NIL, the Transfer Portal, Cinderella, and why the Dream will never die

July 1st, 2021, was a landmark day for the world of collegiate athletics. Universities and the NCAA could no longer siphon millions of dollars from the athletes who attended their respective schools under the guise of amateurism. 

No more Reggie Bushes, Johnny Manziels, or Chris Webbers. Athletes would finally be able to profit off their name, image, and likeness. In theory, this is what the people that preceded today’s athletes had been waiting for: to receive compensation for all the money and free advertising they provided every college that made a big March run or a New Year's Six bowl in college football. 

Not so fast my friend.

The NCAA allowing athletes to profit off of NIL came with a caveat: no guard rails whatsoever. The NCAA didn’t know it at the time, but they had unleashed the Wild West onto collegiate athletics.

It was a slow progression, but fast forward almost four years later and we’re in the age of university collectives, a seemingly never closing transfer portal, and offseasons resembling an ever-fluctuating free agency. Where athletes can up and leave their school for whoever throws the most amount of money at them. 

Recently, the starting quarterback for the Tennessee Volunteers, Nico Iamaleava, held out of practice in an effort to get his already monstrous NIL deal of $2.2 million reupped to the $4 million range. Well, you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. He has since been told to kick rocks and committed to UCLA after North Carolina passed on him in favor of pursuing...South Alabama transfer Gio Lopez. Nico is a cautionary tale in the new era of college sports, where every offseason you have to view any exciting talent as a flight risk.

That bears the question of where the little guy, David, Cinderella, whatever name you would like to call them, fits into the new equation of money being king. In the world of college basketball, the lower seed Cinderella story has long been celebrated, from Doug Edert and the St. Peter's Peacocks, Max Abmas and Oral Roberts, and the Florida Atlantic Owls. The casual fan tunes into the tournament in large part due to the draw of seeing the underdog knock off the state school, captivating a nation along the way.

In the most recent iteration of the men's NCAA tournament this year, there was an unprecedented amount of “chalk”, where there were only three double-digit seeds to advance to the second round and zero that advanced to the Sweet 16. This caused a large social media outcry about the fact that NIL and the portal caused this, and that college basketball was ruined as a result.

On face value, yeah, there is an issue with smaller schools getting shafted when it comes to being unable to meet the NIL packages that larger schools can offer, operating like the European soccer model. Smaller clubs watch as their homegrown stars bolt to La Liga or Premier League and become future stars for bookoo dollar amounts. 

Looking at tournament iterations since NIL has been instituted, you see how this past year was truly an anomaly, where the four teams that ended up in the Final Four: Auburn, Florida, Houston, and Duke, all finished in the all-time top ten in the metric KenPom, which measures general efficiency amongst multiple categories for a season. KenPom is a metric that dates back twenty years, which puts into perspective the pure domination that the 1 seeds unleashed this year for college basketball. 

In the eyes of those who had watched this sport from November to March, myself included, there was not an extended amount of scenarios where those four teams wouldn’t be making it deep into the tournament or the Final Four, along with a lack of matchups that would draw the potential for a Cinderella run for a program. But just because there wasn’t a story that captivated a nation doesn’t mean there weren’t worthy candidates for the Cinderella label. Colorado State, a 12 seed, was a miracle Derik Queen buzzer-beater away from advancing to the Sweet Sixteen!

11 seed Drake and 10 seed New Mexico both put up incredible efforts against Elite Eight caliber teams with exciting players to rally behind as well as Bennett Stirtz and Donovan Dent. But to the casual fan, this isn’t exciting enough for them, and it is a damn shame because all the double-digit seeds that advanced to the second round had great seasons in their respective conferences. 

That includes New Mexico’s run and gun offense, with the aforementioned Dent as their showrunner, and co-stars center Nelly Junior Joseph and guard Tru Washington. Drake’s slow-paced system, with a roster of D-II transfers and coach Ben McCollum’s analytics darling Bennett Stirtz dissecting defenses in the Missouri Valley conference. The man went 8-11 from the field against Missouri, you can’t say March didn’t have exciting underdogs!

Cinderella always has her chariot turn back into a pumpkin, and the clock happened to strike midnight a little early this March. The mid-major March stars transferred to larger programs with larger NIL budgets, (Bennett Stirtz to Iowa, Donovan Dent to UCLA), and the NIL proponents whine and complain that the beautiful game is ruined. 

In the NIL era, we have had…let's see here. A 2023 Final Four that featured San Diego State from the Mountain West, Florida Atlantic from the American conference, and the Miami Hurricanes’ first-ever Final Four appearance. 2024 had a North Carolina State team that was a legitimately bad team until March, where they famously caught fire and won the ACC tournament, then kept winning until the Final Four.

D.J. Burns man, special college player, footwork like a ballerina, and the size of a Mac truck. I digress, but there have been countless examples of the Cinderella story occurring in the NIL era, and no one wants to talk about it! Let’s not forget St. Peter's run to Elite Eight in 2022, Princeton knocking off #2 seed Arizona in 2023, and freaking Oral Roberts going to the Sweet Sixteen in 2021. Are we serious here? 

Historic domination through the regular season by the best this sport has to offer resulted in this incredible amount of chalk, and those who have watched the sport from November to March were not surprised by this compared to the general public. 

Many college basketball analysts such as Jay Williams were clowned for having their Final Four predictions consist of all the #1 seeds, and ridiculed heavily on social media. 

Look who’s laughing now. 

As mentioned previously, the transfer portal has been to blame by many for the result of no lower seed teams making a run, or the lack of a massive upset in the first weekend in the tournament. To critics, the portal is a one-way street, where college basketball’s best and brightest mid-major talents move up to Power Five competition, and they resemble more of a small European club in how they operate compared to a D-I basketball program. 

Looking at the rosters of some of these mid-major teams, there is a litany of former Power Five players who play a massive role on their respective teams by going down a level! Grand Canyon, a back-to-back tournament team out of the WAC conference, had a player by the name of Tyon Grant-Foster lead them in scoring in both years. He came to Phoenix by way of Kansas and Depaul, and showed out at the mid-major level. 

Being a two-way street, there will always be players who move up a level after having their respective career years, but not every player gets a storybook season the following year. For every Alijah Martin, there is a Cade Tyson, for every Max Abmas there is an Aidan Mahaney, and so on. I stress this so much just for how much there is an epidemic of players entering the portal that just should not make the jump to the next level of basketball.

Development should be paramount in these players' decisions, and many are choosing a boost in their paycheck rather than their skill development, and you see players go back down a level the following year when guess what, they either play way less efficiently/effectively, or flat out just aren’t good enough to play at that level.

Therein lies the beauty of college basketball, where what you expect doesn’t happen, and the unexpected does. Cinderella is not dead, and the transfer portal/NIL is here to stay. Will it be harder for small schools to spend? Absolutely. Will they be dead in the water come March for the foreseeable future? Not in the slightest. 

College basketball fans have been spoiled by the plethora of upsets in the past decade, and that has warped people's perspectives on how that should be every season. The season of chalk has come and gone, and guarantee this, the small schools are not out of it, they will be back with a vengeance. Because this is March.