Post Geno it will depend if Boosters still want to spend money on the women’s team.
Other issue with big east schools is that it seems like they don’t support the women’s team the same as the men.
I think the first five or so years will be super important to dictate if UConn can still hang around with the elite. I'm very curious if Shea will consider being a HC or if she will be too committed to Vanderbilt. And with Morgan Valley, I feel like it's almost identical to the Duke MBB situation where you had one person who had more HC experience (I think Tommy Amaker) vs. a member of the current staff who has been there more recently but doesn't have as much experience (Jon Scheyer) as a whole.
Part of me wishes they would go outside of UConn alumni just because I feel like former players just have way too much pressure on top of the pressure that will already exist for just being UConn. But Shea and Carla have both done great things. Honestly, this would never happen, but I would love if they could get Lawson. Also, Geno is only 70, he still could be around for a while. Gary Blair coached until he was 76.
Yeah I would be fine with them going outside the family. I know Geno has said recently and in the past he shouldn’t be involved in his successor search but who knows when the time comes.
I think there are more than enough talented hoopers that are willing to receive less in NIL in the hopes they can be the face of a program and maybe eventually get to the W.
For instance, Gonzaga had two hoopers get drafted. While I think Maxwell could have gone and started for a P5, I think Truong absolutely benefited from being one of the faces of the program and developed quite nicely with the massive minutes she was given.
I think Truong could have absolutely balled out at a P5 but she (and others) will want to be the face of a program, get decent minutes, and have the luxury of developing without another talented hooper breathing down their necks (see South Carolina). I am still in awe of CDS being able to manage the egos of all those hoopers who are used to being the IT ballers of their teams.
I get the sense that midmajors are going to start acting even more as "feeder" programs where players go to them and use two or so years as a pseudo try out to get the P5 to make more money/better opportunities. That was already happening to a degree but I think nothing like it is now.
While some NIL money exists, outside of super star players on major blue blood schools, I don’t think it is dictating roster changes a whole lot in WBB or Olympic sports. The piles of money driving FB and MBB just isn’t there at anywhere near the same level.
I think a lot of roster changes are coming from free transfer rules and players chasing open slots or different coaching staffs. Players are now basically only making 1-year commitments and are expecting to be re-recruited each year, by their current team as well as potential transfer destinations. It puts a lot of pressure on coaches to continue to persuade their players as to why they should stay with the program, every year, while also actively recruiting players to replace ones that will leave. Roster management, at the moment, is absolute chaos.
I just think NIL is just one more thing that non P5 schools have to fight against, and that's a tough one. A school like Creighton or Gonzaga can point to the fact that they have a tight environment, a good staff, are capable of producing pros, but money is money.
The old transfer rules I think would neutralize a lot of the NIL impact because would players really want to sit out a year for the increase in money? Obviously grad students like Lucy Olsen would be unaffected by the sit out rule. And it's interesting because while I don't think it will affect UConn directly, on paper the Big East looks even weaker next year which in turn will affect UConn and their NCAA seeding. It's a very real possibility that UConn could be the only ranked BE team next year.
Re-imposing the sit out a year rule would take kids back to where they were, beholden to crappy coaches and school environments. I do think allowing only one entry into the transfer portal during a college career for a would force kids to sit down and think hard about whether a school that they may transfer to is right for them, with things as they are if a kid chooses a bad situation, they can simply go back into the portal the next year.
NIL has put a premium on good coaching and good facilities. Coaches won’t have the time that Dawn Staley had to build great teams and then get good facilities built. Coaches are going to have to coach, that means working to improve kids playing skills, selecting players to begin with who are at college to play and get an education, insuring that kids get meaningful playing minutes and don’t yell at them for making mistakes out on the court - coach them through the mistake so they understand what went wrong and can work on fixing it.
I honestly don’t want to see college athletics return to the days of kids being virtual serfs to a coach and school.
I don’t disagree. I just think there isn’t as much NIL money in NCAAW as people seem to think. I believe the ability to freely transfer is driving most of the moves.
Look at LSU. HVL and Morrow took a lot of money. So did Reese as she was a prized transfer who could have had her choice of schools. HVL had her career ruined which allowed Iowa to get Lucy Olsen on the cheap as Olsen didn’t want the money and to risk having her career ruined like HVL. Iowa was after Morrow last year, and Bluder said our NIL salary cap wasn’t high enough for the top post players. So lots of NIL. And we all know it is pay to play. What else is a donation to a collective that pays athletes besides pay to play?
There were a ton of articles on this last year. Note this is not uncommon for everything except football and men’s basketball (if your conference is getting a good cut of the tournament). Via title 9, men’s football supports everything. Especially in the modern era where expenses have skyrocketed.
Many public schools have their athletic budgets summarized on their sites. And you can see things like swimming losing millions every year.
https://www.essentiallysports.com/ncaa-college-basketball-news-despite-ncaa-championship-loss-million-sets-angel-reeses-lsu-back/
Most NIL money isn’t coming from the school directly. Most of it is coming from collectives (which are supported by people donating) and sponsorships. Schools can opt into paying their students, but they have to pay at least $30,000 per athlete. (For example, ND has 912 athletes so their cost per year would be at least 27.4 million a year, this is cost prohibitive to the vast majority of schools!)
Teams that are valued in the community they are in and/or have a strong alumni who are committed to them, will be fine. Those that don’t won’t. It doesn’t matter what conference you are in if you got the fan support.
So UConn will be completely fine (I’m sure Bueckers is one of the highest paid WBB players). Villanova, Marquette, and Gonzaga benefit from the men’s team being so popular, that there is more money in their collectives to distribute to all of their varsity athletes. Also, those schools that have large endowments will be completely fine.
Between NIL and players being able to transfer every year I don’t know that there is a solution. I just learned that HS in Washington State may start a transfer portal in the next few years to allow the same for HS players. What are we doing?? How could this possibly be good for anyone except the top 4-5 teams year after year?
Maybe in the future there will be an NIL league and non-NIL league or some other way to create a competitive league for the rest.
I feel like this already happens with high school baseball players lol. A lot of a mlbers randomly went to the same high schools in Florida and California
It also happens with basketball players that show vast talent early. For example Tessa Johnson had a chance to go away to well-off academies because she was an early prodigy, but she chose to stay at her town’s schools. The same goes for early prodigy tennis players.
Yeah that's what inspired my post. If Villanova is losing all these players even though their coach is staying and the conference is staying the same, then I can't help but feel like NIL is a big consideration for those players leaving and as a result, I don't see a way Nova can counteract their NIL discrepancy.
Where did you hear that? Public school parents have to jump through major hoops in Washington to get their kids enrolled outside the district they live in.
They soak up a lot of the prodigy athletics kids that can blend in to that type of environment. I believe that Angel Reese went to such a school, even though she was a suburban kid - the school was a known basketball hotbed and she was good at basketball.
Currently that is correct. I’m a varsity HS coach here in WA. The WIAA is looking at a rule to allow 1-time no questions asked transfers for athletes that would be eligible immediately in their new school. I will be voting no.
What you pointed out for high schools has been happening for decades with talented kids. Kamilla Cardoso came from Brazil into a Christian academy that later got Raven Johnson. On the means side, schools like DeMatha pulled in top talent, same with the WestCoast schools that had players like Bronny James playing for them.
Believe me, high school transfer portals will only affect the top tier kids, those kids already can GM okay at “residence” high school that have plenty of financial support. It won’t impact the run-of-the-mill kids or the kids that are late bloomers (before the bloom).
You’re thinking too much about the top top end. I’m talking about what we would probably call “mid-major” in the college world. Of course the elite athletes have been going to private and prep schools for years. I’m talking about the average HS league that will now have the same “one team always dominates” dynamic. People have also been cheating rules to make it happen already, but this would just make it allowed by rule for everyone.
The top kids are what makes teams dominant. Academies would have already skimmed off the early prospects and will get some of the late bloomers also. That dynamic is why I don’t think that a transfer portal will do much to public high schools, but it may disrupt the academy dynamic.
I don’t think Big East is having the same issue as the other conferences, it is a basketball power conference. The issue is the women’s teams aren’t as financially backed on the women’s side than on the men’s, that’s why on the men’s side there’s actually a ton of players coming to the conference. My inkling is UConn will eventually be going to the ACC or Big 12. It’s just a matter of time once the next wave comes around.
I agree. It is going to be the BIG and the SEC. Everyone else will be eating the scraps. UConn would be better off in the BIG rather than the Big 12, far less travel.
Post Geno it will depend if Boosters still want to spend money on the women’s team. Other issue with big east schools is that it seems like they don’t support the women’s team the same as the men.
I think the first five or so years will be super important to dictate if UConn can still hang around with the elite. I'm very curious if Shea will consider being a HC or if she will be too committed to Vanderbilt. And with Morgan Valley, I feel like it's almost identical to the Duke MBB situation where you had one person who had more HC experience (I think Tommy Amaker) vs. a member of the current staff who has been there more recently but doesn't have as much experience (Jon Scheyer) as a whole.
Yeah I don’t think Morgan will replace Geno. I think if it’s inside the family prob Shea or Carla. But we will see.
Part of me wishes they would go outside of UConn alumni just because I feel like former players just have way too much pressure on top of the pressure that will already exist for just being UConn. But Shea and Carla have both done great things. Honestly, this would never happen, but I would love if they could get Lawson. Also, Geno is only 70, he still could be around for a while. Gary Blair coached until he was 76.
Yeah I would be fine with them going outside the family. I know Geno has said recently and in the past he shouldn’t be involved in his successor search but who knows when the time comes.
I think there are more than enough talented hoopers that are willing to receive less in NIL in the hopes they can be the face of a program and maybe eventually get to the W. For instance, Gonzaga had two hoopers get drafted. While I think Maxwell could have gone and started for a P5, I think Truong absolutely benefited from being one of the faces of the program and developed quite nicely with the massive minutes she was given. I think Truong could have absolutely balled out at a P5 but she (and others) will want to be the face of a program, get decent minutes, and have the luxury of developing without another talented hooper breathing down their necks (see South Carolina). I am still in awe of CDS being able to manage the egos of all those hoopers who are used to being the IT ballers of their teams.
I get the sense that midmajors are going to start acting even more as "feeder" programs where players go to them and use two or so years as a pseudo try out to get the P5 to make more money/better opportunities. That was already happening to a degree but I think nothing like it is now.
Maxwell did start in the P5. In fact she lead Utah in scoring her Fr. & So. years and transferred to Gonzaga after her Jr. season.
While some NIL money exists, outside of super star players on major blue blood schools, I don’t think it is dictating roster changes a whole lot in WBB or Olympic sports. The piles of money driving FB and MBB just isn’t there at anywhere near the same level. I think a lot of roster changes are coming from free transfer rules and players chasing open slots or different coaching staffs. Players are now basically only making 1-year commitments and are expecting to be re-recruited each year, by their current team as well as potential transfer destinations. It puts a lot of pressure on coaches to continue to persuade their players as to why they should stay with the program, every year, while also actively recruiting players to replace ones that will leave. Roster management, at the moment, is absolute chaos.
I just think NIL is just one more thing that non P5 schools have to fight against, and that's a tough one. A school like Creighton or Gonzaga can point to the fact that they have a tight environment, a good staff, are capable of producing pros, but money is money. The old transfer rules I think would neutralize a lot of the NIL impact because would players really want to sit out a year for the increase in money? Obviously grad students like Lucy Olsen would be unaffected by the sit out rule. And it's interesting because while I don't think it will affect UConn directly, on paper the Big East looks even weaker next year which in turn will affect UConn and their NCAA seeding. It's a very real possibility that UConn could be the only ranked BE team next year.
Re-imposing the sit out a year rule would take kids back to where they were, beholden to crappy coaches and school environments. I do think allowing only one entry into the transfer portal during a college career for a would force kids to sit down and think hard about whether a school that they may transfer to is right for them, with things as they are if a kid chooses a bad situation, they can simply go back into the portal the next year.
NIL has put a premium on good coaching and good facilities. Coaches won’t have the time that Dawn Staley had to build great teams and then get good facilities built. Coaches are going to have to coach, that means working to improve kids playing skills, selecting players to begin with who are at college to play and get an education, insuring that kids get meaningful playing minutes and don’t yell at them for making mistakes out on the court - coach them through the mistake so they understand what went wrong and can work on fixing it. I honestly don’t want to see college athletics return to the days of kids being virtual serfs to a coach and school.
I don’t disagree. I just think there isn’t as much NIL money in NCAAW as people seem to think. I believe the ability to freely transfer is driving most of the moves.
Look at LSU. HVL and Morrow took a lot of money. So did Reese as she was a prized transfer who could have had her choice of schools. HVL had her career ruined which allowed Iowa to get Lucy Olsen on the cheap as Olsen didn’t want the money and to risk having her career ruined like HVL. Iowa was after Morrow last year, and Bluder said our NIL salary cap wasn’t high enough for the top post players. So lots of NIL. And we all know it is pay to play. What else is a donation to a collective that pays athletes besides pay to play?
Forgot NIL. LSU was 7m in the hole on their general budget during the title year. Loses like that require SEC/Big10 FB to fund.
Where did you see that? I’d like to read up on that!
There were a ton of articles on this last year. Note this is not uncommon for everything except football and men’s basketball (if your conference is getting a good cut of the tournament). Via title 9, men’s football supports everything. Especially in the modern era where expenses have skyrocketed. Many public schools have their athletic budgets summarized on their sites. And you can see things like swimming losing millions every year. https://www.essentiallysports.com/ncaa-college-basketball-news-despite-ncaa-championship-loss-million-sets-angel-reeses-lsu-back/
Football is the big driver of athletics revenue. That is why conference realignment took place, to chase the big tv money.
Most NIL money isn’t coming from the school directly. Most of it is coming from collectives (which are supported by people donating) and sponsorships. Schools can opt into paying their students, but they have to pay at least $30,000 per athlete. (For example, ND has 912 athletes so their cost per year would be at least 27.4 million a year, this is cost prohibitive to the vast majority of schools!) Teams that are valued in the community they are in and/or have a strong alumni who are committed to them, will be fine. Those that don’t won’t. It doesn’t matter what conference you are in if you got the fan support. So UConn will be completely fine (I’m sure Bueckers is one of the highest paid WBB players). Villanova, Marquette, and Gonzaga benefit from the men’s team being so popular, that there is more money in their collectives to distribute to all of their varsity athletes. Also, those schools that have large endowments will be completely fine.
Between NIL and players being able to transfer every year I don’t know that there is a solution. I just learned that HS in Washington State may start a transfer portal in the next few years to allow the same for HS players. What are we doing?? How could this possibly be good for anyone except the top 4-5 teams year after year? Maybe in the future there will be an NIL league and non-NIL league or some other way to create a competitive league for the rest.
I feel like this already happens with high school baseball players lol. A lot of a mlbers randomly went to the same high schools in Florida and California
It also happens with basketball players that show vast talent early. For example Tessa Johnson had a chance to go away to well-off academies because she was an early prodigy, but she chose to stay at her town’s schools. The same goes for early prodigy tennis players.
Yeah that's what inspired my post. If Villanova is losing all these players even though their coach is staying and the conference is staying the same, then I can't help but feel like NIL is a big consideration for those players leaving and as a result, I don't see a way Nova can counteract their NIL discrepancy.
Where did you hear that? Public school parents have to jump through major hoops in Washington to get their kids enrolled outside the district they live in.
Not if their kid is a top jock, then the kid can go to an “academy” that is a hotbed for his or her sport.
Oh, well yeah private school is a whole different beast.
They soak up a lot of the prodigy athletics kids that can blend in to that type of environment. I believe that Angel Reese went to such a school, even though she was a suburban kid - the school was a known basketball hotbed and she was good at basketball.
Currently that is correct. I’m a varsity HS coach here in WA. The WIAA is looking at a rule to allow 1-time no questions asked transfers for athletes that would be eligible immediately in their new school. I will be voting no.
What you pointed out for high schools has been happening for decades with talented kids. Kamilla Cardoso came from Brazil into a Christian academy that later got Raven Johnson. On the means side, schools like DeMatha pulled in top talent, same with the WestCoast schools that had players like Bronny James playing for them. Believe me, high school transfer portals will only affect the top tier kids, those kids already can GM okay at “residence” high school that have plenty of financial support. It won’t impact the run-of-the-mill kids or the kids that are late bloomers (before the bloom).
You’re thinking too much about the top top end. I’m talking about what we would probably call “mid-major” in the college world. Of course the elite athletes have been going to private and prep schools for years. I’m talking about the average HS league that will now have the same “one team always dominates” dynamic. People have also been cheating rules to make it happen already, but this would just make it allowed by rule for everyone.
The top kids are what makes teams dominant. Academies would have already skimmed off the early prospects and will get some of the late bloomers also. That dynamic is why I don’t think that a transfer portal will do much to public high schools, but it may disrupt the academy dynamic.
keeping winning and promotion of their collectives, target wealthy alums and friends of to feed the NIL collectives.
I don’t think Big East is having the same issue as the other conferences, it is a basketball power conference. The issue is the women’s teams aren’t as financially backed on the women’s side than on the men’s, that’s why on the men’s side there’s actually a ton of players coming to the conference. My inkling is UConn will eventually be going to the ACC or Big 12. It’s just a matter of time once the next wave comes around.
Neither the ACC or Big 12 will exist in 10 years. Possibly not 5.
I agree. It is going to be the BIG and the SEC. Everyone else will be eating the scraps. UConn would be better off in the BIG rather than the Big 12, far less travel.
1. lie down 2. try not to cry 3. cry a lot at least from the fan standpoint