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The NIL is taking over the college sports world. As a top program in college basketball, if you don't have $4 million to $7 million in NIL money in your war chest to use for recruiting and transfers, you'll fall behind.
According to reports, an innovative event called “Players Era Festival” has now been decided on soon and each of the eight teams participating in the tournament will be paid $1 million in NIL. According to CBS, the players involved will also receive NIL opportunities in the future.
This multi-team event (MTE) will be held in Las Vegas and will likely be part of the iconic “Feast Week” held during Thanksgiving week. The eight teams confirmed to participate are Alabama, Texas A&M, Creighton, Houston, Notre Dame, Oregon, Rutgers, and San Diego State, with more big teams expected to join in the future.
This event will be good for college basketball for a variety of reasons. First, players who participate in tournaments are entitled to the payments they receive. Not only do they deserve these payments, but this money could be a huge boost to a program that desperately needs a little bit of his NIL boost.
The extra $1 million will help teams like San Diego State acquire players from the portal that they wouldn't otherwise be able to acquire. Which brings me to my second and biggest point about him. That said, the parity of college basketball is unlike any other sport in America.
For decades, the winning teams in college basketball were bluebloods. Kentucky, Kansas State, UNC, Duke, UCLA and UConn have won 22 of the last 36 national titles. We can't pretend like the players weren't being compensated behind the scenes by some of these programs and they had the biggest banks at their disposal. Now that this is legal, teams across America who want to spend millions of dollars on their teams and players can now do just that.
The transfer portal is so big right now that every coach in America is always trying to get their team back to their school and adding to their roster at the same time. Tournaments like the “Players' Era Festival” could be a driving force in keeping players at Rutgers, Notre Dame, SDSU, and other less prestigious programs they might attend in the future.
Finally, the new MTE adds another elite event to the early season college basketball schedule. “Feast Week” in late November is one of the best weeks of each season on the college basketball calendar, featuring events such as the Maui Invitational, Battle 4 Atlantis, the Empire Classic, and the ESPN Events Invitational.
More big names participating in prime-time events could help the sport as it desperately tries to steal the show from other competing leagues like the NFL and college football. My only complaint is that it's not that early in November. Festival week is wonderful. Not so much the start of the college basketball season in early November.
Nevertheless, a new top-level event will be born in college basketball that will help players, programs, and the sport as a whole usher in a new NIL era.
