[Cactus Jack]

I'm thinking Arizona was the better job and might still be.  How much of the Texas NIL money actually goes to the basketball program?

Haven't been able to find a firm figure, but Texas Basketball's estimated NIL this season was around $4 million, with message boards and bloggers saying that it's expected to be in the range of $5 million next season.

Coming up with the money for the right players will never be an issue-- the issue will be getting the players that boosters will pony up for without blinking interested enough in Texas to get to that point.

The problem with Texas athletics (as told by a former player) is that you have a lot of cooks in the kitchen. It's a big state that gets tons of donations, but all of the big donors have their guy that they want to see play. That leads to factions where a guy from Houston wants to see his guy play but he plays the same position as a guy from Dallas that was backed by a different big booster (who wants to see his own guy play). Multiply that by donors in the West Texas, Austin/San Antonio/Waco, and far East Texas and you can see why just managing the boosters and their expectations is a job in and of itself. It's a better position to be in than plenty of other places, but unless you have a really strong, entrenched head coach, some might think it's better to be an LSU where you have one big city, a few smaller towns, and a lock on in-state recruiting as a whole.

I suspect that Texas could have been in on the bidding with an AJ Dybantsa if they really wanted, and maybe that's how Miller plays it, but he won't have the funds to fill out a team of Dybantsa's (and I don't think anyone else could either). At some point, he'll have to turn inward to get role players and the NIL funding that keeps them from one of the other Texas schools or a neighboring state, and that's probably where his problems are going to start.


Something else I should have added in my earlier post: Texas is one of the few (and definitely one of the largest) states where NIL is prohibited at the high school level. That means no signing a kid and moving him to a nearby Texas high school for his senior year, at least if he wants above-board NIL benefits. They'll probably remove this cap at some point, but it may be a bit. This doesn't hurt Texas high school football nearly as bad as basketball. A few thousand dollars and a Lloyd's of London policy may be enough to make someone turn down a prep school in another state and keeping the high school experience that you can't get back, but I'd imagine that some schools can offer six figures or more. For a player like Justin Edwards or one of the Harrisons (read: a highly rated recruit who hasn't played a ton in the NBA), that could be a considerable portion of their career earnings from basketball, especially if it's invested wisely.

If the NIL cap were off Texas high schools, Miller would be in a much better situation, IMO.