Four years into NIL, coaches, agents reveal heartache and frustration of students' big money chase

New York Post

a day ago

In late December, University of Miami hoops coach Jim Larranaga retired two months into the season. There was no scandal behind it, no family reasons given.
Larranaga — who has taken two teams to the Final Four, most recently in 2023 — told The Post thisweek: 'It's not that I don't love coaching anymore or wanted to step down. I felt like I was no longer the right guy for the job.'
More specifically, not the right guy in this brave new world where NIL — the NCAA right that lets college athletes profit off their name, image and likeness — combined with the freedom of movement the transfer portal provides young athletes, has essentially made college athletes free agents every year.
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12 Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava caused an uproar in April when he held out for more money — but ended up transferring to UCLA for a pay cut.
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12 Iamaleava had a reported $8 million deal at UT.
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As the first class who were freshman under NIL privileges, which were instated July 1, 2021, are now ready to graduate, the college sports landscape is a chaotic one. Not only did it change the status quo for coaches and athletes, it's taken dynamite to the whole system.
'When NIL hit and the transfer portal opened up at the same time, what I found immediately frustrating was that players and their view of the college experience was going to be completely changed,' Larranaga, 75, said.
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The Queens native, who is currently writing a book on leadership and will be teaching at Miami, made it clear he's not critical of athletes wanting to capitalize on a short window and make money.
'But to build a program as a coach, you're losing the normal continuity,' he said of the now-yearly roster turnover. 'I had 10 new guys and they weren't that interested in a new system or developing skills that could be put to use. They were basically trying out for their next job.
12 Miami coach Jim Larranaga ended his coaching career in December and said he was frustrated with NIL culture.
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'The culture changed. Not my culture, but the players had a different view.'
Followers of college hoops will likely cite Larranaga's age and say he was already heading toward the end of his career. But only two months earlier, University of Virginia coach Tony Bennett also shocked the basketball world by calling it quits at 56. It underscored the tumult.
On his way out, he expressed similar sentiments as Larranaga. Bennett was critical not of student athletes being compensated — but of NIL's lawlessness.
12 College hoopers Hanna and Haley Cavinder were immediately high earners after the implementation of NIL.
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'The game, and college athletics, is not in a healthy spot,' he said at the time.
That was obvious this spring, when University of Tennessee sophomore redshirt quarterback Nico Iamaleava was a no-show at practice — because he was holding out in a high-stakes game for a better NIL deal than the reported $8 million one he had at UT.
After a high-profile game of chicken that angered the school's rabid fan base, Tennessee removed Iamaleava from the roster and he transferred to UCLA for a reported pay cut of $500K a year.
A few executives and experts told The Post the Iamaleava situation is a 'cautionary tale' on how to not conduct business. Sports attorney Mit Winter said the very public battle between a powerful institution and an individual player has 'galvanized' coaches to prevent a repeat.
12 Caitlin Clark became the first college athlete to sign a deal with State Farm.
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When NIL was enacted, it was a given that some athletes would be treated like influencers — netting deals with businesses and brands. We saw athletes like LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne and twin hoopers Haley and Hanna Cavinder, who transferred to the University of Miami, become early star earners. That led to NIL collectives — aka third parties — essentially paying them a salary for playing their sport.
'I don't think people envisioned that every school would [create] a new entity called an 'NIL collective' … just to pool money to pay athletes. It spread a lot quicker than people had expected,' said Winter, adding that it caught the NCAA, conferences and many schools flat-footed.
As a result, college sports has truly shifted into a pay-to-play system with few rules in place, no transparency — and a whole lot of financial and cultural whiplash. Players, unencumbered bytransfer rules, can now hop around each year hunting for the best deals.
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12 Former UVA coach Tony Bennett shocked the college basketball world when he retired this year and said college sports was 'not in a healthy spot.'
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It's also widened the gap between the schools that are the haves and have-nots. After leaping from Seton Hall, basketball star Kadary Richmond finished his collegiate career last season at conference rival St. John's where, coach Rick Pitino revealed on Vice's 'Pitino: Red Storm Rising' docu-series, 'He wanted to play for me. But we paid him a lot of money.' Richmond's NIL deal was reportedly in the high six figures.
Texas quarterback Arch Manning is atop the NIL food chain with a valuation of $6.5 million, while Duke phenom Cooper Flagg, who declared for the NBA draft, had a reported valuation of $4.8. Dunne was valued at $4.1 million.
And while NIL has led to greater player agency, allowing athletes to create generational wealth for themselves, it's also created a lot of uncertainty,
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12 ESPN analyst and former New Mexico coach Fran Fraschilla (left) said it's almost impossible to know what NIL will do to college sports longterm.
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'I've talked to some of the smartest people in college athletics and it scares me when they say, 'Hey, I have been in this business 40 years and I have no idea where this all ends up,'' ESPN analyst and former New Mexico coach Fran Franschilla told The Post. 'I think they might have the answer but they have no clue.
'It's a new system. It's a very transactional business right now,' Fraschilla said.
One frequent criticism of the current NIL system is the lack of transparency. Many sources said no one truly knows how much money collectives have, nor what players are worth.
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'What was a challenge for us was to talk to an agent and not know the true market value of a player,' said Larranaga. 'An agent could tell you, 'OK, to be involved with this player would cost you a million dollars' … [But] no one knows what other schools are offering. And so you're guessing and dealing with your own budget.'
12 Coach Jim Larranaga celebrated with his players as the clinched the Final Four in 2023.
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Murky deals aside, Fraschilla said NIL and the transfer portal have altered not only the coach-player relationship, but also, in some cases, the power structure.
'I had a referee recently text me. He said, 'I did games this year where I could tell the coach was afraid to yell at the players because he was worried the kid might get mad and transfer,'' said Fraschilla, adding that money and the reshuffling of players every year has impacted team chemistry.
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'There are teams that, when you watch games, you think, 'How the hell are they losing with all that talent?' And you find out one guy is jealous of another guy because he's getting more money,' said Fraschilla.
On the other hand, agent Daniel Poneman, the founder of Weave, one of the top agencies in college hoops, said the monetary incentive has only made athletes want to play harder — and, many times, led to more professional dealings between coach and player.
12 St. John's coach Rick Pitino admitted the program paid a lot of money to lure Kadary Richmond from conference rival Seton Hall.
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However, not up for debate is the danger of handing large infusions of cash to young people with little financial acumen. While not many are reportedly making millions, there are significant payouts that come with few if any guardrails.
'I had one client and I told him how to save for taxes. Tax season came and it was all gone. It turns out, he had been playing online blackjack,' said one executive.
That's where people like Michael Haddix Jr. come in. Haddix, who taught financial literacy for the NBA G league and NFL teams, founded Scout, a fintech platform that helps athletes automate pesky things like tax withholding.
He works with top schools like Louisville, Mississippi State and Iowa.
'I've heard examples where players were going through money and not paying their taxes and jumping into the transfer portal, asking the new coaches for an advance so they can clean up their financial mess,' Haddix said, adding that coaches and ADs tell him they worry about athletes ending up in severe trouble with the IRS.
12 In 2021, Paige Bueckers was the first college basketball player to sign with Gatorade.
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Over the summer, Poneman's agency will be trying to stave off this kind of scenario by hosting clients in Scottsdale for a two-week offseason training. 'It's like a boot camp, where we're bringing in tax experts, financial advisors and spiritual teachers,' said Poneman.
'We're saying, look, the money you're making is not for you to go crazy and buy bottle service on your college campus,' Poneman said. 'This is to put in your Roth IRA and into a diversified portfolio. This is life-changing money if you allow it to change your life positively.'
There's less emphasis on graduation, not to mention traditional alma-mater relationships, but players are staying in college longer for the paycheck.
'I don't hear the term graduation rate anymore. No one is talking about getting degrees now. They're just figuring out how much money those kids can make,' lamented Fraschilla.
12 Haley Cavinder (left) transferred from Fresno State to the University of Miami to Texas Christian University — only to return to Miami.
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12 The Cavinders started playing at Gilbert High School in Gilbert, Arizona. Now they each have more than 1 million Instagram followers and a combined 4.6 million fans on TikTok.
Haley & Hanna Cavinder / Instagram
And one positive is the incredible boost NIL has provided to women's hoops by driving interest to the sport's big stars.
In 2021, former UConn star and current Dallas Wings rookie Paige Beuckers became the first college basketball player to sign with Gatorade. Two years later, Caitlin Clark was the first collegiate athlete to notch a deal with State Farm.
And changes are coming. On July 1, the NCAA House Settlement — the result of a class-action lawsuit brought against the NCAA and the country's five biggest conferences — is expected to go into effect, kicking off a flurry of new modifications.
Among them: awarding $2.7 billion in backpay to athletes, allowing schools to directly pay athletes instead of compensating them through a third-party collective, revenue sharing and instituting what is, essentially, a salary cap of $20.5 per school over the next year.
But as the new rules settle, Winter expects new legal issues, including inevitable Title IX lawsuits — 'Because, as of now, schools [are] paying like 90% of [their] dollars to male athletes,' he said.
Winter said some athletic directors favor a collective bargaining structure that mimics the NBA and NFL.
'If college sports is really going to be professional,' Larranaga said, 'let's come up with good rules and let's figure it out.'