As soon as once more CBS Sports activities presents our annual Candid Coaches sequence, which spotlights related subjects and points in males’s faculty basketball. Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander polled roughly 100 coaches in latest weeks on quite a lot of topics. Coaches spoke on background and have been offered anonymity to supply unfiltered opinions. That is the second installment in our 2025 survey.
Discuss to any sitting athletic director lately, and most of them will let you know that among the many hardest selections they’ve needed to make prior to now 12 months is easy methods to divide the as much as $20.5 million their departments at the moment are allowed to share yearly with athletes.
How a lot of that ought to go to males’s basketball?
It’s a query with numerous solutions — solutions largely linked as to if faculties have or do not need an FBS soccer program and/or how a lot a selected faculty cares concerning the hardwood. Put one other approach, each establishment with an FBS soccer program is spending the majority of its cash on soccer, partially due to the variety of gamers wanted to discipline a workforce, partially as a result of soccer is the driving financial drive on most campuses. However the breakdowns are a lot completely different at faculties with out FBS soccer as a result of at faculties with out FBS soccer the basketball applications are, in some circumstances, getting as much as 95% of the cash.
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(For this reason a number of Massive East and Atlantic 10 males’s basketball applications at present have extra money of their budgets than some SEC, Massive Ten, Massive 12 and ACC males’s basketball applications, as I detailed in a narrative earlier this summer time about VCU outbidding a number of power-conference applications for a top-70 prospect.)
With all of this in thoughts, Matt Norlander and I made a decision to ask roughly 100 Division I males’s basketball coaches the next query:
What share of your faculty’s income cap ought to go to males’s basketball?
Solutions from coaches at faculties with FBS soccer applications
Someplace between 25% and 30%
56%
Someplace between 15% to twenty%
35%
Someplace between 30% and 40%
9%
Solutions from coaches at faculties with out FBS soccer applications
Someplace between 90% and 95%
29%
Someplace between 70% and 80%
27%
Someplace between 50% and 60%
19%
Someplace between 30% and 40%
15%
Someplace between 20% and 25%
10%
Quotes that stood out
Solutions from coaches at faculties with FBS soccer applications:
“This is a tough one because I think it depends on the university you’re at. For example, Duke and Kentucky are going to resource their basketball/football programs differently than Clemson and Alabama.”
“Figure football has to have 70%. Men’s basketball, 25%. And I’m giving the other 5% to women’s basketball. And I’m not giving any money to anyone else. Soccer, volleyball, hockey, none of it.”
“Twenty-five percent at the Power Four level. Exceptions for football blue-blood schools, which would likely lower basketball to 15%-to-20% there.”
“Twenty-percent minimum … I believe it’s a matter of time before pretty much 100% of revenue-share will go to football and men’s basketball. ADs just need cover. They want to put their money in the sports that actually generate revenue.”
“I think all of it should go to men’s basketball — but that’s because I’m the men’s basketball coach. Realistically, I asked for 35% and my AD gave me 30%. So I’m good. I think I’m getting more than most in my conference.”
Solutions from coaches at faculties with out FBS soccer applications:
“I am at a school without football, without any other revenue-generating sports. We will not spend close to the $20.5 million as a department, but [we] do have a very healthy revenue share for our level. So with that said, 95%.”
“I’m at 90% and I think my AD would agree. It’s been hilarious to see some of these other coaches complain about the schools without big-time football. You should have been in on some of our meetings at the Final Four. ‘It’s not right that the St. John’s of the world, that they can now have this advantage!’ Well, for 75 years you guys have had, if not one leg up, two legs up on all of us, and now there’s this perception that we finally have a slight advantage? And I say this to them: Guys, there aren’t donors walking around with $10 million to give every year and if they do, no matter how much money they have, they won’t just give $10 million with no tax breaks like how it was with the collectives. Maybe they do it once or twice. They’re not just going to keep doing it. It was straight paranoia at the coaches meetings. I think the irony is hilarious.”
“Because we don’t play at the top level of D-I in football, men’s basketball should get 90% of it. Only revenue driver in the department.”
“[We have] more potential [for a] return-on-investment per dollar invested in men’s basketball [in our mid-major league] than any other sport.”
“Putting myself in my AD’s shoes, by not having football, I believe 70% of the rev-share should go to men’s basketball. Our ability to make an NCAA tournament appearance would change the trajectory of [our] university enrollment.”
The takeaway
As beforehand famous, the solutions to our query have been wildly completely different relying on the place the coach being requested works, which is another excuse this new set of (unclear) guidelines that the Home Settlement introduced to school athletics is crammed with points and nothing near the problem-solver some touted it to be.
The principles will ultimately be modified once more.
Within the meantime, now we have some coaches combating with athletic administrators for the largest share of their revenue-sharing {dollars} they’ll get, some coaches with dramatically completely different budgets than different coaches of their identical league, some coaches in some leagues nonetheless with no concept what their budgets really are, and a few coaches in mid-major leagues with greater budgets than power-conference coaches engaged on campuses the place nothing actually issues a lot apart from soccer.
It’s bananas.
Which is why I preferred the next quote we obtained from one coach: “Why not make it mandatory for every school to give [an] equal amount in that specific sport?” he requested. “Football equals $15 million. Men’s Basketball equals $4 million. Right now, coaches are fighting their ADs for more money. Eliminate that from the equation. Might bring more stability and level the playing field.”
To be clear, I’ll perpetually be in opposition to any wage cap, or limits on what faculty athletes could make, until it’s collectively bargained with faculty athletes and agreed upon. I’ll by no means budge from that time. However so long as we’re going to have what quantities to a wage cap in faculty sports activities, it does make far more sense, because the coach above steered, for every particular person sport to have its personal wage cap.
What ought to the numbers be?
Once more, that needs to be decided through negotiation after which positioned right into a legally binding CBA that includes penalties for violators so extreme even the Clippers wouldn’t take into consideration breaking them. However, regardless of the numbers, the quantity for males’s basketball needs to be the identical for everyone in order that Kentucky’s Mark Pope and Oklahoma’s Porter Moser have the identical amount of cash to spend on a roster as one another — but in addition the identical as Houston’s Kelvin Sampson and Colorado’s Tad Boyle, as Michigan State’s Tom Izzo and Penn State’s Mike Rhodes, as Duke’s Jon Scheyer and Virginia Tech’s Mike Younger, so on and so forth.
Till we get there, it’ll simply be extra chaos and confusion and, sure, high-stakes dishonest — as I defined in a column final week. Both approach, we’re positively not there but. So males’s basketball coaches from coast to coast are first negotiating with their athletic administrators to get the largest share of their faculty’s revenue-sharing cash that they’ll get in order that they’ll then negotiate with brokers to attempt to construct the perfect rosters they’ll construct. Some coaches have $7 million. Others have $3. Some have zero. It’s a problematic system that forces faculties to determine which massive sports activities they wish to elevate on the expense of others.
A number of coaches don’t prefer it.
We realized that right here, too.
And, relaxation assured, you’ll hear tons extra concerning the subject subsequent spring when the switch portal opens and a few coaches inside the identical high-major leagues are pursuing the identical gamers with completely different budgets, leaving them with a choice to make about whether or not to play by the foundations as they perceive them or get inventive and determine a strategy to get the cash the place it must get, , by any means mandatory.
Earlier 2025 Candid Coaches questions
