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The NCAA March Madness logo is pictured on the basketball court at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
College sports has become little more than a game of mercenaries, a constant coming and going of hired guns who wear a school’s jersey long enough to collect an NIL check and then move on to the next highest bidder.
Just look at what’s happening in the ongoing NCAA Tournament.
There’s a post on X this week that shows the starting lineup of each team in the Sweet 16, with the players represented only by a school logo of the school where they began their college careers. “Try to figure out which teams are which,” says the tagline.
In many cases, it’s impossible.
Michigan’s starting five is represented by five different logos, none of them Michigan’s. They’re from North Texas State, Texas Tech, Texas Tech, Auburn and Yale. Not a single starter began his career at his current school.
Ditto for Arizona and Kentucky.
Auburn’s starting unit is represented by one Auburn logo and logos from four different schools.
The starting lineup for nine of the 16 schools features four or five players who began their college careers elsewhere, and many of those players have played for more than two schools.
In all, 51 of the 80 starters in the Sweet 16 originally played for other schools — an average of 3.1 per team. According to CBS, transfers accounted for more than half of the scoring through the first two rounds of the tournament.
Not that loyalty is completely dead. All five of Purdue’s starters have been at the school since the start of their collegiate careers. Duke and Michigan State are next, with four (BYU has three).
Taken a step further, another X post showed the original schools for the top eight players (based on minutes played) of every team in the Sweet 16.
All eight of Kentucky’s players originally played elsewhere. Michigan and Texas Tech have only one player among their top eight who began their careers at those schools; Ole Miss, Alabama and Arkansas have just two apiece.
Purdue again leads the way in loyalty, with all eight players having never played for another school. Michigan State (7) and BYU (6) are next.
Because of the lure of NIL money and the ease of moving elsewhere via the transfer portal, schools and their basketball teams are not destinations anymore — they’re layovers for players on the move to another school.
Travis Branham of 247Sports reported that when the transfer portal opened on Monday, more than 700 players signed up — some even as their teams were heading to the Sweet 16. It has now topped 1,000. College athletes have more freedom of movement than their professional counterparts.
It’s difficult to understand why this situation would be appealing to anyone. Why do boosters donate vast sums of money to the NIL pot of their favorite school to rent players for a year or two — players who have no ties to, or truly represent, the school, culture or community.
They are just wearing a jersey and a year later they’ll likely be wearing some other school’s jersey. Why would fans enjoy this? They’re cheering for strangers every year. It’s not as if they can even credit their school’s program for having developed the players.
NCAA basketball (and football) is soulless.
Under the heavy hand of NCAA officials, college athletics has always been marked by extremes, and they never get it right. The NCAA was so stingy and mean-spirited — with transfers and benefits — that things swung dramatically so far the other way that it is equally untenable.
The NCAA brought all of this on in the first place and now the coaches, boosters and players are like kids who have escaped a stern parent and are drunk with freedom.
Not that any of the above — transfers and big financial incentives, etc. — is truly new in college sports; it’s just that now it’s no longer done under the table because the rules sanction it.
It has blown the lid off the whole thing and exposed college athletics for what it really is. It’s all out in the open now and, as a result, transfers and payments have proliferated to the extent of making college sports unrecognizable.
It remains to be seen how sustainable it will be.
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People wait for the BYU Cougars to play the Alabama Crimson Tide in an NCAA Sweet 16 game at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., on Thursday, March 27, 2025. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
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