Popular topic, I see.

Kind of wild how little we know about something that we all agree is a key component of success in college basketball going forward.

I'll piggyback on this since adding another gloomy thread may be deserved but is certainly unnecessary.

I've said something similar elsewhere but it bears repeating: This isn't fun anymore.

I don't fault any student for chasing NIL money and the old system was certainly unfair, but this explicit caste system - catering exclusively to P5s and/or feeding the maw of television - is unsustainable. We're already in a league where all athletic departments only exist at the D1 level because of student fees. Now we need to find benefactors to cobble together a competitive team? And the reward for success is a mass transfer after winning the MAC Tournament and losing in the first round of the NCAAs. Rinse and repeat.

The ceiling in this world isn't an Elite Eight run or an at-large bid like when I was in school. It's being the one bid in a perpetual one-bid league and lacking the talent to make a run in the tourney.

Even if our basketball program was doing everything possible and had all the right donors the most it could become is present-day Akron. See above for results. Long gone are the days of grabbing (and keeping) a Gary Trent and blowing out UConn, ousting Michigan with DJ Cooper and making the kind of national splash that athletics uses to justify its existence. And it's only getting worse.

It was always a rigged game but greed is rigging it beyond recognition. And yes, watching our atrocious basketball team makes this easier to say, but the writing has been on the wall since NIL started. I doubt I'm alone in my rapidly waning interest in the whole enterprise.

I get the thinking, but think you're vastly over-stating the case here. It's far from a given that it's no longer possible to make an Elite Eight run or win NCAA tournament games. In fact, I'm actually struck by the fact that the disparity between the top spenders in the country and the top spenders in the MAC isn't nearly as large as I expected it to be.

A few things have been published lately about this. Last year, there were 9 programs that spent up to $10m on player pay. There were another 14 spending up to $8m. That's 6% of D1 basketball programs.

Are they spending lot of money? Sure. Way more than MAC schools will ever pay? Also, sure. But it's not like we were ever actually competing for recruits with those schools. They always had a massive, massive recruiting advantage and got better players consistently.

It's not clear to me, exactly, why money reaching the players eliminates the possibility of upsets. Drake beat Missouri last year. McNeese State beat Clemson. In 2024, Yale upset Auburn -- one of the schools with an $8m player budget. Duquesne upset BYU -- one of the schools with a $10m player budget. Oakland beat Kentucky -- who has a 10m budget.

There was always a massive, massive spending disparity between the top of NCAA basketball and middle and bottom. It created huge advantages before some of that money went to players, and there are still upsets every year, and plenty of surprise runs.

I’d add that a lot of these P5 rosters are littered with former mid-major talent. I think it’s relevant because yes, you have situations like Yaxel Lendeborg who doesn’t skip a beat going JUCO->UAB->Michigan. However, there’s more circumstances like Xavien Lee not being able to make the jump and significantly eating into that roster budget without the matching production.

It’s like baseball. There’s a disparity in spending, but it’s finding a way to be the Brewers/Guardians/Dbacks if financial resources are less significant.

Really great insight BLSS and others. Gives pause for how this mess will look in say 2030. I really can't disagree or add to the post from Recovering Journalist. Like many of you, I have never stopped passionately following our Bobcats since graduation in 1988. It all started with going to my 1st hoops game in the Convo. I never looked back.

I like being the underdog. I like having a chip on my shoulder. I like the shock on someone's face when I tell them I could care less about ousucks. I couldn't have celebrated harder when going to play Southern Miss in the first bowl game of my Bobcat life or when leaving Bridgestone Arena after we hung an L on Michigan. Say what you want but Solich forever made Saturdays in Athens a football party. With maybe a HC game as the exception, you could drop the Dr. Pizza Express ambulance in what is now Tailgreat Park and not hit a soul.

When I hear about the basketball victories in 1969-1970, it fires me up. How did we build that roster? Rolled out of the gate 7-0 with the first 4 wins against formidable opponents (including, of course, beating osu's ass). Given today's nonsense,how many of those players transfer out to chase NIL money?

Over the years, our coaches went out and found recruits that were impact players. We aren't going to be able to keep these players going forward. Our coaches develop and bring along these players and boom! they are plucked right from us. Without some guard rails or policy changes, we cannot stop the train. Yes we can get some decent grad students in football and maybe hoops but we are hitting a point in what we lose we in talent isn't going to be a 1:1 ratio to what we bring in.

I would be happy as hell if I am wrong. Time will tell. It is hard to explain this to most people. It's kind of like you had to be there (for 10-20-30 years) to see the wins, coaches and players to relate and I have left out a ton of other examples you all have in your memory.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving people! Just my unsolicited view as a lifer.

Okay.

to quote the 80s musician prince: tonight we,ll play B ball like it,s 1998.

Here, too.

Good luck with the anti-trust designation. Your shuttle bus may pick you up in Detroit first.

You’re welcome to be sanguine about the whole enterprise. Football is less affected partly because it’s always been harder to break into the cool kids’ club and partly because one Gary Trent doesn’t change the fortunes of a whole team like it can in basketball. Our football team being competitive in conference and winning the Tidy Bowl has long been a realistic expectation, with an outside fantasy of a WMU-like run for the dreamers. So football is easier to swallow because the system has always kinda sucked.

Basketball used to be different. Many March upsets were fueled by players that had three or four years in a system who were overlooked or took time to blossom in college. Those dudes are on the first train out as soon as they get a better offer. And I don’t fault them at all. But I struggle to care about a team in perpetual flux where part of you is cringing as you watch an underclassman shine because you know he’s gone next year. Would I rather be in the conference power position like Akron? Of course, but I’d still be losing interest overall and I’d still have the same dissatisfaction with the whole shebang.

You mean teams like Gonzaga? Butler.

Some of this is MAC-specific, but it affects all basketball schools that are also playing FBS football: There's not enough money to feed both successfully and football always wins out. The MAC was once frequently in the top 10 leagues in Kenpom rankings. It's now in the lower third with low-major leagues. As a student, I watched Gary Trent, Antonio Daniels, Bonzi Wells, Earl Boykins and tons of guys who played pro in Europe. None of them were poached. The big fear was they'd leave early. That's how it used to be. If you don't see a sea change I don't know what to tell you.