.
14. Must be flexible with scheduling and be willing and able to work evenings and weekends
15. Requires current Wisconsin driver’s license, meeting the requirements of Alverno for driving an Alverno vehicle.
16. Must be able to freely move throughout the facility. Requires the ability to frequently stoop, bend, sit and stand.  Must have the ability to occasionally lift and/or move up to 50 pounds. Requires good manual dexterity. 

Working Conditions

• General office environment
• Athletic Training Room Facility
• Courtside during indoor events
• Sidelines during outdoor events

In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Alverno College will provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. If you require accommodations during the application or interview process, please contact HR@alverno.edu.

 Alverno College is an Equal Opportunity Employer and committed to workplace diversity

About Alverno College

Based in Milwaukee, Wis., Alverno College is a four-year independent, Catholic, liberal arts college for women. Founded in 1887 by the School Sisters of St. Francis, Alverno promotes the academic, personal, and professional development of its students in a collaborative and inclusive environment. Certificate programs, digital badges, degree completion programs and graduate programs are open to all genders. A leader in higher education innovation, Alverno has earned international accolades for its highly effective ability-based, assessment-as-learning approach to education, which emphasizes hands-on experience and develops in-demand skills. The College is a Minority-Serving Institution and is Wisconsin’s first designated Hispanic-Serving Institution. The College ranks among the top schools in the Midwest for its commitment to undergraduate teaching and innovation by U.S. News & World Report.

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