Money is not holding Indiana back as new coach Darian DeVries rebuilds the roster.
CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander is reporting “based on a variety of sources” IU basketball is one of ten programs across the D-I landscape with a player NIL budget of $10 million or more. That figure includes upcoming revenue sharing from the athletic department, along with cash from collectives like Indiana’s Hoosiers Connect.
This would be a substantial increase for Indiana from a year ago, when the program’s budget was widely thought to be in the $4-6 million range. And that amount was thought to be a top-shelf budget in the sport a year ago.
But now several college players have received multi-million dollar deals in recent weeks since the transfer portal opened. A $10 million budget means multiple players, and perhaps most of IU’s roster will receive at least $1 million in 2025-26.
In addition to Indiana, the other nine schools Norlander named are Arkansas, BYU, Duke, Kentucky, Louisville, Michigan, North Carolina, St. John’s and Texas Tech.
According to Norlander, on the next rung and not far behind are Auburn, Connecticut, Florida, Houston, Kansas, Kansas State, Miami, Purdue, Tennessee, Texas, UCLA, USC, Villanova, and Virginia.
Reforms could be coming by way of the House vs. NCAA settlement expected this summer. One key anticipated aspect of that would be independent verification of the arm’s length, fair value nature of NIL deals, as an attempt to move away from the richest boosters system that currently moves the market.
Ultimately the sport probably needs to land on a collective bargaining arrangement to arrive at anything resembling stability.
But right now, college basketball is a chaotic free-for-all market that Indiana is fortunate to be operating in with deep pockets.
We’ll see if DeVries and his new team can make the right moves.
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