College athletes are channeling their NIL earnings into venture capital investments. Front Office Sports reports that three college quarterbacks — including a potential top-five pick — are putting their money into VC-backed start-ups.

South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers — projected as one of the top signal-callers in the 2026 NFL Draft — Southern Methodist University’s Kevin Jennings and Kansas State University’s Avery Johnson have invested in The Cashmere Fund. According to Front Office Sports, the fund is a “Nasdaq-listed venture capital fund that allows non-accredited investors to invest in VC-backed start-ups.”

Buffalo Bills players Josh Allen and Damar Hamlin are also investors.

“There was some business savvy in all of them,” Elia Infascelli, CEO of Cashmere, told Front Office Sports. “Avery Johnson is a business major, for example. They didn’t need to do this, but they wanted to.

“They are investors in the fund just like any other person would invest in the fund.”

Cashmere is working with college athletes to bring more attention to their fund and attract additional investors.

“At 18, 19, or 21, to think about long-term relationships and invest without any immediate upside today, that’s rare,” Infascelli explained.

NIL has created new opportunities for college athletes. For those who won’t turn pro, these ventures offer a path to financial stability beyond their college careers.

Matt Higgins worked in national and local news for 15 years. He started out as an overnight production assistant … More about Matt Higgins

It’s fair to say Kendrick Perkins is extremely high on Cooper Flagg.

PublishedJune 25, 2025 10:48 AM EDT•UpdatedJune 25, 2025 10:48 AM EDT

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One of the greatest aspects of the NBA Draft is the talking heads in the media trying to come up with player comparisons for prospects, and Kendrick Perkins truly outdid himself with his Cooper Flagg comp.

It’s only natural for folks in the media to compare prospects to some of the best players in the league. That is what stirs the pot, and comparing a top-tier prospect to a player that averages 10 points per game doesn’t exactly make for the most exciting content.

NBA Draft Prospects Give Varying Opinions Of NIL Effect On College Basketball

Given the fact that Flagg has been the sure-thing first-overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft since his high school days, he’s been compared to essentially every notable player in the league up to this point. It has forced the media to think outside of the box when coming up with any sort of original thought about the undisputed best player in the draft.

Perkins took a swing at doing just that during ESPN pre-NBA Draft coverage on Tuesday, and delivered an all-time comparison for the former Duke star.

“This is how I look at Cooper Flagg, if LeBron James and Kevin Garnett had a baby, you’d get Cooper Flagg,” Perkins said.

Now look, Perkins makes some fair points while describing Flagg as an all-around player, such as James, and then as a tenacious competitor like Garnett, but it feels like a significant stretch to go ahead and try and lump him into a category of two of the best players to ever do it.

Folks on social media went to town on Perkins after his strange comment about Flagg:

The NBA Draft is set to get underway at Barclays Center in Brooklyn at 8:00 PM ET on Wednesday.

This year, the NBA Draft saw its fewest early entrants in a decade. Just 106 players entered the draft by the end of April, which continues a downward trend from 363 declarations in 2021 just before the NIL era began.

More players are opting to stay in college and hone their skills now that they are able to enter into NIL deals and make money. To ESPN’s Jay Bilas, that helps both the college and professional games.

Bilas said the amount of talent returning to college programs means those players can become more well-rounded by the time they reach the NBA. As a result, both levels can benefit – and it makes the later rounds of the draft a bit more interesting.

“I think what we’re seeing is that NIL and the opportunity to make money while you’re in college has caused players that may have been fringe-first rounders or second-round picks to stay in school longer,” Bilas said on FOS Today. “Why go in when you’re doing so well financially in college? You can wait now and go when you really feel like you’re ready. So we’ve seen, the second round is a lot different with NIL that it would have been in past years, you would’ve seen a lot of players go. And now, they’re staying, and I think that’s nothing but a good thing, certainly, for college basketball, to keep more talent in the game.

“But I think it’s also good for the NBA that they’re getting finished products when they decide to go and players that are really [feeling] like they’re truly ready. I think that’s a good thing for the NBA, as well.”

One of the most notable draft withdrawals was Labaron Philon, who announced his decision to return to Alabama despite having first-round potential and initially saying he’d stay in the draft. On3’s James Fletcher III ranked the former touted recruit as the No. 27 overall player on his Big Board prior to his announcement.

Florida also won big with NBA Draft withdrawals, keeping Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu on the roster after last season’s national title. Former Memphis guard PJ Haggerty also withdrew from the draft and eventually announced his decision to transfer to Kansas State for an NIL deal reportedly in the “neighborhood” of $2.5 million. He was considered a fringe second-round pick.

The 2025 NBA Draft officially gets underway Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET. Round 2 will take place Thursday at 8 p.m. ET.

College basketball used to be about evaluating and developing players; now it’s all about the transfer portal.

This spring 2,320 Division I players entered the portal. That’s about 41% of the 5,607 players eligible to play. Coaches aren’t trying to woo players from junior colleges and high school, instead their focus is on the known talent looking for a new home.

Jamie Dixon, TCU men’s basketball head coach, gets an updated list of the players in the transfer portal every day. His assistant coaches alert him about players of interest, those who are looking for a better team or more time on the court.

“Recruiting in the portal is different,” Dixon said.  “You are not going to the player’s school; often you are doing Zoom recruitment, and it is a shorter time frame. The players have been to college, so they are not as interested in taking visits, they just want to get to know their value and role.”

When added to the impact of NIL payments, allowing players to be paid for name, image and likeness, it’s clear to see that recent NCAA rule changes have changed college hoops in significant ways. For decades, players were held to a 1961 rule that made all athletes who transferred schools sit out one year and lose a year of eligibility.

That began unraveling early into this century as student-athletes pressed for structural changes with the governing body of college sports.

Because of the sport’s small-roster teams, the portal has an outsized effect on basketball.  For example, after transfers and graduates left, Baylor University brings no returning players into the 2025-26 season. Instead, the team will field a mix of recruits and transfers when they hit the paint this fall. The Bears focus in the portal has been picking up players who have been good at mid-majors. Baylor has picked up seven players from Rice, Texas A&M Corpus Christi, High Point, Omaha and Wyoming.

As this year’s NCAA tournament showing, mid-major players are besting recruits as coaches attempt to build a winning team.

Purdue was only team that made the Sweet 16 without having a transfer in their starting five.

This was also the second time in NCAA history that the men’s Final Four was all one seeds.

The transfer portal seems to be a siren to some of the best players from mid-major schools who hope to transfer to schools that are destined for greater success.

This has made the tournament “Cinderella runs” look less likely for the future.

“It is trending towards Power conferences being more dominant because players from mid-majors are transferring up to the Power conferences,” Dixon said.

Coach Dixon also said the shift will require high school players to be patient with their recruitment.

With the transfer portal high school recruits are not only trying to compete against other high school kids for a spot on a division one roster. They are also competing against every other division one basketball player.

Another way coaches are filling their rosters is buying out a player from a European basketball league, promising them NIL money to play in college.

This is something that has never been seen before, and top programs like Kentucky, Michigan, Illinois and Purdue have all done it. The days of teams trying to get young players and keep them together so they can develop seems to be a thing of the past.

It is now about putting the oldest team with the most amount of experience on the court.

“The evaluating is not really there,” Dixon said. “It’s strictly get the production guys that have produced most recently, you are not projecting, you are not evaluating, you are not developing.”