As the 2025 Final Four unfolds, college basketball is spending like there's no tomorrow
SAN ANTONIO -- College basketball and money are intertwined more than ever before at the 2025 Final Four, where war chests of dollars pooled by collectives are getting furiously doled out in the transfer portal while there's still time.
Monday, the day of the National Championship game, features a hearing in California where an Oakland judge could rule on the House vs. NCAA settlement, kickstarting a full-fledged revenue-sharing model. It could take some time for Judge Claudia Wilken to make the official call, but college basketball staffs are sprinting to sign deals with transfers before new enforcement protocols could complicate things.
There is cash everywhere that needs to be spent … right now. The murmurs of a $10 million roster in the Big Ten or SEC are not fake. If transfers can sign their contracts before Monday night, they will unequivocally avoid any new enforcement. Once the revenue-sharing model is enacted, any contract will count toward the revenue-sharing cap and be subjected to the peering eyes of the NCAA clearinghouse to determine "fair-market value" and if the agreement is up to snuff.
To avoid that red tape, make-it-rain money guns are spewing out green bills galore. The shock value of Washington's Great Osobor and Kansas State's Coleman Hawkins earning $2 million deals last spring is gone. Numerous transfers this cycle have already earned that type of money. Donovan Dent, the New Mexico transfer point guard who dices up pick-and-roll coverages for breakfast lunch and dinner, has a deal in place with UCLA that tops $3 million, multiple sources have confirmed to CBS Sports.
"It's the big elephant in the room," Auburn senior guard Miles Kelly says. "We saw all the rumors and allegations on Twitter. We are always talking about it, speculating about it. We have to live in reality, though. That's what this team has done well."
Auburn has to play Florida in Saturday's Final Four, but it is still all over the portal right now. It landed UCF star transfer Keyshawn Hall on Wednesday and held three more Zoom meetings with transfers on Thursday just hours after practice and media responsibilities.
"The one thing with this transfer portal era of basketball is things are changing constantly," Auburn offensive coordinator Mike Burgomaster told CBS Sports Thursday. "The programs that pivot the fastest are the ones that remain relevant. You have to stay flexible."
Auburn is unquestionably at the top of that list of best pivoters. It dipped into the Junior College market for Chad Baker-Mazara who transformed into a stud. It went to the Division II ranks for key backup forward Chaney Johnson. It was grinding Ohio Valley Conference tape to prioritize All-American Johni Broome who will go down as one of the most accomplished transfers ever. Denver Jones was at FIU before turning into a key starter.
It has to be this way.
Auburn might be the top dawg after winning the SEC Championship, but this was not the biggest NIL budget in the SEC. That title belonged to Arkansas. It wasn't even second. Or third.
"We have to be smart in our evaluations because while we've worked on improving the NIL space, we've been in the middle to the bottom of the league," associated head coach Steven Pearl says. "We have to make great evaluations with guys who aren't going to break the bank. Auburn has stepped up their game to be aggressive in the transfer portal space but going into this year, we were eighth to tenth in the league."
For Auburn senior Chris Moore, this era of college basketball is almost unrecognizable from when he joined the Tigers way back in 2019.
"My first year, there was not even a scholarship pension," Moore says with a laugh. "Next year, was a little bit of money. It was $900 a month. It was not bad at all. Significantly different now, though."
Freshmen, like Duke's Cooper Flagg, waltz into college basketball and can earn seven figures right away. That's way more than some veterans on the roster make.
"Or," as Steven Pearl adds, "guys coaching on the staff for 10 years."
"We never talk about what people make in here," said Duke guard Caleb Foster. "That's not even on our mind. We're a close-knit group. We don't talk about money at all. We're all bought into winning. That's the main goal for us. We're not letting anything get in the way of that."
This is not to say every decision is chiefly about money, or that every player is ruthlessly chasing a bag. Rather, it's one of the important calculuses most people make when deciding whether to take a new job: Salary might be tops, but career advancement, the management structure, quality of life, company culture and location will play a part, too.
"I'm really more worried about fit and long-term money than short-term money," Florida's Jaden Alexis said. "I want to play in the NBA."
When told some fellow big men are signing for upwards of $1.5 million, Alexis played it cool.
"That's crazy, honestly, to make that much money in college," he said.
The dynamics are changing in real-time. In the rush to spend money before it's subject to oversight, it's conceivable a deal so large is made before Monday that a player can earn a heftier paycheck than the head coach. It's not going to happen at Auburn, where Bruce Pearl makes $5.9 million annually, but slide down the list of college basketball's highest paid coaches and you get into the 3s and 2s rather quickly.
Auburn is dreaming about orange and blue confetti while simultaneously understanding what else is at stake. This all-time Auburn team has just 40 guaranteed minutes of basketball left. Broome, Jones, Kelly, Moore, Dylan Cardwell and Chaney Johnson are all slated to be out of eligibility in two days. Freshman sensation Tahaad Pettiford may have a NBA decision to make. That's seven of the top eight players in this rotation.
"This is it," Bruce Pearl said. "We're running out of One Shining Moments. We do it now, or like Dylan Cardwell said, this is last free breakfast. Every morning he's been prepared to wake up and not have a free breakfast. There's a lot of T-shirts. We want Dylan to continue to eat free. There's a level of desperation knowing tomorrow could be our last game every single time for this group. They don't want this to end."
The hay is not fully in the barn from a game-prep perspective. Burgomaster still had the laptop out in the tunnels of the Alamodome trying to find ways to get buckets against this enormous Florida frontline. At the same time, you can see the gears turning. How does Auburn stay old? What's the point guard situation next year? What defensive bigs can we find to replace Cardwell and pair well with Hall?
"It would be unfair to these guys for us to not be 100% worried about this game," Burgomaster says. "But in the moments that we're not doing stuff for this game, we're working on it. We have to."
Building a winner never sleeps, even on the eve of the Final Four.
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