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While explaining his sudden resignation from Miami on Wednesday, coach Jim Larrañaga partly blamed the growing influence of NIL deals that have made it difficult to keep players in his program. Two days later, Norchad Omier — who helped Miami make the 2023 Final Four before transferring to a wealthy Big 12 school — scored 19 points and grabbed 24 rebounds for Baylor in a 107-53 victory over Arlington Baptist.
So … yeah.
“You’re talking to people that expect a million dollars for playing college basketball,” Larrañaga said.
Like I noted on Friday’s episode of the Eye On College Basketball Podcast, nobody is going to feel sorry for Larrañaga losing players to the transfer portal because of NIL money given that his program used NIL money to get Nijel Pack to transfer from Kansas State, and to keep Isaiah Wong from transferring somewhere else, before making the Final Four just 15 months ago. If I were Larrañaga, I would’ve focused less on losing players to the portal and more on the fact that I’m 75 years old, understandably exhausted and completely uninterested in going through a second straight losing season that seems unavoidable.
Life’s too short to finish near the bottom of the ACC again.
Only unreasonable weirdos wouldn’t have understood that. But complaining about big NIL deals damaging your roster less than two years after your school used big NIL deals to build a Final Four roster is never going to land well. I wish somebody would’ve helped Larrañaga understand that in advance of his press conference because it would’ve been more fun spending the past two days listening to people celebrate his incredible career than it’s been watching people roll their eyes at some of his comments.
Anyway …
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