It’s hard to debate without having a better sense of the disparity of freshman contracts from high to low major. I’d also think there’s a chance some of those schools would be willing to invest more in the freshman contracts for those kinds of players.
That being said - if you look at the range of paydays, I’d be willing to bet there’s a pretty significant difference in that potential bump from year 1 to year 2 if you do knock it out of the park vs. very little if you don’t play much at a high major.
Is it a ton of risk if you don’t do well at a mid-low major? I’m not sure there is. They aren’t going to give up on you as you represent higher potential than most players they can attract so, say you don’t put it all together until year 2 - you’re still going to be able to showcase that ability.
If you can’t do well at that level, then you’re probably going to be buried at the high-major school anyway. Maybe you drop back down and get paid by being a pedigree guy who couldn’t crack the rotation, but that’s trending the wrong way, isn’t going to be what the high-major market pays, and you also have that chip of “he couldn’t hack it on (insert major team)” if trying to work back up.
It would be interesting if someone actually did a break down on this starting with basically this coming season (or last) when the money really started going bonkers. I’d be willing to wager a good deal that it would be more profitable to play at the smaller schools in years 1-2 over sitting at the bigger.
I guess you’d also have to factor the % of guys who got drafted into the NBA and how much they were able to earn there (and how likely they were sitting early at major schools vs. ascending from lower ones) - which is probably the best argument for that route… but it feels like a dicey one.
*There’s also the Ryan Dunn model where IF you do crack the rotation early at a major school and show something then you could get drafted in the first round vs. you’d likely need to prove it at the major level if going smaller school. A player would probably need to have a certain athletic profile for that route to be something they considered early, though.