We know the Mark Pope hire reenergized Kentucky boosters, NIL support coming in quickly to help the first-year coach build his first roster in Lexington ahead of the 2024-25 season. How does the program’s NIL situation stack up with the rest of college basketball moving forward, though? Opposing college coaches believe UK will continue to be a top-five school financially when it comes to roster-building.
CBS Sports college basketball insiders Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander polled over 100 Division I men’s coaches where they shared their anonymous takes on the schools with the strongest NIL situations. Of that group, over a quarter of coaches put Kentucky on their ballots, good for fourth nationally.
At the top of the list? The school who recruited an old friend using blank checks, Arkansas under new head coach John Calipari coming in at No. 1 overall with 73.7 percent of ballots featuring the Razorbacks. From there, Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks came in at No. 2 with 43.2 percent of ballots, followed by BYU under new head coach Kevin Young at No. 3 with 30.6 percent of ballots. Kentucky is No. 4 with 25.3 percent, followed by Indiana at No. 5 with 16.9 percent, Kansas State at No. 6 with 13.7 percent, Baylor and Louisville tied at No. 7 with 11.6 percent, respectively, followed by Alabama at No. 9 with 10.5 percent, then Illinois and Texas Tech tied at No. 10 with 9.5 percent.
Among the interesting notes from coaches polled with Kentucky ties? No one knows what is real and what is fake when it comes to negotiations and specific NIL deals. At the end of the day, everyone is lying.
“This answer varies from week to week,” one coach said. “One week on the road you hear Washington is offering a kid $2.3 million, then you hear Kentucky and Louisville have offered more. At this point, no one knows what to truly believe with agents involved and trying to drive prices through the roof with false information.”
Great Osobor’s recruitment, maybe? He was seen as a high-dollar portal target out of Utah State who took visits to all three schools and settled on the Huskies in a record-breaking NIL deal — considered the highest-paid known player in college basketball at the time, according to his agent.
And then there was a note on Pat Kelsey and the Cardinals down I-64.
“They’re handing out f-cking money like it’s Monopoly,” one coach said of Louisville.
How about Calipari’s move to Fayetteville?
“You know Cal,” another coach said. “He’s not going anywhere unless he has everything in place.”
Other schools receiving votes include Duke, UConn, North Carolina, Tennessee, Memphis, Texas, Ohio State and St. John’s. You can check out the complete list here.