From Shaq to Zion: Which past men's college basketball legends would have earned the most money in the modern NIL era?

Yahoo

13-03-2025

In early 1993, Michigan basketball coach Steve Fisher did a double take when he walked by the newly opened NikeTown store along Chicago's Magnificent Mile.
'The front window was plastered with Fab Five stuff,' Fisher told Yahoo Sports.
There were Michigan jerseys for sale bearing the jersey numbers worn by Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Jalen Rose. There were the black socks that the Fab Five had helped popularize. And there were the royal blue and purple Air Flight Huaraches that Nike had given to Michigan players to wear before anyone else and that at least one Fab Five member considered the quintet's unofficial signature shoe.
At the time, Fisher viewed the storefront display as evidence that corporations were treating the Fab Five brand as a marketable commodity but that his players weren't seeing any of the profits. Now he also sees it as proof that the members of college basketball's most celebrated recruiting class would have made a killing in the NIL market if they played in the modern era.
'They were marketed by other people from the time they came out of high school,' Fisher said. 'I can't fathom how much they would command now, but it would be a new high, I would imagine.'
[Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Mayhem is back: Enter for a shot to win up to $50K]
For decades, the NCAA stubbornly refused to allow college athletes to become paid endorsers or to monetize their success beyond school-funded scholarships. Only in response to mounting legal and political pressure four years ago did the NCAA relent and at last loosen its name, image and likeness policies.
The rule change instantly laid bare exactly how much generations of college athletes had been underpaid and undervalued. Despite objections from the NCAA, NIL deals predictably became de facto pay-to-play devices with donors and collectives footing the bill for athletes rather than the universities themselves.
Men's basketball players often land the most lucrative pay-to-play deals, those in the NIL space told Yahoo Sports, because one or two standouts can drastically improve a program. Deals well into the six figures are common for high-major starters. Top-tier transfers received as much as $2 million last offseason. Highly touted prospect A.J. Dybantsa reportedly had an asking price of $5 million before choosing BYU over Alabama, Kansas and North Carolina.
'I wouldn't be surprised if you see more basketball schools drop their drawers to go get a bigtime player like that,' said AthleteZ PR founder Megan Curry, a former Adidas executive who transitioned into the NIL space four years ago.
For top-tier athletes with big personalities and visible platforms, the endorsement market is also a profitable pathway. You've seen commercials featuring Paige Bueckers sipping Gatorade, Cooper Flagg shooting jumpers in New Balance sneakers and Livvy Dunne tumbling in Vuori leggings and joggers.
With the NCAA tournament tipping off in less than a week and the landscape of college athletics evolving so rapidly, Yahoo Sports sought to tackle an intriguing question: Which past men's college basketball legends would have earned the most money in the modern NIL era? To answer that, Yahoo Sports asked eight experts in the NIL space to rank their top candidates. The only rules were to keep it strictly to men's basketball players from after the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
Below are the results of that informal poll. It's a top eight that includes everything from draft busts to NBA superstars.
Jimmermania first swept an unsuspecting nation the night of January 26, 2011.
That's when Fredette cemented his reputation as college basketball's most feared scorer at the expense of Kawhi Leonard and previously unbeaten San Diego State. The BYU senior torched the fourth-ranked Aztecs for 43 points, pulling up, going right or going left, off balance or off the wrong foot, from the paint or from impossibly deep range.
Video clips of Fredette's most audacious shots instantly set social media ablaze. Kevin Durant described Fredette as the 'best scorer in the world.' Rap star Nelly called Fredette 'the truth.' Steve Nash gushed on Twitter, 'Jimmer Fredette? Man, that name's straight outta Hoosiers. No wonder he never misses.'
As Fredette's fame grew, it became more difficult for him to venture out in public. He resorted to enrolling in online courses after weeks of getting mobbed on campus and showing up to classes an hour late. He ordered most meals via delivery to avoid constantly being interrupted mid-bite by autograph seekers. He checked into hotels using an alias and left BYU's home arena undercover after games to avoid being spotted.
'My now-wife, at the time my girlfriend, had to drive her car to a secret entrance so that I could leave because there were so many people waiting outside,' Fredette told Yahoo Sports in a 2018 interview.
Between Fredette's distinctive name and aesthetically pleasing playing style, sports business experts say he'd have been a goldmine in the NIL era. They argue brands would have jumped to associate with Fredette until his star fizzled in the NBA.
Said Austin Walton, CEO and founder of Next Sports Agency, 'He'd have made millions and millions of dollars today.'
Wardell Stephen Curry II wasn't always a one-name superstar. The son of ex-Charlotte Hornets sharpshooter Dell Curry grew up in the heart of ACC country without receiving a single ACC scholarship offer.
The cult of Curry began to grow at Davidson with every impossibly deep 3-pointer and every scoring barrage. Fans packed arenas across the Southern Conference to witness Curry's exploits. Then a national audience fell in love with the wisp of a guard when he racked up 128 points in four NCAA tournament games to carry Davidson within a missed 3-pointer of the 2008 Final Four.
A baby-faced Curry went on "Late Night" with Conan O'Brien that March. He was best known as Dell's son when that NCAA tournament began. By the end he became so popular that Dell was relegated to Steph's dad.
The buzz about Curry even tempted the NBA's biggest star to make a couple special trips to see Davidson play. LeBron James sat courtside for Davidson's Sweet 16 rout of Wisconsin and for the Wildcats' victory over NC State the following December. James leaped out of his seat after an acrobatic Curry layup, spoke glowingly of the young guard's crowd-pleasing game and even exchanged cell phone numbers with the Davidson star.
'Whenever we heard he got a text from LeBron, it was just the coolest thing,' Curry's Davidson teammate, Andrew Lovedale, told Yahoo Sports in 2023.
Those in the NIL space say that Curry would have been besieged with endorsement offers had his college career come 15 years later. The year after spearheading Davidson's Elite Eight run, Curry averaged 28.6 points and showcased the point guard skills NBA teams wanted to see.
'If an NCAA tournament hero comes back the next year, it opens up a lot more possibilities,' Rob Sine, co-founder and CEO of the NIL agency, Blueprint Sports, told Yahoo Sports. 'I don't know if anybody knew he was going to be what he is now, but he was already doing things we'd never seen before.'
At the end of a pep rally celebrating their first national championship, the stars of that 2005-06 Florida team made a stunning announcement. Projected first-round picks Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer revealed they were postponing their NBA dreams and coming back to Gainesville to chase a second straight championship.
'We're back, baby!' Noah shouted, drawing a roar from the O'Connell Center crowd.
Fort Lauderdale-based sports attorney Darren Heitner was a student at the University of Florida at the same time that Noah, Horford and Brewer were considering their future. Heitner laughs when he considers how many millions those future first-round picks could have commanded in the modern NIL era.
Last offseason, Heitner reviewed the $2 million contracts that Great Osobor signed when he transferred to Washington and that Coleman Hawkins signed when he transferred to Kansas State.
'Don't get me wrong, they're talented players,' Heitner told Yahoo Sports, 'but they didn't have the national acclaim nor a championship under their belt. So yeah, I would expect Al Horford, Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer to command at least that much.'
Then there's the endorsement side.
While Heitner admits 'brands would have jumped at the opportunity' to associate with Florida's returners as a group, he argues that Noah would have been most marketable individually. The 6-foot-11 future lottery pick evolved into college basketball's ponytailed antihero, revered by some for his on-court bravado and political consciousness yet reviled by others for his untamed locks and chest-beating antics.
"He's the most hated player in college basketball," Brewer told reporters days before Florida became the second team since John Wooden-era UCLA to win back-to-back titles.
Says Heitner now, 'He would have been in line for millions of dollars.'
He's not just perhaps the greatest freshman of college basketball's one-and-done era. He's also one of the most marketable.
At the beginning of Davis' junior year of high school, he was a 6-foot-3 guard with a single offer from Cleveland State. Over the next year-plus, he famously grew eight inches, blossomed into an elite shot blocker and rebounder and attracted interest from just about every major program in college basketball.
Forget for a moment that Davis was the best player on a 38-2 Kentucky team that captured John Calipari's lone national championship. Or that he became one of three freshmen ever to be named college basketball's national player of the year. What sets Davis apart from other college basketball legends from a marketability standpoint was his infamous unibrow.
What started with a few Kentucky fans making T-shirts with the silhouette of the unibrow over Davis' No. 23 went on to spawn an entire cottage industry. Numerous unibrow-themed T-shirts popped up at Kentucky home games with slogans like "Brow down," "Bow to the brow" and "Fear the Brow." More adventurous fans shaved a replica unibrow into their chest hair or drew unibrows onto their faces in permanent black marker. Davis' mother even wore a Mardi Gras-themed mask to the SEC tournament title game with a drawn-on-brow over the eye holes.
"I just embrace it," Davis told Yahoo Sports before the 2012 Final Four. "The fans enjoy it and the signs are everywhere now. They've been making everything out of it. I've even seen a baby with a unibrow on Twitter.'
Were it possible back then, Heitner believes that brands would have latched onto Davis' unique look just like fans did.
'Everyone was talking about it back then,' said Heitner, who has drafted and reviewed countless NIL contracts. 'I think a lot of companies could have found creative ways to take advantage.'
Last March, during an interview on ESPN Radio, Laettner revealed his distaste for how college basketball has evolved since his playing days.
'They gotta take out the NIL,' Laettner said. 'They gotta wipe that out. They gotta change the transfer portal."
Laettner argued that coaches can't develop 'any type of culture at a school' when they have to overhaul their rosters every year and reteach their offensive and defensive system. That's why Villanova's Jay Wright, Alabama's Nick Saban and other college basketball and football coaching legends have retired, Laettner contested.
'I think I saw something with Nick Saban where he said the first thing a recruit says to him now is how much money are you going to get me, 'Laettner said. 'I mean, it's just horrible."
The irony of that rant is that Laettner would have benefited as much as anyone in his era if the loosening of NIL rights arrived three decades earlier. Laettner was a four-time Final Four participant, a two-time national champion and college basketball's player of the year as a senior. He hit maybe the most iconic shot in college basketball history, the buzzer-beating turnaround jumper that capped a 10-for-10 shooting performance and won Duke the 1992 East Regional final over Kentucky.
Above all else, Laettner became the player opposing fans most loved to hate. He was brash. He was cocky. He was a bully. He always won. He famously stepped on one opposing player and got away with it. He became a symbol of silver-spoon Duke entitlement even though he actually grew up in a blue-collar, working-class household.
Laettner embraced being the bad guy. Corporations could have used that to their advantage.
'Laettner was a massive, massive name and that Duke team in general, they were celebrities,' said sports marketing executive Michael Ehrlich, founder and CEO of the brand consultancy and talent representation firm Playbook Marketing. 'One of my favorite marketing mantras is 'either love me or hate me, but feel me.' You either loved Laettner or hated Laettner. That drives conversation, brand value and dollars.'
In summer of 1985, former LSU men's basketball coach Dale Brown traveled to West Germany to deliver motivational speeches to U.S. soldiers. Brown had just finished holding a basketball clinic at a U.S. Army base in the town of Wildflecken when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
Looking the tall, hulking figure in front of him up and down, Brown earnestly asked, 'What rank are you, soldier?'
'Coach, I'm 13 years old,' a young Shaquille O'Neal replied.
An incredulous Brown introduced himself to O'Neal's stepfather that day, gave him a business card and made a point to stay in touch. Before long, Brown became the first to offer O'Neal a scholarship after he moved to San Antonio and blossomed into a goliath of a superstar.
Over the next few years, the rest of the basketball world became familiar with the powerful yet nimble kid who Brown met in Wildflecken. He became the top center recruit in his class. Dick Vitale lost his mind watching him block a shot in the McDonald's All-American game and then go coast-to-coast for a rim-shaking dunk.
At LSU, O'Neal became a phenomenon beloved as much for his fun-loving personality as for his high-flying blocked shots and thunderous dunks. The 7-foot-1 center averaged 27.6 points, 14.7 rebounds and 5.0 blocks as a sophomore. The next season, he put up similar numbers and won national player of the year.
O'Neal went on to endorse anything and everything as an NBA superstar, from Burger King, to Pepsi, to Reebok, to Icy Hot. That would have started when O'Neal was at LSU had the NCAA allowed it, marketing experts say.
'He was a freakish athlete with a larger-than-life personality,' said Chris Brown, chief operating officer of Blueprint Sports, which matches college athletes with NIL opportunities. 'Those are the guys that stand out for me.'
One month before he unveiled the most celebrated freshman class in college basketball history, Michigan coach Steve Fisher took his players to the school's outdoor track to time how fast they could each run a mile.
Fisher vividly remembers the shock of finding a horde of reporters gathered alongside the track waiting to capture footage of the Fab Five doing mundane preseason conditioning.
'We had all the local TV outlets, ESPN, even the New York Times,' Fisher said. 'That just goes to show how much hype they received.'
The interest only mushroomed as Webber, Rose, Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson led Michigan to back-to-back national title game appearances. When Michigan's team bus arrived at Penn State in February 1993, hundreds of Penn State fans greeted them to ask for photos or autographs. A couple weeks later in Tucson, Arizona, Fisher recalls a memorabilia collector sending a bevy of 10-year-old boys with big bags of basketballs for the Fab Five to autograph.
'I compare it to traveling with the Beatles,' Fisher said.
While the Fab Five's basketball legacy is significant, its cultural impact was even more massive. Rose was the jester. Howard was all-business. Webber scowled on the court and flashed a megawatt smile away from it. Together, the black-socked, baggy-shorted Fab Five impacted basketball style at every level of the sport.
Before the Fab Five, black socks were for the 'shuffleboard crowd,' Fisher said with a laugh. After the Fab Five started wearing them in games, everyone else did too.
'It became crazy,' Fisher said. 'You couldn't find a pair of black socks in the store. Truly, you couldn't find them.'
The excitement about Zion Williamson began to build before he was even old enough to obtain a driver's license. The 6-foot-7, 285-pound manchild became the rare athlete who amassed a national following while he was still in high school.
Standing-room-only crowds flocked to his tiny South Carolina private school to see him play. YouTube clips of his blocked shots and 360 dunks amassed millions of clicks. The rapper Drake even followed Williamson on Instagram and posted photos of himself wearing the 16-year-old's Spartanburg Day jersey.
Starring for one of college basketball's most visible programs accelerated the pace of Williamson's ascent to stardom. Viewers couldn't get enough of the projected No. 1 overall pick with the size and power of an NFL defensive end and the footwork and agility of an NBA-bound small forward.
Celebrities such as Barack Obama, Floyd Mayweather and Jay-Z made special trips to watch Williamson play. Tickets for marquee Duke games went for for thousands of dollars on the secondary market. The frenzied response to Williamson spraining his left knee when his shoe split open against North Carolina provided a true measure of his impact. Investors reacted by unloading Nike stock, causing shares to tumble by as much as 1.7% the following day.
When Williamson's lone season at Duke ended one victory shy of the Final Four, sports marketing experts were left scratching their heads trying to think of a previous NBA prospect with as much mass appeal. Some mentioned LeBron. Others went even further back in history.
'I guess you go back to Shaq, maybe?' Bob Dorfman, creative director at San Francisco-based Pinnacle Advertising, told Yahoo Sports at the time. 'But more recently, I can't think of anybody. I haven't seen anybody have as much attention surrounding him in recent years.'
Even though injuries have hampered Williamson in the NBA, those in the NIL space say that shouldn't take away from projections of what he could have earned at Duke. All but one of the NIL experts polled by Yahoo Sports had Williamson among their top three potential earners. Many had him atop their lists.
'When Zion was playing in college, he was the name,' said AthleteZ PR founder Megan Curry, a former Adidas executive who transitioned into the NIL space four years ago. 'I think brands would have jumped all over him.'