College basketball rosters now start at $10 million. And one league is spending 3 times that

NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. — If you want to be a competitive college basketball program next season — maybe not a national title contender, but at least an NCAA Tournament team — then there’s a new unofficial minimum you probably have to meet from a spending perspective:

$10 million.

“Every year we’re like, OK, this is the last year — and then that s— just keeps going up,” one SEC head coach said of rising roster budgets. “I do not think it’s a sustainable model, but people keep paying for it.”

The Athletic surveyed 25 high-major coaches at Peach Jam last weekend, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because roster numbers are not made public and to protect their relationships with other coaches. We found that last year’s swollen budgets were only the beginning. This spring, college hoops teams went on staggering spending sprees, with some individual players set to earn as much as entire teams did a season ago. To get a better sense of how much it actually cost to put together a team this offseason, we asked all 25 coaches: On average, what would you estimate teams in your conference spent on their rosters for next season?

The results were jaw-dropping, especially compared to our data from last summer:

Last offseason, when revenue-sharing was officially introduced as a result of the House settlement, many coaches hoped that roster budgets were at (or nearing) their all-time peak. That’s because teams were essentially working with two pots of money in the same offseason: any funds they’d already raised — and had to spend — before the adoption of the House settlement; and then whatever revenue-sharing money they received from their athletic departments.

“Everyone was trying to front-load, because that’s when you were going to feel the House stuff,” said one ACC head coach. “You hear all the time that this is not sustainable, but every year the prices go up, so we need to stop saying that. Somehow we’ve been able to sustain it.”

Perhaps the most notable change from last offseason is that the high-major leagues are no longer as tightly clustered in spending. While every league has its outliers, the SEC is broadly starting to separate from the pack, which tracks with the conference’s increased revenue from its TV deal with ESPN.

One SEC stalwart, Kentucky, made headlines last season for its reported $22 million roster, which was believed to be the most expensive in college hoops history. But now, only a year later?

“There has to be at least three or four teams (in our league) that are in the $30 million range,” said one SEC assistant.

The other reason for the SEC’s growing emergence? A lack of bottom-feeder teams who lag significantly behind their counterparts in spending. Comparatively, coaches said that most of the other high-major conferences — none more so than the ACC — still have chasm-like gaps between their highest- and lowest-spending programs.

“It’s a little harder to calculate the average of an 18-team league,” one ACC assistant added, “when the gap is over $20 million.”

A year into the revenue-sharing era, the Big East is another fascinating case study. Considering the league (outside of UConn) does not sponsor football, coaches hypothesized that Big East teams would receive a larger cut of their school’s revenue-sharing funds — and that trend played out in the conference’s spending this spring. The league still has some schools, like UConn, St. John’s and Villanova, operating at a higher spending level, but the conference’s overall average has spiked in no small part because of the effects of revenue-sharing.

Additionally, agents told Big East coaches this spring that they appreciate doing deals with their schools because they’re backed by reliable revenue-sharing funds, compared to less-certain deals that must pass through the College Sports Commission’s clearinghouse, NIL Go. (The CSC announced earlier in July that it has rejected nearly $90 million in NIL deals since its inception last summer.)

Not that other conferences aren’t still ponying up and finding creative ways around the supposed spending “cap.”

“Everyone broke the rules. (If) you’re spending $15 million, you broke the rules, right?” said one Big 12 head coach. “Is anyone actually going to get in trouble for that? I say no. And then when is all the bulls— going to get ironed out with the CSC and NIL Go and all this stuff? Until that happens, it’s going to be just a total moving target.”

Positionally, all 25 coaches agreed that the most expensive players this spring — via retention or the transfer portal — were centers, with point guards a close second. Multiple coaches said that the starting rate for a high-major center was roughly $1.5 million, with some of the top earners set to make triple that.

“There’s guys that can barely walk and chew gum at the same time that are making like $2 million,” said the SEC assistant.

Added another ACC assistant: “If you track it since the beginning of NIL to now, (the price for) bigs has gone up probably 300 percent. We went from 250K to $5 million. What are we doing?”

Part of that infatuation with big men, several coaches said, is that college hoops is a copycat league. On the court, last season was defined as much as anything by the prevalence of super-sized wings and multiple bigs playing together. It’s no wonder that every Final Four team last season (Michigan, UConn, Arizona and Illinois) also relied on at least one dominant big, further emphasizing the trend.

The market for centers and forwards also became even more inflated because of the relative dearth of quality options. Only eight of The Athletic’s top-25 transfers, and 17 of the top-50, could reasonably be described as frontcourt players.

No wonder that many of the sport’s highest-paid individuals are also some of the (literal) biggest stars.

As for how much individual players are making, you don’t surpass $30 million as a team without several highly priced talents. One Big 12 head coach said the most expensive player he’s aware of will earn roughly $4.8 million next season. Another Big East assistant said he knows of at least one player who will earn more than that.

The highest-paid player in the sport, believed to be Florida wing Thomas Haugh, may wind up making more than most teams spent last season.

But for as much financial chatter as there is about what players make and what teams cost, there’s still a major element of the unknown that most coaches believe is working against them.

“There’s got to be more transparency. I think the hidden figures of what guys are truly making is causing some of the inflation,” said the second ACC assistant. “We’re all for guys getting paid, but let’s not be silly.”

For astute coaches (and fans), though, there’s a clear tell for which programs really got out their wallets this spring, and which programs didn’t (or couldn’t).

“You can tell how much money people have by their bench,” said a second ACC head coach. “If they have a bench with guys that can start other places, they had a lot of money.”

Although what constitutes “a lot” these days is clearly different from what it once was.