With the transfer portal in full swing, some college basketball players are reportedly getting millions to transfer to schools. These are 1822 year-old athletes, and many are choosing schools not because of coaching or fit but for the bag.

Collin Gillespie makes roughly 600k for the Suns. Many of these guys making millions in college can't hold Giillespies jock strap.
It's getting utterly ridiculous that college kids are making north of 4 million for 1 year. I think they should be paid no doubt. But the amount of $$ being thrown at guys who simply aren't worth what they're getting paid is mind boggling. I'll continue to say it. But college athletics are a joke. If this continues I fully expect a major drop off in viewership as fans lose interest

A player is worth whatever the highest bidder is willing to pay. We can evaluate later on that it seems like teams overpaid based on the production of a player or the revenue the team generated, but right now I don't think anyone knows what the market prices for players will end up settling at. I would guess there's some serious financial analysis being done with consultants that are providing budgets that make sense for each team but it's hard to know how good the team will be based on a budget when you're investing in kids that can get injured or just suck.

We see in baseball how insane the contracts are even though baseball is a sport on the decline and is less popular than NFL, NBA, CFB, and maybe even CBB. I think a big part of that is the fact that there is no salary cap. Now in CBB, there is no cap and the alumni are being told they're responsible for paying the team so it's a deep well.

I don't like all the transferring and I don't like that Baylor seems to be suffering a bit from it all, but on the bright side, if contracts get figured out, I wouldn't really care how much players make if they stay on a team multiple years and there is continuity of names. If it incentivizes players to stay in CBB longer because they make more than the NBA, isn't that a good thing (as long as they stay in one or two spots)?

With all of our returning players transferring but one... do we even know if they were encouraged to leave or not vs. just leaving? We know Wright is leaving for more money, but what about the rest of them. I still find it strange that everyone just up and left leaving us with zero depth and literally no team.

100%. Fans are going to tire of a new roster every single year, traditional rivals not being as played as much or just flat out gone ruins the pageantry, and many schools and donors can't shell out this amount of NIL money every single year, or will tire of it eventually. "Coach, every year you ask for just $5 more million to get that championship and every year you fall just short. How about a new practice gym I can put my name on?"

yes I have to assume that some guys left to get playing time that Baylor staff were not willing to guarantee. like Georgetown is in no way an upgrade from Baylor (no hate to the Hoyas). and asemota only getting minutes out of either absolute necessity or good sportsmanship, to me, seems telling as to what the postseason convos were like. but is it also possible some of the other guys are testing the NBA waters but will come back? or would they not have entered the portal in the first place?

I polled 25-plus high-major coaches and this is what I came up with as far as salary numbers for this season.

Obviously, there will be some outliers but this is a pretty good feel for what guys are getting now.

PROJECTED ELITE GUYS (Top 10-15): $2.5 to 4 million

PROJECTED…

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) April 11, 2025

Copy of full text for those who don't have X (Twitter)

I polled 25-plus high-major coaches and this is what I came up with as far as salary numbers for this season.

Obviously, there will be some outliers but this is a pretty good feel for what guys are getting now.

PROJECTED ELITE GUYS (Top 10-15): $2.5 to 4 million

PROJECTED ALL-LEAGUE PLAYER: $1.5 to 2.5 million

PROJECTED STARTERS: $500K to 1.5 million

PROJECTED BENCH PLAYER: $200K to 700K

Oregon State is getting clobbered in the men’s basketball transfer portal. The Beavers paid Michael Rataj $80k last season. He’s getting seven figures at Baylor.

Has OSO gone all-in on football or is something else at play?

More: https://t.co/Hk0X8aa8vV pic.twitter.com/Zco9EB6K2j

— John Canzano (@johncanzanobft) April 4, 2025

This illustrates the difference in last year and this year. Remember, this is our guy.

And remember, other schools are OUTBIDDING us for people.

I can't believe women are standing for this. They've been sent back to the 1950s

True Grit said:

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With all of our returning players transferring but one... do we even know if they were encouraged to leave or not vs. just leaving? We know Wright is leaving for more money, but what about the rest of them. I still find it strange that everyone just up and left leaving us with zero depth and literally no team.

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Generally I think everyone is leaving for more money, but only because other schools are willing to commit way more money than they're worth. Sure some of that is like don't come back but some of that is like look this is the most I can offer you and I know you're going to get offered more out on the market situation. Langston Love as the example, pre NIL era I imagine he'd probably spend his last year at Baylor, but we can't afford to pay a guy who can't stay healthy and Georgetown is willing to throw way more than we are at him in the hopes he stays healthy for once. They're in a position to gamble on him while Drew does not think we should (rightfully so).

Here are the CBB programs that are *estimated* to have spent the most NIL money on incoming transfers this offseason so far.

Michigan 8.8 million
Kentucky 7.6m
Maryland 7.1m
Miami 7.1m
Iowa 6.6m
Virginia 6.2m
Washington 5.9m
Creighton 5.6m
Georgetown 5.5m
Xavier 5.5m

These are…

— Evan Miyakawa (@EvanMiya) April 14, 2025

This seemed interesting. Evan's usually not far off on too many things although Tech reportedly paid Toppin $4 million and Christian Anderson $2 million so I'm unsure why they're not on this list. If you don't have X, here is the truncated part: (CORRECTION: I found a later post where Evan said this was just money to TRANSFERS, not the whole roster so that's why Tech isn't on there).

"These are ballpark numbers using the Front Office Suite at EvanMiya.com based on what every player should theoretically be worth in NIL, accounting for current market rates."