CBS Sports college basketball insiders Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander spent a month surveying 100-plus Division I men’s basketball coaches for our annual Candid Coaches series. They polled across the sport’s landscape: some of the biggest names in college basketball, but also small-school assistants in low-major leagues. Coaches agreed to share unfiltered opinions in exchange for anonymity. We asked them 10 questions, and will post the results over a three-week span.
There is nothing more talked about in college athletics these days than student-athletes finally securing name, image and likeness rights around the same time the one-time transfer waiver became a thing. Those two developments have combined to change college basketball in a variety of dramatic ways.
Recruiting high school prospects is no longer as important as it was in previous eras. Roster-building and developing a team over a span of two or three years is increasingly difficult. Organizing collectives to more or less buy or keep desirable players is very much a part of the game at pretty much all levels.
But what are these players really getting?
What’s fact? What’s fiction?
We’ve all heard stories — big and small. But it’s often difficult to sift through the tales and figure out exactly what’s exaggerated or even made up. So, with this in mind, we decided to go straight to the men who are operating in this world every day and ask roughly 100 college basketball coaches the following question:
Based on your experience recruiting via the transfer portal, approximately what NIL price is a projected starter at the high-major level looking for in college basketball?
Less than $100,0007.5%Somewhere between $100,000 and $200,00025.5%Somewhere between $200,000 and $300,00040.4%Somewhere between $300,000 and $400,00014.9%More than $400,00011.7%
Quotes that stood out
“Like anything, there are outliers in both directions. But I would say an average…..
