Norlander got a bunch of scary sounding quotes from an NIL agent who really doesnât like the new system and put together an article based on those quotes:
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Yeah my eyes glazed over reading that one earlier. âFork found in kitchenâ situation, especially when you consider this:
Poneman runs WEAVE, a player agency that has quickly ascended over the past four years. Heâs been a thorn in the NCAAâs side at times, but thereâs no downplaying his agility in the NIL space. In April he knew the pending House settlement was a threat to his burgeoning business. Poneman saw that 2025âs portal cycle, by far the most lucrative yet, could be the last of its kind.
Though I think thereâs some directional accuracy in the notion that once thereâs clearly money that people want to give the players in return for playing basketball for their school, saying âno you canât have it because ofâŚfair market valueâ doesnât seem to be particularly tenable.
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If the system is somewhat cleaned up as the NCAA envisions (ha!)âŚwould players need agents anymore? Theyâre charging these college kids much higher percentages than pro clients. At minimum, it becomes a much simpler negotiation that may not be worth the fee.
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I think thatâs at least partially whatâs going on here.
Agents are less important and probably merit a much lower fee. (Still good to have a rep and someone review the contract, but it wonât be in the ballpark of 20%. Tho I think that was trending down anyway)
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It does seems like thereâs room for a âVanguard of basketball agentingâ in the college level where the agency charges low fees, handles only straightforward situations, and just gets a crap-ton of client volume through price competition. Shouldnât CAA et al be eating all these little 2-4 client agentsâ lunches?
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So what you are saying is they will all be signing with Amazon Sports Agency?
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I think thatâs right if we get to some sort of stability. Which begs the question⌠will we?
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There were a couple of other funny quotes in the Norlander article.
He entertained some coachesâ panicking themselves around the Big East hypothetically outspending them because of no-football, but then let a coach give this zinger:
âOhio State wonât let Xavier, Illinois wonât let DePaul, Virginia wonât let VCU beat them for players. Thatâs not happening,â another Big Ten coach told me. âHow is it not going to happen? I donât know.â
We got mentioned!
âWhy isnât it transparent?â Izzo said. âYou donât have to say what these players are making, but why canât we say Michigan State gets $4 million, Arkansas gets 5 million and so on?â
Inevitably, this conversation for most leads to an obvious conclusion.
âJust make them employeesâ was the sentiment from plenty on the recruiting trail this month.
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One more thing, since Iâve already put my cards on the table thinking the collective era was really bad and really dumb:
I really hate folks like Parrish (norlanders podcast partner) discussing the past 2-3 years as if they were the halcyon days of transparency and the free market. They were neither. It was a free market created entirely by state legislatures, a Supreme Court concurrence, and buttressed by federal court opinions interpreting a federal statute. And transparency? Yeah, they were transparent in the same way that everyone âknowsâ exactly what Austin Nichols did to be dismissed. Even though there was no actual reporting or disclosure.
Addendum: also, for the record, I feel like I could probably figure out how to get most of the toothpaste back into the tube, if I had to.
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I mean, it got there somehow to begin with, right!?!?
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Someone has a point about stuffy white people thoughâŚ
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True.
However, I am super white and super stuffy and nobody lets me run shit.
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I think it involves opening the back door and stuffing it in that way.
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lol so the âcapâ lasted about 3 weeks?
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Eamonn Brennan expanded on a point from his recent podcast in his (paid) newsletter that also caught my ear (context is that the pod discussed UNC not getting good value for roster spend): Understanding college hoops rosters is about to get even harder
This is not to pick on UNC (again). It is just one example among many that makes me â to say nothing of the fans and boosters whose donations float these money pools in the first place â wish there was a maybe bit more to analyze here than thinly sourced reports.
If you care about the NBA at all, you canât listen to five minutes of a podcast without learning how much a recently signed free agent is going to make by the third year of their deal, and how that affects the signing teamâs overall cap situation, and how many pick swaps they have, and what their apron status is, and on and on. The market position of every NBA player is perfectly known, almost to the point of mental exhaustion, a culture weâre hardly asking the college game to replicate. But a small sliver of that transparency, and the roster composition analysis that could flow from it, would be both useful and fun.
I am hearing more NBA cap-style analysis from college media folks (and fans) but itâs not very good or useful when you have like negative transparency on the actual numbers involved.
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And itâs exceedingly rare for any hoops pundit/analyst/journalist to discuss the unique aspects of this past offseason.
Now I know thereâs ongoing debate and maneuvering over whether we will have a flaccid, semi-flaccid, or fully erect cap.
But regardless, the money this past cycle was sort of like those use it or lose it FSA dollars. Itâs hard to criticize Hubert Davis for spending all his money on Advil and not open heart surgery, come December 30.
I think thereâs a fairer version of the criticism that actually looks at the available options and what they wound up being priced at. But none of the criticisms really engage much with the particulars (and to your point, there was never any real transparency)
TLDR - these criticisms need to be more explicit about what is good value and why it matters in this context (and why it might not).
Yup. LikeâŚdid we all forget the summer of Timofey Mozgov (or Durant to GSW if you prefer)? Cap spikes make for funny dynamics.
The related dynamic is that the money available keeps going up and up; itâs like if the NBA didnât publish its cap increase expectations and also didnât bother to quantify what actually happened.
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Another handout to these attorneys that get to sue over this
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Weâve got law and politics involved in college sports. Can we find more ways to get religion involved in college hoops? Maybe see if Sankey has any thoughts on how to bring peace to the Middle East? Get Dabo Swinneyâs thoughts on the proper marginal tax rates?
Lot of territory to explore here.
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Iâm not expecting On3 to know the difference between EOs that have immediate tangible impact and EOs that are basically PR statements, but I think this one is closer to the latter. The mechanism that turns this EO into an actual ban is more or less undefined in the EO.
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