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 10 questions and are posting the results over a three-week span.
It’s hard to have a conversation about college athletics with just about anybody these days without it eventually turning into and back-and-forth about name, image and likeness. That’s my experience, at least.
Everybody wants to know what you’re hearing. Everybody wants you to try to separate fact from fiction. Everybody wants you to share the wildest story you’ve heard. So, with this in mind, we decided to ask more than 100 college basketball coaches the following question as a part of our annual Candid Coaches series:
What is the most amount of NIL money somebody has asked you or your staff to pay for a player?
$2 million or more10.4%Between $1 million and $2 million40.6%Less than $1 million49.0%
The takeaway
Those who follow our Candid Coaches series should know that we survey people from all levels of the sport. So, yes, head coaches who have won national championships at high-major programs annually participate in this poll — but so do assistants at low-major programs and everybody in between.
For most questions, that doesn’t hurt as much as it provides perspective from all levels of the sport. It’s an approach that usually works well. But the variety definitely led to misleading surface-level results here.
So let me provide some context.
Among the power-conference coaches we polled, the main thing you need to know is that a whopping 77% of them told us their staff has been asked to pay at least $1 million in NIL for a player….
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