What colleges are paying marginal guys to play basketball is crazy stupid

JT Toppin, a second-team All-American, and a projected second-round 2025 NBA Draft pick, is returning to Texas Tech for his junior season, for a reported $3 million in NIL compensation, according to reporting from The Athletic.

Let that sink in for a sec.

The 20th pick in the first round will get $3 million in his rookie season, per the 2025-2026 rookie scale

Second-round picks don’t even get guaranteed deals, and many end up on two-way contracts that have them splitting time between the NBA and the G League that pay them in the range of $600,000 for the year.

The kids who end up on full-year G League deals get, gulp, $40,500 for the season.

Texas Tech, meanwhile, is going to pay Toppin, a 6’9” forward who averaged 18.2 points and 9.4 rebounds per game, shooting 55.4 percent from the floor and 32.7 percent from three, close to lottery-pick money to play another year of college basketball.

Before you go and assume, well, it’s because Texas Tech will make that money back, um, no.

According to Sportico, the Texas Tech basketball program ran a modest $2.5 million operating surplus in the 2023-2024 academic sports year, the most recent year for which fully audited numbers are available.

And this surplus is based on a modest $15.6 million in revenues for that 2023-2024 season.

The Athletic article suggests that top schools are budgeting in the area of $8 million in NIL compensation for the coming season.

Eight million would put Texas Tech very much in the red going forward.

I’m writing about this to illustrate how dramatically out of whack the college basketball NIL/transfer portal market is relative to economics reality.

I can see football programs spending more on underclassmen, since guys aren’t eligible for the NFL Draft until they’ve been out of high school for three years, meaning, there could be guys who are freshmen, sophomores or juniors who would be able to fetch first- or second-round NFL money if the rules weren’t working against them.

Basketball players can hit the NBA Draft a year out of high school, so schools aren’t bidding against the NBA to try to keep guys on campus.

They’re bidding against other college programs, and, fun fact here, again, according to data from Sportico, the average Power 5 college basketball program loses $3.2 million a year.

Keep that in mind when you read a story by me or somebody else about how your favorite college program is paying this guy or that guy gobs of money to come play basketball for them.

The people paying kids who will be lucky to sniff the floor for an NBA Summer League game more than what first-round picks will get are just plain stupid, and they’re not alone.

Nothing personal against Isaac McKneely, but if Louisville is paying him more than the value of an NBA two-way deal, I’ve already used the word stupid, but it still applies.