College basketball programs on the highest level of Division-I level need approximately $3 million in NIL money to be competitive next season — at least. However, some of the big-name brands are operating with a number more than double that amount.
The unregulated system creates ongoing (and never-ending) bidding war that could cause more harm than good for the players and their bank accounts. They might be on the hook for MILLIONS of dollars if they decide to break a binding contract to enter the transfer portal.
It is not a secret that the role of NIL money and the transfer portal has decimated a large number of competitive college basketball rosters. Baylor is the perfect example. All 14 members of last month’s NCAA Tournament team are gone — with the majority of them leaving for a different program.
Rob Wright III is one of those players. He signed an NIL deal with the Bears during the regular season that guaranteed his return for 2025-26 at a price tag of approximately $1,000,000. And then BYU swooped in to offer him at least double. The Cougars adamantly reject a popular narrative about their Name, Image and Likeness funds, but the proof is in the pudding.
Baylor lost Wright to BYU because BYU paid him more money than Baylor. There is no penalty for breaking the previously existing agreement.
Other schools are taking extra precautions to make sure this kind of thing does not happen. Some contractual agreements include very strict clauses to ensure that they are binding. Matt Nolander of CBS Sports spoke with a few different coaches about their back-end deals. Players who break them might be on the hook for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
One high-major player signed a big NIL deal at the end of last season. He still hit the portal in search of more money. His now-former coach says the unnamed player will owe the school “the entirety of a contract he hasn’t received a dime of yet.” The school plans to hold him to that deal.
A different coach at a different school presented a similar scenario. There is a world where programs may have to pay a buyout for poaching players in the same way they do for coaches.
We had a kid signed to NIL and Rev share agreement (both binding agreements) and then 5 days later a school in our league offered him twice as much and he signed with them!
Our legal team is figuring out [how to hold him to his contract] right now. I stayed out of it. It’s outta my hands.
The school he signed with will probably need to buyout the [old contract.]
— Anonymous head coach, via Matt Nolander
While this kind of buyout structure helps the program that lost its player on the backend, it does not solve the issue at hand. Players are committing to their current programs only to leave as soon as a different program offers more money. The system is broken. Litigation feels inevitable.