Once again CBS Sports presents our annual Candid Coaches series, which spotlights relevant topics and issues in men’s college basketball. Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander polled roughly 100 coaches in recent weeks on a variety of subjects. Coaches spoke on background and were provided anonymity to offer unfiltered opinions. This is the second installment in our 2025 survey.
Talk to any sitting athletic director these days, and most of them will tell you that among the toughest decisions they’ve had to make in the past year is how to divide the up to $20.5 million their departments are now allowed to share annually with athletes.
How much of that should go to men’s basketball?
It’s a question with lots of answers — answers largely connected to whether schools have or do not have an FBS football program and/or how much a particular school cares about the hardwood. Put another way, every institution with an FBS football program is spending the bulk of its money on football, in part because of the number of players needed to field a team, in part because football is the driving economic force on most campuses. But the breakdowns are much different at schools without FBS football because at schools without FBS football the basketball programs are, in some cases, getting up to 95% of the money.
Candid Coaches: Who will be the best men’s college basketball team this season?
Matt Norlander
(This is why multiple Big East and Atlantic 10 men’s basketball programs currently have more money in their budgets than some SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC men’s basketball programs, as I detailed in a story earlier this summer about VCU outbidding multiple power-conference programs for a top-70 prospect.)
With all of this in mind, Matt Norlander and I decided to ask roughly 100 Division I men’s basketball coaches the following question:
What percentage of your school’s revenue cap should go to men’s basketball?
Answers from coaches at schools with FBS football programs
Somewhere between 25% and 30%56%Somewhere between 15% to 20%35%Somewhere between 30% and 40%9%
Answers from coaches at schools without FBS football programs
Somewhere between 90% and 95%29%Somewhere between 70% and 80%27%Somewhere between 50% and 60%19%Somewhere between 30% and 40%15%Somewhere between 20% and 25%10%
Quotes that stood out
Answers from coaches at schools with FBS football programs:
“This is a tough one because I think it depends on the university you’re at. For example, Duke and Kentucky are going to resource their basketball/football programs differently than Clemson and Alabama.””Figure football has to have 70%. Men’s basketball, 25%. And I’m giving the other 5% to women’s basketball. And I’m not giving any money to anyone else. Soccer, volleyball, hockey, none of it.””Twenty-five percent at the Power Four level. Exceptions for football blue-blood schools, which would likely lower basketball to 15%-to-20% there.””Twenty-percent minimum … I believe it’s a matter of time before pretty much 100% of revenue-share will go to football and men’s basketball. ADs just need cover. They want to put their money in the sports that actually generate revenue.””I think all of it should go to men’s basketball — but that’s because I’m the men’s basketball coach. Realistically, I asked for 35% and my AD gave me 30%. So I’m good. I think I’m getting more than most in my conference.”
Answers from coaches at schools without FBS football programs:
“I am at a school without football, without any other revenue-generating sports. We will not spend close to the $20.5 million as a department, but [we] do have a very healthy revenue share for our level. So with that said, 95%.””I’m at 90% and I think my AD would agree. It’s been hilarious to see some of these other coaches complain about the schools without big-time football. You should have been in on some of our meetings at the Final Four. ‘It’s not right that the St. John’s of the world, that they can now have this advantage!’ Well, for 75 years you guys have had, if not one leg up, two legs up on all of us, and now there’s this perception that we finally have a slight advantage? And I say this to them: Guys, there aren’t donors walking around with $10 million to give every year and if they do, no matter how much money they have, they won’t just give $10 million with no tax breaks like how it was with the collectives. Maybe they do it once or twice. They’re not just going to keep doing it. It was straight paranoia at the coaches meetings. I think the irony is hilarious.””Because we don’t play at the top level of D-I in football, men’s basketball should get 90% of it. Only revenue driver in the department.””[We have] more potential [for a] return-on-investment per dollar invested in men’s basketball [in our mid-major league] than any other sport.””Putting myself in my AD’s shoes, by not having football, I believe 70% of the rev-share should go to men’s basketball. Our ability to make an NCAA tournament appearance would change the trajectory of [our] university enrollment.”
The takeaway
As previously noted, the answers to our question were wildly different depending on where the coach being asked works, which is another reason this new set of (unclear) rules that the House Settlement brought to college athletics is filled with issues and nothing close to the problem-solver some touted it to be.
The rules will eventually be changed again.
In the meantime, we have some coaches fighting with athletic directors for the biggest percentage of their revenue-sharing dollars they can get, some coaches with dramatically different budgets than other coaches in their same league, some coaches in some leagues still with no idea what their budgets actually are, and some coaches in mid-major leagues with bigger budgets than power-conference coaches working on campuses where nothing really matters much other than football.
It’s bananas.
Which is why I liked the following quote we got from one coach: “Why not make it mandatory for every school to give [an] equal amount in that specific sport?” he asked. “Football equals $15 million. Men’s Basketball equals $4 million. Right now, coaches are fighting their ADs for more money. Eliminate that from the equation. Might bring more stability and level the playing field.”
To be clear, I’ll forever be against any salary cap, or limits on what college athletes can make, unless it’s collectively bargained with college athletes and agreed upon. I’ll never budge from that point. But as long as we’re going to have what amounts to a salary cap in college sports, it does make way more sense, as the coach above suggested, for each individual sport to have its own salary cap.
What should the numbers be?
Again, that should be determined via negotiation and then placed into a legally binding CBA featuring penalties for violators so severe even the Clippers wouldn’t think about breaking them. But, whatever the numbers, the number for men’s basketball should be the same for everybody so that Kentucky’s Mark Pope and Oklahoma’s Porter Moser have the same amount of money to spend on a roster as each other — but also the same as Houston’s Kelvin Sampson and Colorado’s Tad Boyle, as Michigan State’s Tom Izzo and Penn State’s Mike Rhodes, as Duke’s Jon Scheyer and Virginia Tech’s Mike Young, so on and so forth.
Until we get there, it’ll just be more chaos and confusion and, yes, high-stakes cheating — as I explained in a column last week. Either way, we’re definitely not there yet. So men’s basketball coaches from coast to coast are first negotiating with their athletic directors to get the biggest percentage of their school’s revenue-sharing money that they can get so that they can then negotiate with agents to try to build the best rosters they can build. Some coaches have $7 million. Others have $3. Some have zero. It’s a problematic system that forces schools to decide which big sports they want to elevate at the expense of others.
Lots of coaches don’t like it.
We learned that here, too.
And, rest assured, you’ll hear lots more about the topic next spring when the transfer portal opens and some coaches within the same high-major leagues are pursuing the same players with different budgets, leaving them with a decision to make about whether to play by the rules as they understand them or get creative and figure out a way to get the money where it needs to get, you know, by any means necessary.
