re: MBB Portal Targets List

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NIL budgets seem to be closely guarded and is still a big mystery. I have heard rumors that LSU this past year was around $1.5M - $2M on the high side for men's bball. Also heard that CMM prefers to allocate fairly evenly across the roster, at least across the top 7 or 8 players rather than a sliding scale. That in itself has some pros and cons. It would be nice to shell out a big chunk to bring in a game changer surrounded by the rest of solid to good players, but CMM's philosophy is to not get in a bidding war and create unbalanced pay to play, keeping most of the squad on the even with some adjustment based on experience to the team.

Kentucky was operating with $4M this year, and heard various places that Arkansas, Tenn, AUB, and Bama were around that $2.3M - $3M range. One requirement for Coach Cal to take the Arky job was to guarantee at least $6M to be top in the conference. The Waltons, Tysons, and Jones family among others were eager to put that in.

There are always exceptions but from what I've seen, allocating $150-$250k on a player seems to get you solid to good players, though not blue chips and one and done elite talent. Think HS recruits between #30 and #100 and portal players ranked between #40 and #150. That does seem to fit what CMM has been doing and not able to be doing relative to recruits.

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I'm sure this will start a fight (because it always does), but some, media, fans on here, etc, believe Wade was throwing around huge sums of money to sign guys like Naz Ried, Waters, Smart, Watford, Thomas, etc, etc,. Contrary to popular misinformation, I doubt Wade was bankrolling everything out of his own pocket (if at all). So either (a) the reports of the purported amounts paid to those players were grossly inflated, or (b) Wade was getting quite a bit of money from boosters. Assuming it is the later, then I have a hard time believing those booster simply refuse to give similar money to McMahon to sign players. (If so, that's a separate and bigger issue.)

That said, I'm willing to bet there is significant money out there for LSU to spend. Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, North Carolina money? Doubtful. But I can't imagine schools like Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Florida, etc are grossly outspending LSU. Particularly when they are in the same boat as LSU where the majority of the "resources" are earmarked for football. Alabama likes Oats. They like the success he's had. They aren't given one cent to basketball if they feel it in anyway could hurt the football program.

More likely is that McMahon is taking more of a socialistic approach to NIL funding in that he's not paying better players significantly more than other players. I get it from a coach's standpoint because the marketplace is so one-sided in favor of the players. With no long term "contracts" locking a player to a school for more than a year (if that), there is nothing to prevent the players from constantly leveraging the coach for more and more money. If you give one guy a "salary" increase, then the other players are quickly going to ask for one too (even if the on-court production doesn't justify it).

If a coach is going to go that route, that's fine. But that means the sum must be greater than the individual parts because you likely won't be able to sign a true blue chip guy without paying significantly more than you would to sign the, say, 91st ranked player.