What does it cost to build a winner in men’s college basketball these days?
“I think if you’re serious about being in the pursuit of championships,” a high-major assistant told The Athletic last month, “you’ve gotta get to a $10 million roster.”
And that, apparently, is on the low end.
More than 2,000 players have entered the transfer portal since it opened last Tuesday, the day after Michigan’s national championship win over UConn. Over the last month, The Athletic has polled college basketball coaches and general managers about the cost of doing business, particularly at the high-major level.
The consensus is that the average roster at that level next season will be in the $10 million to $12 million range, with one general manager estimating that most schools have added at least $2 million to their expected roster cost compared to last season. Another, who said his school was at $5 million last year, said his program will almost double that this year. His team had success this season, so its administration has invested to try to keep the momentum going. The top-end spenders from last year are mostly staying where they were, but others are playing catch-up, meaning there are more teams spending more money.
“The numbers,” the first GM said, “are insane right now.”
The GM ballparked the price of the current market:
• Borderline starter? “An agent will start at $1.5 million.”
• A definite starter, but not all-conference? “$2.5 million.”
• A player projected to be all-conference? “$3 million and above.”
• A player projected to be an NBA Draft pick? “$3 million floor. Basically, it’s 30 percent of your budget. So if you’ve got $12 million, that guy is likely up to $4 million.”
As for a position breakdown, the consensus is that centers, especially those with skill, are the most expensive and hardest to find, followed by point guards. Evan Miyakawa, who runs the analytics site evanmiya.com, has data from 30 teams that input player salaries in his front office tool. According to data he published on Tuesday, the NIL market for Division I players is up 65 percent from last year, with a 73 percent increase for players on power-conference teams.
The anecdotal data support Miyakawa’s findings. Former Kansas center Flory Bidunga, the top-ranked player in The Athletic’s portal rankings, committed to Louisville this weekend, and the number floating around for his price tag was $5 million.
Four years ago, when player salaries started reaching six figures, the college basketball community was shocked when Nijel Pack, an All-Big 12 player at Kansas State at the time, transferred to Miami for a reported deal of $800,000 for two years.
That’s a good reminder of how quickly this has taken off. Agents have driven up the asking price every year, because they’re aware the schools are operating with more money to spend.
Theoretically, last year was supposed to be the peak. Because of the House v. NCAA settlement, which took effect July 1 and established a revenue-sharing cap for schools to pay players directly, college basketball teams front-loaded player deals with money from their collectives. Last July, when The Athletic polled 35 coaches, the average estimate to build a roster in the SEC was $9.7 million, and the other four high-major leagues were in the $8 million range.
At the time, there was an expectation that this year would contain more guardrails around how deals are made. Each school can spend up to $20.5 million in revenue sharing for the 2025-26 school year, and basketball receives a portion of that. The industry norm is around 20 percent for men’s basketball, which ends up close to $4 million. So if that’s the revenue-sharing allotment, but a roster costs $10 million, then that other $6 million has to come through name, image and likeness deals, which are supposed to be submitted to NIL Go, a clearinghouse created by the College Sports Commission (CSC).
“Last year you could get away with murder,” the high-major assistant said. “Truthfully, getting the money isn’t nearly as hard as, for lack of a better term, as laundering the money, cleaning the money.”
What’s actually happening, coaches and GMs say, is that most players are going to the highest bidder, and most programs are operating under a premise of “we’ll figure it out later” on how they’ll actually get to that number.
“What’s gonna happen if they don’t do it legally?” another high-major assistant asked. “And are there going to be ramifications for it?”
That worry dominates conversations right now with coaches and general managers because they’re operating in a space where they don’t really know the answers. Initially, the CSC announced last July that it would not clear any collective deals, then backtracked to allow those deals to pass through the clearinghouse. During college football’s portal window in January, the surge of deals led to an increase in review time.
“I don’t think the system was designed with this amount of associated deals in mind,” Bryan Seeley, the chief executive officer of the CSC, said in a conference call last month.
With 2,000-plus names in the men’s basketball portal, the CSC is about to get flooded with deals again. Because schools cannot guarantee the deals that go through NIL Go will get approved, the first GM said these deals are “basically term sheets and promissory notes.”
“It’s super, super, super tricky,” the first high-major assistant said. “Because what the CSC is doing is just denying it and then they request more information, more paperwork. More, more, more, more. They’re basically doing what these top legal firms do. They’re not saying no; they’re just drowning you in paperwork.”
“There is no transparency on their end right now, and it’s really hard to exactly understand how you’re supposed to get the deals cleared,” the second GM said.
This is reigniting a fear that basketball coaches have had over the last couple of years: Big East teams, or any school without a football program, have an advantage because their players can be paid straight from their revenue-sharing allotment.
“They don’t have to go through the paperwork to get to a $10 million roster,” the first high-major assistant said, “they just have to find money.”
But so far, nothing has stopped players from signing big deals elsewhere. Bidunga signed with an ACC school with football, his deal alone theoretically wiping out what the Cards likely have in rev-share money. The Cards also signed former Oregon point guard Jackson Shelstad, meaning they’ve signed two top-10 transfers at the most expensive positions. Among the 23 transfers ranked in our top 50 who have signed thus far, six have gone to the Big Ten, five to the SEC and ACC, and four to the Big 12. The Big East has just three signings.
Because these deals are not made public and neither is each team’s operating budget, there’s a lot of bluffing that takes place, which makes the market harder to read. The first GM said he recently talked to two different agents, each with a player at the same position who was getting recruited by the same school. One’s offer was $3 million; the other’s was $2 million. Both were under the impression that it was a done deal once accepted.
“They’re gonna pull the trigger on one guy,” the GM said, “and I think everybody that’s on the second and third tiers are gonna realize next week that there isn’t the amount of money out there that they thought, and all these hypothetical offers weren’t actually real. They were trying to keep them warm.”
One reason there is so much movement is that money is the biggest motivator. Many players go to the highest bidder, regardless of fit.
“I think a lot of people right now in the state of rev share and NIL get so caught up in the front-end number, which I call the signing bonus, that they completely negate the retirement fund,” said Justin Young, BYU’s director of recruiting. “They lose sight of the value of, if you’re a four-year graduate at BYU, your life is forever changed. You can say it at any school. You don’t change fraternities and sororities, because if you do, you lose that brotherhood or that sisterhood.”
It’s hard to expect the players to think long-term. Most people make job choices based on salaries, as well. But one frustration coaches and general managers have is that they are not dealing with parents and players as much as they once were; the agents have most of the control, particularly in the transfer market. That has gotten even worse, they say, with the timing of the portal window.
In 2024, the portal opened the day after Selection Sunday and was open for 45 days. In 2025, it opened on the Monday after the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament and was open for 30 days. In an effort to allow the teams still playing in the tournament to focus on their seasons and not worry about the portal, this year the portal opened on April 7 and is only open for two weeks.
“Moving the portal entry back, all it did was give more control to agents because you can’t talk to student athletes,” the second high-major assistant said. “Agents have all the control because you can’t talk to a student athlete until they’re in the portal, so then they drive the market. That’s who dictates everything now, so you don’t get to build a relationship with the kid you want to recruit and play for you. All it did was encourage cheating.”
The only guarantee seems to be that no matter what the rules are, the cost of fielding a competitive team is continuing to go up every year.
“It’s not a matter of raising the money,” one high-major head coach said, “it’s getting the money into the pockets of the kids.”