CBS Sports college basketball experts Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander spent a month surveying more than 100 Division I men’s basketball coaches for our annual Coaches in the Box series. They surveyed people from across the sports landscape: some of the biggest names in college basketball, but also assistants from small schools in the minor leagues. The coaches agreed to share their opinions without any filters in exchange for anonymity. We asked 10 questions and are publishing the results over three weeks.
It’s hard to have a conversation about college sports with just about anyone these days without it eventually devolving into an exchange about name, image, and likeness. That’s my experience, at least.
Everyone wants to know what you’re hearing. Everyone wants you to try to separate fact from fiction. Everyone wants you to share the weirdest story you’ve ever heard. So with that in mind, we decided to ask more than 100 college basketball coaches this question as part of our annual Candid Coaches series:
What is the maximum amount of net money someone has ever asked you or your staff for a player?
| $2 million or more | 10.4% |
| Between $1 million and $2 million | 40.6% |
| less than a million dollars | 49.0% |
Ready Meals
Those who follow the “Honest Coaches” series should be aware that we conduct surveys at all levels of the sport. So, yes, this survey annually includes head coaches who have won national championships at major programs — but so do assistant coaches at major programs and everyone in between.
For most questions, it doesn’t hurt as much as it provides perspective from all levels of the sport. It’s an approach that usually works well. But diversity definitely This has led to misleading results at the surface level here.
So let me give some context.
Of the major conference coaches we surveyed, the main thing you need to know is that 77 percent of them told us that their staff was asked to pay at least $1 million for a player. Does every major conference transfer demand that much money? No. Does every major conference program pay that much money? No. But what our survey results show is that impactful transfers at the high major level routinely demand at least $1 million to sign. What they actually demand is that players who transfer to major conferences actually demand at least $1 million to sign. get Scoring is another story. But more than three out of four power-conference coaches we surveyed said they were asked to offer seven-figure deals for a player.
The biggest number we heard was… $5 million!
Seriously, one coach told us that his staff was asked to offer a $5 million deal to secure a player. Since there are no reports of a men’s basketball player being offered anything close to that amount, I’m assuming the staff politely agreed and eventually lowered the price.
I appreciate the boldness, though.
This, more than anything else, is what we’ve heard from most coaches—that nearly every player in the transfer window worth watching is asking for something, often something that’s out of the realm of reality. One coach told us he was told it would cost $400,000 to sign a player who had never averaged more than five points per game at the major league level.
“I’m still in shock,” the coach said.
Another coach told us his team offered $50,000 for one player, and then felt the offer was insulting.
“It was $50,000 more than he was worth, and he ended up moving to the Southeastern Conference,” the coach said.
To be honest, we had nine coaches who either refused to answer the question or told us they had never been asked to make zero money — but literally every single one of these guys works somewhere where there is absolutely no zero money.
But where there is no demand for money, there is demand for money too – even at the mid- and low-levels, where the opportunity to earn money is limited but certainly available. In this context, the number of mid- and low-level coaches we surveyed skews the broader figures for this question.
So let me give you some more context.
As you can see above, 49.0% of coaches who answered this question told us that the most money their staff was asked to provide for a player was less than $1 million. But one thing to understand is that over 75% of coaches who answered this way are working outside What this highlights is that coaches working in these five leagues — the only strong conferences college basketball has now — are often in a different world than coaches in the mid- and low-major leagues, with the gap between rich and poor widening.
In short, at the top level, a good player is likely to demand a zero-sum bonus package of more than $1 million. That’s what our surveys show. But at the lower levels of the sport, the demands are typically smaller—usually much less than $1 million, and in most cases less than $100,000. That’s what our surveys show as well.
However, the numbers have risen dramatically in recent years.
We didn’t ask about this specifically for our series, but one of the coaches I spoke to went out of his way to argue that the amount of money being demanded and paid for missing games is much higher than it was just two years ago. Is every player getting every penny they’re supposed to? Absolutely not. There’s a lot of exaggeration in the media. That’s the consensus among coaches. But what’s also the consensus is that the so-called going rate for influential players has increased a lot and rapidly.
“One coach said to me, ‘The same player who made $50,000 a few years ago is now making $200,000 — and the player who made $200,000 a few years ago is probably asking for $1 million (now) and he’s almost getting it.’” “I was getting a good package with zero bonuses. About $2.5 million. That was good. But it’s nothing now compared to some of the SEC and Big 12 schools. I swear some schools are spending $6 or $7 million in the transfer window. We couldn’t do that in my shoes. But that’s all it takes now.”
The bottom line is that sports don’t change. He has Things have changed. What used to be the firing of coaches—paying players—is now one of the biggest and most important aspects of the job. I’m not saying you can’t win big at the major conference level without spending millions of dollars to build a roster, but I am saying with confidence that it’s very difficult and unlikely.
The players know it, and if their agents don’t, they know it.
We’ve gotten to the point where Coleman Hawkins and Gret Osobor are getting deals worth about $2 million. There’s a real market. They’re good players. And good players are valuable.
But it is not so only Good players demand good money.
Modest players from modest programs often command exorbitant amounts of money, something one coach told us he finds problematic but also understandable given the amount of reporting on this. “Given what these kids and their parents have heard, what has been reported, and even some of the numbers I know, it’s hard to criticize some of these kids for what they’re asking for,” the coach said. “At the end of the day, it’s like a house. You are what the market says you are.”
TRUE.
But one thing that many coaches have told us over and over again is that there is a huge gap between the market and many of the average players. He thinks It exists and it is the one In reality This is something that happens to players at their level. Coaches say they often find themselves at a loss when talking.
This story in particular made me laugh:
“One of my assistants came to me and said it would cost $800,000 to get one player we were looking at,” one coach said. “I had to make sure we were talking about the same player! I’m not against players getting paid; they deserve it. But you wouldn’t believe some of the players who ask for crazy amounts of money… If you published your poll, I would happily pay $800,000 to a top American player. But the player who asked us for $800,000 wasn’t a top American player. He wasn’t even close. And a lot of that happens. Crazy times.”
Previously on Candid Coaches…