On NIL, I think it is a net positive:
- Sue, DT and maybe Plum? were talking recently talking about the NIL opportunities of current players. Sue and DT had a pregnant pause at one point when they probably thought of their early pro careers of having to go to Russia to maximize their earnings potential.
- NIL opportunities help raise the attractiveness of basketball careers by being less tainted by existing market-imposed gender pay disparity. This increases interest and elevates the talent pool entering the sport and the intensity of quality skills development.
- NIL adds an informal incentive to prevent otherwise next-level-eligible player from leaving for the next level, thereby avoiding the resulting bumps in the quality of programs due to that specific reason.
On the Portal, I think it is a net positive with a downside disproportionately borne by players who overestimated their market worth, who run the risk of losing their scholarships.
- The Portal simulates the harsher realities of the free market professional talent system, except with a greater pool of places/teams interested in one’s specific skills. Having to face these types of risks early in life may have net educational benefits, albeit with a possible cost.
- The Portal provides four bites of the proverbial next-level aspirations Apple. There maybe a psychological cost in the futility of having such four bites for those with failed aspirations. This may even frustrate mere observers more than the transfers.
Portal positive effects for Players:
- Players can transfer for any reason — a lifeline in untenable situations — and for personal reasons due to changed circumstances or preferences.
- Players can transfer for basketball reasons, such as enhancing their draft stock or for better basketball training and playing conditions, with or without next-level aspirations.
- The Portal gives players with next-level aspirations who were not recruited by their desired schools another track by training and excelling in basketball in one school to raise their profile to be recruited in the Portal by a school that improves their draft stock.
- The Portal also gives players with next-level aspirations who also have serious academic/traditional career goals an opportunity to matriculate first in a school to pursue those goals, excel in their program and finish school in 3 years and then enter the Portal to pursue their next-level basketball aspirations at a different launching pad school.
Portal positive effects for Coaches / Programs:
- For established programs like UConn with a great coach like Geno who are also successful at recruiting, the Portal can be used in contingencies for strategic-fit high-quality transfers that also fit the culture at the programs.
- Not-established or de-established programs with promising young coaches, just-hired great coaches or great coaches who are mediocre at recruiting can more quickly become established programs by having a quick succession of noticeably successful seasons that make such programs attractive destinations for top transfers.
- Programs with underperforming coaches will more quickly be less tolerant of underperforming coaches.
- A cumulative effect of the Portal is elevated mobility, pay, quantity and quality in the coaching market and an increase in established programs.
- The increased number and parity in super-team formation, the higher quantity of higher quality players and the higher quantity of higher quality coaching will raise visibility of the sport even by casual fans and traditionally disinterested parties.
- The raised visibility of the sport will increase desirability of university investment in its program which attracts at-large donations to the University and boosters to the University and its program.
The cumulative effect of the Portal and NIL will be increased visibility of the sport at large which may help lessen the gender disparity in and spur franchise formation in the professional version of the sport which then becomes a self-propelling mechanism for all levels in the sport.
There is the inevitable downside whereby the resulting transformation of the college sport may turn off some existing fans.
Finally, a nuanced benefit of the portal is the elimination of charges of seeming favoritism inherent in the prior transfer rules with a 1-year wait on transfer play that can be seemingly inconsistently lifted. Recall the debates on Evina, Jessica Shepard, ….
In short, choice is good, free market is good, pay incentives are good. But like everything, there are downsides.
