College basketball has always had a money problem. The difference now is that the money is increasingly finding its way directly into roster construction.
The House v. NCAA settlement ushered in a new era for college athletics in 2025, allowing participating schools to distribute direct revenue-sharing payments to their athletes. The initial annual cap was set at roughly $20.5 million per school, with the figure expected to increase over time. Those payments exist alongside traditional NIL opportunities, giving the wealthiest athletic departments another major tool for recruiting and retaining players.
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For the biggest programs in the country, the change has created another recruiting budget. For many mid-major programs, it has created another expense they have to figure out how to absorb.
The distinction is important because college basketball does not operate with a uniform financial model. A school competing in the Big Ten or SEC can draw on massive media-rights revenue, large donor bases, packed arenas and football money. It’s the kind of cash that dwarfs what most basketball-focused mid-majors generate. A school in a smaller conference may have a successful basketball program without having anything close to that financial infrastructure.
That gap becomes especially difficult when players have the freedom to move.
The transfer portal has turned roster retention into an annual negotiation, and the money available at the top of the sport can make keeping a productive mid-major player increasingly difficult. BYU coach Kevin Young offered a blunt explanation during the 2025 NCAA Tournament after all 16 Sweet 16 teams came from power conferences.
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“It’s not even that people are coming to get their players. Kids are smart; they see what’s out there, and they think that they can better their situation by going in the portal and maybe going to a bigger school that can offer more to them,” Young said.
That is the central problem for programs operating outside the richest conferences. A mid-major can identify a player, develop him for two or three seasons and turn him into one of the best players in its league, only to watch a larger program arrive with more money and a bigger platform.
The portal does give those schools another avenue to replace departures, but replacing a player and retaining one are two different financial problems.
The first full season of direct revenue sharing changed the financial calculations for Division I programs. Schools can now distribute a portion of their athletic revenue directly to athletes, with the initial cap around $20.5 million. The amount is not required to be divided equally among sports or players, meaning individual programs can make their own decisions about where the available money goes.
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For basketball-heavy mid-majors, that creates a complicated equation. A successful men’s basketball program may be the school’s primary revenue-producing sport, yet it is competing against institutions where football generates enough money to support much larger overall athletic budgets. That difference can show up on the recruiting trail.
A 2025 CBS Sports report found that a mid-major role player who had not reached the NCAA Tournament was being offered at least $1 million for the following season. The report described the portal market as having reached levels that would have been difficult to imagine only a few years earlier.
The numbers also explain why the transfer portal can feel different depending on where a program sits.
South Dakota State women’s coach Aaron Johnston has built his program around development and retention rather than trying to replicate the spending habits of the biggest schools. His approach is rooted in knowing what his program can realistically offer.
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“If we tried to run our program the way a power conference school that has a couple million bucks and an NIL collective [does], it wouldn’t work,” Johnston said. “We have to be really smart about who we are and attract people that want to graduate and have a good basketball experience.”
That strategy can still produce successful teams. It simply operates on a different timeline.
A mid-major can recruit locally, develop players and build continuity over several seasons. The problem arrives when that development produces a player valuable enough to attract attention from programs with substantially larger budgets.
The result is a system in which development itself can become a recruiting advantage for richer schools.
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The portal has created opportunities for players who might otherwise have remained buried on a depth chart, but it has also made roster stability harder for smaller programs.
More than 1,200 players entered the men’s basketball portal within the first 11 hours of the 2026 opening, according to an Associated Press report, illustrating the scale of the annual movement.
Mid-majors can participate in that market, and some have used it effectively. The problem is that they are often competing for the same players with schools that can offer greater compensation, higher-profile schedules and a clearer path toward professional basketball.
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The financial gap also extends beyond direct revenue sharing. Third-party NIL collectives remain part of the ecosystem, while donor money can supplement what schools provide. ESPN reported that collectives accounted for an estimated 81.6% of NIL compensation in October 2024, with men’s basketball representing 21.2% of that compensation.
That creates another layer of separation between programs with large donor networks and those without them.
Some mid-majors have responded by leaning into identity rather than trying to win a spending contest. Others have embraced the portal and tried to find undervalued players before larger programs do. Neither approach removes the basic financial reality.
A program that spends years developing a player can lose him in a single offseason. A wealthier program can then pay that player while benefiting from the development work done somewhere else.
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The NCAA Tournament remains capable of producing surprises, and the 2025 postseason offered reminders that talent still exists outside the power conferences. Drake and Robert Morris both advanced deep into the tournament after entering as double-digit seeds.
What has changed is the difficulty of keeping the roster that gets a mid-major there.
The financial gap in college basketball is therefore becoming less about whether smaller programs can find talent and more about whether they can afford to retain it. As revenue sharing grows, NIL markets continue to develop and players gain more freedom to move, the schools with the deepest resources will have more ways to solve roster problems.
For mid-majors, the challenge is finding ways to make development, opportunity, culture and fit valuable enough to compete with money that may be impossible to match.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com
