When asked why the storied UCLA-Arizona basketball series will continue only at neutral sites over the next three seasons, far away from the electricity of McKale Center and Pauley Pavilion, Bruins coach Mick Cronin had a quick answer.
“There are promoters involved,” Cronin said, “and at the end of the day, look, you’ve got to pay players.”
Yes, they do. While NCAA rules still forbid schools from paying players directly — at least until a potential legal settlement goes into effect that could allow revenue sharing as early as next season — high-major programs are operating with booster-funded collectives around them that are projected to pay an average of $13.9 million per school in 2024-25, according to an annual report by NIL advisory firm Opendorse.
That’s a 50% increase over 2023-24 collective spending, Opendorse says, with collectives now funding an average of 81.4% of the ever-ballooning NIL compensation given to athletes.
In 2024-25, Opendorse estimates, top 25 earners at each position in men’s basketball are making an average of $349,492 in NIL payments, with top 25 football players at each position at $294,134 — including top 25 quarterbacks commanding an average of $821,300.
Braly Keller, director of NIL and Business Insights for Opendorse, said the company doesn’t break down publicly what players at each position are making but in general, said quarterbacks, wide receivers and offensive linemen tend to make the most at Power 4 football programs.
In basketball, guards tend to make the most, followed by forwards and then center, though big men have increased in value lately as their role in college basketball has elevated.
Arizona guard Jaden Bradley, left, bounces off UCLA guard Lazar Stefanovic in a January game at McKale Center. The Wildcats and Bruins will meet in three nonconference games in upcoming years, in part to help raise money for NIL for both schools.
Certainly that was the case with former UA center Oumar Ballo, who received a deal worth well over $1 million upon transferring to Indiana this summer, while power forward Great Osobor reportedly received an NIL package worth $2 million upon transferring to Washington from Utah State.
There’s so much compensation all around now that, according to Opendorse, top college athletes now make an average of 35.3% of what the median salary is in their corresponding pro league.
Except, at the college level, the teams aren’t paying the salaries. The boosters are, with coaches often in their ears.
“We all got a new job: Raising money,” Cronin said. “And raising money is all contingent upon who's willing to give it.”
Cronin, who said he had a “lot of conversation” with boosters that helped improve the Bruins’ NIL situation this year, is hardly the only coach openly addressing the new landscape. Baylor football coaches have worn shirts proclaiming “WE PAY PLAYERS,” while Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy noted earlier this month that the reason he recruited a Division II transfer was because “he was very inexpensive.”
At Arizona, men’s basketball coach Tommy Lloyd has consistently declined to comment about the specifics of NIL, and those around him say he won’t make NIL the first topic of a recruitment with players, parents or agents.
But Matt King, Arizona’s new director of basketball operations, says the Wildcats are “100% on par with other elite programs” in the NIL marketplace. That suggests, according to Opendorse projections, that the Arizona Assist collective that supports the program needs over $3 million this year — especially considering the Wildcats have several potential Top 25 talents, including guard Caleb Love, who has an NIL valuation that On3.com estimates at $812,000.
Both Arizona Assist and Desert Takeover, the collective for UA football, declined to discuss their budgets with the Star. But, according to Opendorse estimates, power conference football programs have an average $10 million budget around them, and men’s basketball collectives average about $3 million.
To hit their budgets, as with most collectives, Arizona Assist and Desert Takeover both offer high-end memberships that include access to private events with team members and tickets to games or other events. Arizona Assist markets an annual $3,000 "Wildcat Village" membership, while Desert Takeover has a range of options up to a "Charter Membership" that requires a $250,000 pledge over up to four seasons.
The averages of $10 million for football collectives and $3 million for men's basketball are based on Opendorse estimates that 77.2% of the $13.9 million in collective spending goes to football and 22.6% to men’s basketball. Women’s basketball teams have collective budgets of $320,000 or 2.3% of the total collective money around an athletic program.
Since that data was released in July in Opendorse's annual NIL report, however, Keller said it has appeared that a range from $3-5 million is actually needed for top men's basketball programs to stay competitive.
“When you start to dial in closer with more recent data, $3.3 million could cover just your starting five” if those players are all Top 25 earners, Keller says. “There’s some reports in the Big 12 where we're starting to see some of their forwards (receiving) in excess of a million dollars a year. The Big 12 is a hotbed for basketball right now and where earnings can be at.”
While Opendorse refers to "Top 25 earners" at each position, those are often the same as the top 25 performers. The company says it uses data from NIL transactions disclosed through or processed by the company and that it produced its report in conjunction with The Collective Association, a trade union comprised of 40 collectives around the NCAA.
Arizona guard Caleb Love has an estimated NIL value of $812,000.
'It's all about money'
Still, even with NIL data from Opendorse and recruiting-focused website On3.com, much of the landscape remains fuzzy. That's been the case since the NCAA began allowing athletes to profit on their name, image and likeness starting in July 2021.
Initially, the entire focus was on commercial activities such as endorsements or appearances. But collectives began springing up around colleges later in 2021, growing to the point where commercial activities now account for only 18.6% of ever-booming NIL compensation numbers.
Much of the real activity remains opaque, while the chatter spreads.
“I'm coaching, and I don't know (what’s going on) because there's no transparency,” Colorado men’s basketball coach Tad Boyle said. “Everything you hear and everything you read, you don't know what's true. But I do know this: There's a lot of kids that have been promised things that have not been delivered.”
Or, as college coaches commonly call the NIL Landscape, it's the Wild, Wild West. All across the country.
“There's a lot of people giving advice, a lot of people trying to figure out the best way forward for the young men that they represent,” UA football coach Brent Brennan said. “Sometimes it's family, sometimes it's coaches, sometimes it's agents. At the same time, we're trying to do everything we can to either retain our current roster or build the best roster we can.
“So it's a really complicated thing that the world's trying to figure out and I don't think anyone is completely slam dunk to get. Even with the teams that are paying the most money, that doesn't guarantee a good outcome.”
Phoenix-based attorney Gregg Clifton, who specializes in entertainment, business and sports, has seen all three of those worlds collide within NIL activity while working with schools and collectives.
Recruiting is “all about money now,” Clifton said. “I represent a bunch of coaches in some NCAA issues, and they tell me the same thing: What are we supposed to do, Gregg? We get phone calls from these kids, and the first question they ask is, `Yeah, I'm interested in maybe transferring. What are you gonna pay me?'
“It’s not about the coaches, not about the schedule. Not about your development plan to get me to the NFL or the NBA. It's all about money.”
Clifton said he doesn’t fault athletes for trying to maximize the money they can make but said it was “sad” the way it is being handled, sometimes with agents trying to break into the business by promising unrealistically big deals for clients, and little consistency in rules and laws surrounding it all.
To help tackle everything, major programs are more often hiring pro-style “general manager” type staffers to handle NIL issues and the upcoming proposals for revenue sharing.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal even addressed the trend in a story headlined “The hottest new recruit in college football sits behind a desk,” noting that Arizona hired the first GM in college football in 2016, when it elevated then-staffer Matt Dudek to the new position.
This year, Arizona, by hiring King, and Utah were among those adding men’s basketball GMs.
“You’ve got to be able to adapt and adjust to the landscape,” Utes coach Craig Smith said.
The 13 games (including two exhibitions) before UA gets into its first Big 12 schedule
The 'next generation' of NIL
Meanwhile, new NCAA rules have allowed collectives to better coordinate with schools, allowing programs to arrange meetings with players and their agents about NIL discussions.
Recruits now sign not only scholarship or letter-of-intent papers with a school but also NIL deals with their collectives, although NIL agreements are typically not made public (UA declined the Star’s public-records request for NIL-related contracts that have been run through the school, citing a student-privacy law.)
Keller said less than 5% of power-four schools have a dedicated GM but that 75% of them have at least one full-time employee working with NIL issues.
“And 100% of schools have people handling these responsibilities one way or another,” Keller said. “As we start to get closer and beyond with revenue sharing, those will be busy people, and they’re going to be commonplace.”
At UA, King said he’ll work with ticket sales, sponsorships and other revenue-producing areas but also with NIL and, when the time comes, with school-paid revenue sharing.
“In the new world of collegiate athletics, there is absolutely a business component to what we're what we're doing,” King said.
Eventually, King said, Arizona is looking to run a “next generation” basketball program, possibly with both NIL and revenue-sharing payments running through him to the players.
In future years, King says, revenue sharing could push the collective market “to get tempered,” and Keller noted that mid- or lower-level schools particularly might encourage donors to give to them to help revenue sharing instead of giving to their collectives, especially since donations to schools often can qualify for tax-deductions.
But that doesn’t mean the money levels off.
Not in modern-day college sports, that is.
“I had a co-worker ask me if I think collective budgets are going to go down after revenue share begins,” Keller says. “I don't think there’s a blue-blood program that's pushing $10 to $20 million a year that says, `Oh, well, we're good now.’ This is such a hyper-competitive market in college sports that I don't see many people easing up.”
