How the rev-share era is squeezing the college basketball recruiting cycle

SHORTLY AFTER PRESIDENT Donald Trump signed an executive order on July 24 calling for the elimination of “third-party, pay-for-play” payments, Janetta Andrews reached out to John Calipari.

The mother of 2026 five-star Arkansas commit JaShawn Andrews was looking for clarification on what the order meant and the impact it could have on her son.

“I have no idea, Miss Janetta,” Calipari told her. “When I find out, I’ll let you know.”

It’s become an increasingly common refrain among college basketball coaches since the House vs. NCAA settlement was formally approved in early June. The decision, following years of lawsuits, allows schools to begin paying student-athletes directly through revenue sharing. But it also casts doubt over how the newly established College Sports Commission (CSC) will regulate NIL deals as a supplementary source of player earnings, especially those facilitated by booster-run collectives.

In early July, the CSC’s NIL Go clearinghouse, operated by Deloitte, rejected some collective-backed transactions, stating deals had to be between players and companies that provide goods or services to the general public for profit — which doesn’t include collectives. Twelve days later, Yahoo reported that, following a new agreement between the House plaintiffs and the NCAA, the CSC would treat collectives like any other third-party businesses. Two days after that, Trump signed his executive order, once again complicating matters.

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The latest development came Thursday, when the attorneys involved in the House settlement released a memo saying NIL collective deals must prove payment is for a promotion or endorsement of goods or services that will be sold for profit to the general public. It clarifies that collectives — responsible for an estimated 81.6% of all NIL compensation last October, with 21.2% of that going to men’s basketball, per Opendorse, which tracks and facilitates NIL deals — will have a role in the rev-share era, but not whether they’ll be able to generate player earnings at a comparable rate to recent years.

Uncertainty over how many collective-generated funds will be available to supplement revenue-share offers is one reason the 2026 recruiting class is developing at a snail’s pace. Coming off a transfer portal cycle in which high-major programs spent hundreds of millions of dollars to sign experienced players — a surge made possible by the confluence of getting collective-backed deals done before the House settlement, to be grandfathered in alongside the injection of rev-share dollars — coaches have pivoted their focus to the 2026 class later than in previous years.

Players, too, are drawing out their timelines. Entering the July recruiting period, only nine prospects in the 2026 ESPN 100 were committed, including just one five-star prospect, Andrews. A year ago, 17 ESPN 100 prospects had committed entering July. (The number remains the same as of this story’s publication, with No. 4 Jason Crowe committing to Missouri but Sheek Pearson — committed to Marquette — reclassifying to 2025.)

Adjusted timelines might not be the only impact. If collective-backed NIL deals are indeed at risk of being rejected — or hindered, at the very least — coaches will have to adjust their valuations of players to be mindful of salary allocations for future rosters, including saving money for next spring’s transfer portal.

This means college programs might need to move ahead with their recruitment of the 2026 class without knowing, for certain, what numbers they can actually promise. And recruits might need to make the decisions without further clarity. For now, it seems most programs will err on the side of caution, and player valuations for the 2026 recruiting class could fall dramatically.

“These guys have no idea what’s coming. [Agents are] telling these kids, look at this year’s numbers. But there were guys making $2-$3-$4 million, that’s not going to happen anymore,” said one high-major coach whose roster will cost around $11 million for the upcoming season. “That’s the whole salary cap now.”

THE CURRENT STATE is a stark contrast to this past spring, when there was essentially no cap on spending and player compensation exploded.

Houston was one beneficiary of that situation. The preseason No. 3 Cougars managed to retain three of their stars — Milos Uzan, Joseph Tugler and Emanuel Sharp — following the national championship loss to Florida. They also signed three top-25 recruits, headlined by projected first-round NBA draft pick Chris Cenac Jr. and Isiah Harwell.

Texas Tech’s athletics collective, the Matador Club, which has built a reputation for spending big — most notably making softball pitcher NiJaree Canady the first $1 million softball player and spending eight figures on the football program — convinced JT Toppin to forgo the NBA draft and return to Lubbock for north of $3 million. Then it helped coach Grant McCasland nab at least three potential starters out of the transfer portal.

Washington looked to bounce back from its last-place Big Ten finish by going deep into its pockets, too. The Huskies landed a top-50 recruit (J.J. Mandaquit), an impact international prospect (Hannes Steinbach), then went into the transfer portal for seven players, including Desmond Claude, who committed hours before the House settlement was passed.

Are any of these approaches to building top rosters still viable in the rev-share era if collectives aren’t able to operate in the same way?

Industry sources consider it unlikely, without players taking significant pay cuts.

“The actual money, realistically, is about 40-50 percent less than what it has been,” one Big Ten coach said.

Industry sources estimate 20 programs will have rosters this season that cost eight figures, with some individual players earning upward of $2 million to $3 million. With schools receiving $20.5 million this year to spend across their sports department, that’s not much less than the projected budgets for men’s college basketball programs in power conferences, according to Opendorse:

ACC: $4,400,000Big East: $5,333,333Big Ten: $3,250,000Big 12: $4,239,000SEC: $3,091,667

More generally, though, a program’s total rev-share budget could be comparable to what the best individual players have made through collective-backed NIL deals in a single season. As one high-major coach said, it would be difficult to have more than one or two “max slots” on a roster without those deals to supplement player salaries. Another said having multiple seven-figure players on a roster will be nearly impossible.

“No one’s going to pay a freshman $1.5 million anymore,” another high-major coach said. “You can’t have a third of your [revenue-share] cap going to a guy who’s never played in college.”

It’s trickling down to the back end of rosters, too.

“You have to manage expectations for later on,” another coach said. “It’s just not the reality for a freshman in the rev-share era. The last cycle, money was flowing. A kid that might have gotten $500,000 last cycle, he now might not get $200,000.”

Doubt over how many collective-backed NIL deals will be approved is leading programs to consider an NBA-style approach to roster-building, which means casting a wider net in the recruiting pool to look at players at different valuation points instead of just the top names at each position.

For now, conversations between coaches and 2026 recruits have barely addressed specific financials.

“We haven’t really discussed anything,” said Deron Rippey Sr., the father of five-star point guard Deron Rippey Jr. The No. 18 prospect is nowhere close to making a decision, having recently named a list of 12 schools and set eight official visits for the fall. “Most coaches say the rules are changing in the next two weeks, the next month, we’re trying to figure out what we can do for players and how we can do it. … They’re saying, ‘We’ll put something in front of you when you get on campus, with how the rules are changing and when we get more information. But we’ll be able to work it out.'”

Top-30 recruit Jalen Montonati, who recently set a pair of official visits, has had similar conversations. “No real numbers have been thrown at me yet,” he said. “Some coaches have no clue, really. A lot of their answers to questions my parents and my team ask is, ‘I don’t know.’ It’s funny hearing that.”

REGARDLESS OF A program’s spending limit and what the rules will look like in one month, or six, the transfer portal’s role in the slow-developing 2026 recruiting cycle also cannot be ignored.

The portal didn’t close until April 22, and 2025-26 rosters weren’t finalized until several weeks later. And with the growing need for proven college experience at the business end of the NCAA tournament, coaches know they can’t overspend on high school prospects in the summer and fall.

Essentially, the recruiting timeline of the 2026 class is getting squeezed at both ends. It’s not a new trend, but the prioritization on the portal has continued to grow since the one-time transfer waiver passed in 2021. In the year before the rules changed, 21 top-100 recruits averaged double figures as freshmen, compared to 38 of the top-100 transfers. In 2022, that number was down to 17 freshmen and up to 62 transfers. Of the 20 starters in the 2025 Final Four, 11 were transfers and three were freshmen. All three freshmen came from Duke.

“A lot of great teams and coaches were trying to get their rosters set and only focusing on the recruitment of the 2026 class after they got their roster set,” Rippey Sr. said. “A lot of people are worrying about the portal when it comes to picking the right schools and going to the right place. Coaches are telling us, ‘We’re not going to the portal if you commit to us.'”

Andrews, the five-star Arkansas commit, is comfortable with his projected role under Calipari, but understands the concern from his classmates.

“I just feel like with a lot of players shifting in the portal,” he said, “it can cause players to have difficulty in trusting what the coaching staff may be saying, playing time-wise, what they think they may get.”

Montonati believes the emphasis on the portal — and the unforeseen resulting attrition that leads to entire roster and coaching overhauls — could cause more highly-ranked kids to delay their commitments.

“We could see a lot more kids [committing] after the national championship game, which is really rare, so they kind of have an understanding of the situation they’re putting themselves in,” he said. “Coaches leaving for new jobs, coaches bringing in seven, eight, nine new guys from the portal — it’s the uncertainty of what a roster could look like.

“Talk to any 2026 guy, if they commit to a school, they probably don’t want you to go get two 22-, 23-year olds in the portal.”

Wait too long, though, and a high school prospect risks getting lost in the shuffle of the 2,000-plus players entering the transfer portal.

“At that point, you should know what school you want to go to,” said ESPN 100 guard Jasiah Jervis, who is still in the process of compiling offers after strong performances in the July period. “You don’t want it to be too late.”

SPEAKING AT THE National Press Club in Washington D.C. last week, hours before President Trump’s executive order, NCAA president Charlie Baker expressed optimism surrounding the rev-share era, as well as the need for transparency in NIL compensation.

“It moves a big piece of the center of gravity away from third parties who are, for all intents and purposes, somewhat invisible and thoroughly unaccountable and totally driven by the opportunity to make money on transactions,” Baker said. “Most schools are not that interested in running a transaction shop, which is pretty much what NIL has been for the past couple of years.”

Will the NIL Go clearinghouse double down on that sentiment, denying lucrative collective deals it doesn’t deem to have a “valid business purpose” or fall within a reasonable range of compensation? Will the CSC’s determination of “fair market value” withstand arbitration and potential lawsuits? Are there ways to circumvent the clearinghouse?

Of course, the numbers will increase if the same kinds of collective-backed deals from the last cycle get approved by NIL Go. Or until there’s a lawsuit accusing the NCAA of limiting a student-athlete’s earnings. Or until schools get fed up and the under-the-table deals of yesteryear make a comeback.

Those types of conversations between agents and coaches have already begun, sources told ESPN.

“Schools aren’t going to sit idly by with $2.7 million [for their college basketball rosters] while other schools have double or triple that,” one high-major coach said.

“There will always be collectives, people that want their program to do well that will invest,” another said.

We won’t know the answers to many of these questions for some time, though basketball coaches are closely watching their football counterparts, who can officially begin sending written revenue-share offers to recruits on Aug. 1 — which will, in turn, help demonstrate which supplementary NIL deals get through the clearinghouse.

“Nobody wants to be the first to go through [the clearinghouse] and see what this is really like, how sharp are the teeth,” one ACC coach said. “There’s a lot of fear for what that looks like.”

Until then, the refrain remains the same.

“We don’t know what rules we’re playing by,” one Big 12 coach said.