Auburn has faded recently, lost 3 out of their last 4 games. They will have to contend with Iowa State and Michigan State. Duke has Alabama, BYU, and Arizona. Granted, teams will cancel each other out, but still, their fields look tougher than ours. The West isn't set yet. Correction! They just released the West. Wow, looks like the toughest of all. Florida has to contend with Kansas, Texas Tech, Memphis, and St. John's.
For a college player of his caliber, the choice between NIL and being a 2nd round draft pick was probably easy. Regardless of what one thinks of NIL in general, one positive aspect is it could lead to more "very good" players returning for another year or two and improve the overall college basketball product.
Reportedly $4M NIL landscape is about to change, this is the last chance for schools to throw around unlimited cash
Approx $20.5M. Outside NIL deals are still a thing, everything over $600 has to be 3rd party reviewed and approved by Deloitte. The other biggie is that scholarship limits are no longer a thing, it's now roster limits. This is the most complete recent writeup I've seen: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/07/nx-s1-5354232/paying-college-athletes-ncaa-legal-settlement
From reading this, it's apparent unbridled NIL won't go away because there is probably no legal way to stop it. Even if the NIL "clearinghouse" survives legally, players will continued being paid outside of NCAA and conference purview (i.e, cheating) because it's the American way. My wild guess is Congress must codify this thing or it will be blown up by legal action. They also must create an enforcement entity that is completely independent from the major conferences. One of the things that bothered me about the NCAA being trashed so much over the last 5-10 years is it was nothing more than a lap dog controlled by the major conferences to take flak for them.
Peanuts! Shows how small time college bball is compared to football. Tennessee's starting QB seems to be holding out until his NIL is increased from $2.4 to $4 million.
Buck has always been pleasant to me. I know he can be a little snarky sometimes but he's generally here just for fun not trying to piss people off like some folks. And the times he does share a link it's always something pretty interesting as far as I've seen.
