Which School Made the Best Coaching Hire in 2025? Which Program do you trust to follow the rules?

Summary

Eye On College Basketball — Episode Summary

Episode Date: October 3, 2025
Hosts: Gary Parrish, with guest Cal Boone
Main Focus: Best Coaching Hires of 2025 & The Future of NCAA Recruiting Rules

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Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Gary Parrish and guest Cal Boone dig into the results of CBS Sports’ annual Candid Coaches survey. They discuss which programs made the best head coaching hires for the 2025 season, with a special focus on Iowa’s Ben McCollum, and analyze the college basketball community’s collective skepticism about the NCAA's new recruiting rules and salary cap. The conversation features direct insights from coaches and plenty of candid reflection on how well the college sports world can really play by the rules.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Best Coaching Hire of 2025

(01:14–12:21)

• Survey Results Summary:
  The CBS Sports Candid Coaches survey asked over 100 college basketball coaches which hire they believed was best for 2025.

  • Ben McCollum (Iowa): 25% of the vote
  • Will Wade (NC State): 22%
  • Sean Miller (Texas): 21%
  • Honorable Mentions: Ryan Odom (Virginia), Buzz Williams (Maryland), Nico Medved (Minnesota), Kevin Willard (Villanova), Ross Hodge (West Virginia), Alex Jensen (Utah)
  • Cal Boone’s pick: Darian DeVries (Indiana) — surprisingly, DeVries received at most one vote in the poll.

• Discussion of Ben McCollum’s Resume:

  • Formerly at Northwest Missouri State (D2): 4 national championships in 15 years, 395–91 record (81.3% win rate vs. Coach K's 70.7% at Duke)
  • Transitioned to Drake for the 2024–25 season: 31–4 record, beat Missouri in the NCAA Tournament
  • Now head coach at Iowa — viewed as the “hottest young coach” in the country
  • Coaches’ Reflections:
    • “It should have never taken Ben this long to get a power conference job. Just look at his record and accomplishments...” (08:37, Coach quote via Parrish)
  • Recruitment has changed: the focus is now on resources, not connections

• Cal Boone on McCollum:

  • Praises McCollum’s tactical ability, transition success, and fit at Iowa.
  • Notes that McCollum’s program boasts “one of the best half-court execution offenses in college basketball.”

• Surprising Omission:

  • Despite his record, Darian DeVries (Indiana) received almost no support in the coaches’ poll — something Boone finds odd “given the success Indiana has consistently had” (11:34)

2. Do Coaches Trust Each Other to Follow the New Recruiting Rules?

(12:21–35:22)

• Survey Result:

  • 89% of coaches do not believe their competitors will follow the new salary-cap-based recruiting rules.
  • Among high majors, nearly all respondents said “no”; only low and mid-major coaches provided some “yes” responses.

• Why the Skepticism?

  • Lack of confidence in enforcement—many coaches see little real policing or fear of consequences.
  • Wide disparities in budgets and resources between programs fuel the temptation to bend or break rules.
  • “If I follow these rules, I will get fired... because nobody else is following them. So I'll be outmanned year after year.” (17:17, Parrish)

• Coach Confession:

  • “I had one coach actually tell me... ‘I'm not going to follow the rules. So I assume nobody else is either.’” (17:17, Parrish)

• Current Revenue Sharing Model:

  • Each athletic department has a $20.5M cap; how it's divided across sports is flexible.
  • Football powers (e.g., SEC) will allocate most funds to football, limiting basketball payroll.
  • Non-football schools (e.g., St. John’s) can put more towards basketball — fueling budget disparities.

• Boone on Putting the Genie Back:

  • “It's very hard to put that genie back in the bottle. Once it has already been unleashed.” (29:11)

• Notable SEC Coach Quote:
  “A fair salary cap at our level should be around $8–10 million per roster.” (26:35)

• Realities of Enforcement and Consequence:

  • Coaches believe even if caught, repercussions are often minimal—“most of them either kept their jobs or got comparable jobs or in some cases even better jobs.” (17:17)

3. Will These Rules Last?

(32:25–end)

• Market Pressures:

  • Players and agents still expect last year’s wild NIL/transfer compensation.
  • Coaches cannot match expectations due to new limits, but “agents don’t believe you. I think you can.” (32:25, Parrish)
  • More offers under-the-table or “skirting rules” are expected.

• Predictions:

  • “The second Big Ten and SEC schools start actually losing recruits to Big East and A10 schools because they genuinely don't have the money… they're going to change the rules...” (34:04, Parrish)
  • The system is considered unsustainable; further adjustment is inevitable.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On McCollum’s coaching credentials:
  "Ben McCollum won a higher percentage of games at Northwest Missouri State, significantly higher...than K was able to win at Duke..."
  — Gary Parrish, (04:17)

• On the new recruiting landscape:
  "All of that recruiting experience I think has never mattered less than then it matters right now."
  — Gary Parrish, (06:44)

• On rules compliance realism:
  “If coaches were being truthful, most would say no. Right. And, you know, I think...if you ask the question this way, will you follow the rules?...the results would be somewhat close to what you got.”
  — Cal Boone, (16:52)

• On the system's paradox:
  "You get comfortable doing things you swore you would never do because you feel like it is necessary to survive. And that is the position the profession is in right now."
  — Gary Parrish, (34:04)

• On salary cap complexity:
  “In professional sports…the punishment is so severe you wouldn't even think about doing it...That might work someday, but this will not work. Not like this.”
  — Gary Parrish, (24:14)

• On VCU outbidding power schools:
  “VCU has more money than me right now...VCU got that kid and outbid schools from every power conference. Sammy Jackson had offers from every power conference. But VCU was able to put the most money on the table.”
  — Gary Parrish, (24:55)

• On expectation management:
  “[Players] watched [their] friend go get this money, and now [they’re] like, well, I want that money...and the players or the families or the agents are saying, I hear you, but I don't believe you.”
  — Gary Parrish, (32:51)

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• 01:14: Episode intro, Candid Coaches survey context
• 03:01: Cal Boone’s evaluation of coaching hires
• 04:17: Detailed rundown of Ben McCollum’s record and what makes him special
• 08:37: Coaches' quotes on McCollum; impact and fit at Iowa
• 11:34: Discussion of overlooked hires (Darian DeVries at Indiana)
• 12:21: Transition to the “rules trust” survey and results
• 16:52: Coaches’ skepticism about the new rules; direct confessions
• 24:04: Comparison to professional sports salary cap enforcement
• 24:55: VCU as an example of budget ‘anomalies’
• 26:35: SEC coach's salary cap expectations
• 29:11: Boone on the difficulty of reining in spending
• 32:25: Realities of player/family/agent expectations
• 34:04: Market pressure and predictions for the next rule change
• 35:23: Lighthearted closing: Gary’s FaceTime story with a UConn/Yankees fan

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Closing Tone

The episode’s tone blends data-driven analysis with candid, occasionally tongue-in-cheek commentary. Both hosts share a palpable skepticism about the NCAA’s capacity to enforce meaningful change under the new rules, and their perspectives are mirrored by the survey of coaches themselves—who seem to believe the new structure is destined for widespread circumvention or imminent adjustment.

Parrish’s conclusion: The new system is “a recipe for cheating” and is not sustainable—the coaches know it, and so do the hosts.

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Quick Reference: Best Coaching Hires of 2025 Poll Standings

| Coach | School | % of Votes | |--------------------|--------------|--------------| | Ben McCollum | Iowa | 25% | | Will Wade | NC State | 22% | | Sean Miller | Texas | 21% | | Others (multiple) | (see above) | <21% each | | Darian DeVries | Indiana | ~0%* |

*Per the hosts, at most 1 out of 100+ votes.

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Final Thoughts

If you want a deep and entertaining dive into the state of college basketball leadership and the roiling uncertainty around the sport’s new compensation rules, this episode delivers. Parrish and Boone blend sharp reporting, insider perspectives, and fan-level warmth—the latter especially on display in the personal story that ends the show.

Memorable closing message:
“You get comfortable doing things you swore you would never do because you feel like it is necessary to survive. And that is, that is the position the profession is in right now.”
— Gary Parrish, (34:04)

Transcript

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[Gary Parrish]

Hey there Gary Parish. Welcome back, CBS Sports. I own college basketball podcast where we sometimes discuss camel fighting, dodo birds and leaky black cow boobs. Here with me, strong jaw. If you watch it on YouTube, you know what to do. Hit the like button, shout outs to Brandon Davies. And if you haven't yet subscribed to the CBS Sports college basketball YouTube channel, please also do that while you're here. Let's get into it. Our Candid Coaches series has continued this week. Over at CBSSports.com we've discussed on the pod the first four questions already today. What we're going to do is focus on the latest two specifically the questions we asked and answered on Wednesday and Thursday. Here are the questions we asked and we asked the questions to more than 100 college basketball coaches. Who was the best coaching hire in 2025? And given that there are is now what amounts to recruiting rules and a salary cap in college athletics, do you trust that your competitors are going to follow the new rules? Let's take those questions in the order that we asked them. Who was the best coaching hire of 2025? The leading vote getter according to coaches was Iowa's Ben McCollum. He got 25% of the vote. Will Wade followed that at NC State, 22% of the vote. After that, Sean Miller at Texas, 21% of the vote. So three different coaches combined to get 68% of the vote, but Ben McCollum got more than anybody else. Cal Boone, how would you have answered that question? Let's say me and Matt Norlander decided to ask more than 100 college basketball coaches, plus Cal Boone, who was the best hire of 20, 25. What, what name would have been on your, on your ballot?

[Cal Boone]

Good afternoon, G.P. first of all, it's great to see you and thank you for including me among the 100 coaches in this poll. I would have voted number one, Darien DeVries at Indiana. He is McCollum's predecessor at Drake. I think Ben McCollum's a great hire. I get why he drew the most vot his media meteoric rise is certainly impressive. You know, two years ago we're talking about someone who is at the Division 2 level now among the hottest young coaches, if not the hottest young coach in college basketball. I would have put de Vries up there as my number one. I think I probably would have put McCollum just behind him. And then I think once you get beyond those top two, you could put Will Wade, Sean Miller, probably in that order. And that's how the coaches did rank them. And then also Ryan Odom. I think that would probably be my 1, 2, 3, 4 top six in my, in my poll. And you know, I think given the results that you got published on CBSSports.com I don't have any major qualms with how coaches ended up casting their votes here.

[Gary Parrish]

Yeah, it makes sense to me. I actually think at some point back in the spring, Norland and I were talking about the different hires and I believe I might have said at some point like the one I think I'm the biggest fan of is is Ben McCollum at Iowa. And I'm just a believer in excellence and he seems to be excellent. Here's a quote we got from a coach about him specifically. And I thought of the coaches we published, of the quotes we published, this was maybe the most insightful or interesting quote we got attached to. Ben. Here's what coach said this. I didn't know much about him before he went to Drake. I had just heard there was this high level D2 coach, but I started studying his stuff this past year they played a coach that I used to work with. So I watched that game locked in and it is just incredible what he does. So there's another Division 1 basketball coach saying, I never really heard much about this guy, but I had heard there was somebody special at the D2 level. And next thing you know, he's the head coach at Drake and he's coaching against one of my friends. And so I decided to turn that on. And my God, this guy's really good. All right. For people who don't know the story. It's a remarkable story. He's 44 years old. He's actually from Iowa City, and he's now the head coach at Iowa. He won four Division 2 national championships at Northwest Missouri State. Coach there for 15 years. All right, so he's been doing this for a while, even though he's only 44 years old. His record at Northwest Missouri State was.395 and 91. That's a winning percentage of 0.813. Just for some context, Mike Krzyzewski's winning percentage at Duke is 0.707. And he is considered by most to be the greatest college basketball coach of all time. Ben McCollum won a higher percentage of games at Northwest Missouri State, significantly higher percentage of games at Northwest Missouri State. Then K was able to win at Duke and also won four national championships in 15 years. Okay, fine, but that's just Division 2. Who cares about that? All right? He got the Drake job last year, went 31 and 4, beat Missouri in the round of 64, and now he's the coach at Iowa. He just seems to be. And what we heard from coaches who know him well and have coached against him or just become aware. Aware of him. He seems to be uniquely gifted. And whatever concerns you might have had about hiring a Division 2 coach for a Big Ten job once upon a time, or a guy with a total lack of recruiting experience, the high major level, any reservations you might have had about that once upon a time? Because they were real reservations once upon a time, and I totally understood them. Now it doesn't. It doesn't matter that much anymore. Can you recruit? Comes down to what. What kind of much money you got? Like, are. When we talk about general managers, let's just say in the NBA, we. We judge them largely based on how they draft and how they trade, but we don't really judge them too often in free agency because we know you are limited by how much money you have to offer under the cap. Unless you're the Clippers, of course. Then you can do whatever you want. But most to play by a certain set of rules. So then it just comes down to, like, who's got the money? Who's got the money? And so now in recruiting at the collegiate level, it used to be important to have strong relationships with the guy who runs this grassroots dream in St. Louis or in Detroit or wherever. And you needed to go back 20 years with him and fly in and see him every once in a while. Now you just need to have the resources to put the check on the table and say, come play for me. So all of that recruiting experience I think has never mattered less than then. It matters right now. And if that's not something that concerns you at Iowa, you just hired a guy who has been winning for a long time at an incredibly high rate regardless of where he's worked. And the transition from D2 to Division 1 could not have gone more smoothly. I just think he's a special coaching talent and it was interesting to see that the coaches largely agree with us.

[Cal Boone]

Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. And that's really well put. I mean, this is a guy who won at a high level at the Division 2 level. One quote that you got from a coach included in the piece here is it should have never taken Ben this long to get a power conference job. Just look at his record and accomplishments. He's a great coach and then they qualified it. He'll win consistently as long as his administration supports him. So I think that is true. I do believe that he's a great coach. He was a great coach at the Division 2 level last year, got the Drake job. Some questions right after taking over a program that has won at a really high level and last season basically won with most of some of his Division 2 recruits. They win 31 games in the Missouri Valley last year, answered a ton of questions. And oh, by the way, one of the best like half court execution offenses in college basketball. They have Bennett Sturts who breaks out and is an amazing player. Sturtz is going to Iowa with McCollum. Like there is a lot of momentum around McCollum and I agree. I mean, I think I probably would have put him number two on my ballot, but the coaches who voted him number one have all the reason to do so. The track record, you know, one of the quotes here, the controlling tempo defensive guy, I think he's just a great fit at Iowa as well. So, you know, in terms of just the resources, the tactical X's and O's, how he plays, his specific style and scheme, all of that I think is going to be a great fit at Iowa. I'm really excited to watch this team next year.

[Gary Parrish]

It is interesting and I, I guess I didn't pick up on this as I was submitting my votes to Norlander because he handled this question specifically. And until you mentioned Darren Devries at Indiana, I did not realize that he did not receive multiple votes here. Ben McCollum got 25% of the vote. Will Wade got 22%. Sean Miller got 21. After that, it's Ryan Odom at Virginia, Buzz Williams at Maryland, Nico Medved at Minnesota, and then, as Norlander put it, others receiving multiple votes. So at least two. Kevin Willard at Villanova, Ross Hodge at West Vir, Alex Jensen at Utah. What that means is that Darren Devries got at most one vote out of more than 100 ballots submitted. Again, I didn't pick up on that in real time because I just took my votes and emailed them to Norlander and then, you know, he took it from there. But that does surprise me because he is, he's well respected. Like people, people think Indiana made a good hire and that he's a really good coach. I, I'm surprised looking at it now that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 different coaches got multiple votes and Indiana's coach wasn't one of them. That does surprise me.

[Cal Boone]

And this is a coach who Devries we're talking about here won at least 25 games in his final four years with Drake. Went to West Virginia last year, went 19 and 13. So they did have, you know, kind of a step back year. But I think, you know, largely speaking, Devries is one of the best coaches in college basketball writ large a across the board. And, you know, maybe his stock is a little bit down after what happened last year at West Virginia, but he enters a good situation too at Indiana that has a ton of resources. I think he's gonna be able to recruit at a high level. That program is very, very hungry to get back to the mountaintop or somewhere close to it. So, yeah, like just looking through the list here in the the post on CBS Sports, that was an omission that to me stood out.

[Gary Parrish]

Yeah. So bit McCollum at Iowa leading vote getter who was the best coaching hire of 2025? The question we asked for Thursday's edition was more or less, given that we have new rules in college athletics and there is what amounts to a salary cap for each program, are you confident that your competitors will follow the new recruiting rules? We asked more than 100 coaches that question. 89% said they do not have confidence that their competitors are going to follow the new rules. We'll talk about that next. First though, let's get a word from our partners.

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[Gary Parrish]

So we asked more than 100 college coaches from all levels of the sport, do you trust that your competitors are going to follow the new recruiting rules as you understand them? 89% of the coaches who responded said no, which means only 11% said yes. And I should tell you that of the yes votes, votes from people who said, yeah, I think we're going to follow the rules, I think this will be fine. All but one of them came from a low major or mid major head coach or, or just coach. Point being, of every high major, slash power conference coach, we asked literally every one of them except one said, no, I do not believe these rules will be followed. Does that surprise you or depress you?

[Cal Boone]

Neither. It makes me giggle because obviously, yeah, like, I think if we're, if coaches were being truthful, most would say no. Right. And, you know, I think to take it a step further, gp, if you ask the question this way, will you follow the rules? I bet if the answers were off the record, the results would be somewhat close to what you got right.

[Gary Parrish]

I had one coach actually tell me, he said, no, I'd say, no, we're not going to follow the rules. And I said, why not? Because I'm just looking to get him, trying to get him to expand on it. And he says, because I'm not going to follow the rules. So I assume nobody else is either. And he was sort of joking, like tongue in cheek, but he was also being serious. And I think this is where you've got a real problem. You're going to have a certain percentage of coaches who are going to break the rules, because there's just certain type of person who is always going to be wired to try to break the rules, whatever the profession, whatever the rules. All right, so that's not unique to college basketball. But the situation that college basketball now finds itself in is you've got coaches that are going to break the rules because they were always going to. You've got wildly different budgets at different schools, which complicate things. And then you have a belief, whether it's true or not, a belief among coaches in the industry that these rules are not going to be followed by most, that there's nobody out there really trying to police this stuff anyway. And that if I try to follow them I will be in the minority. I will end up with bad rosters, I will end up with bad teams, I will stack bad seasons, and then I will get fired. There's no way around it. If I follow these rules, I will get fired. Why? Because I don't believe the other people are following the rules. So I'll be outmanned year after year. That's one way to do your job. The other way would be not, because I don't even think they think in terms of, like, I'm gonna go cheat. I think they think in terms of I'm just going to go do what I got to do because everybody else is doing it. I don't want to do this, but everybody else is doing it. So if I don't, I can't survive. And so I've heard this from coaches. I can play by the rules, but I will lose. And I will, because nobody else is. And I will get fired or I cannot play by the rules. And if I get caught, I guess I'll get fired. But look at all the guys who got caught. Most of them either kept their jobs or got comparable jobs or in some cases even better jobs. So I don't want to get caught, but even if I do, how bad is it?

[Cal Boone]

Right?

[Gary Parrish]

And, and I probably won't get caught because I don't even know who's out there looking. And so that's how you get 89 of these guys saying, no, the rules will not be followed. And it's, it's just I never, and we've done hours on this, but I just never understood why anybody thought the house settlement as presented and these new rules as constructed were going to do anything to college athletics other than bring back a bunch of finger pointing, a bunch of whispering about rules violations and under the table cheating that leads to, you know, just scandals within the sport that I frankly would, would rather do without. I know people didn't like what we had in recent years, which is basically, and maybe I should explain this real quickly just so people understand what we're talking about. For decades, we had rules that were clearly defined. You get a scholarship, then we do a scholarship and a cost of attendance, stipend, but that's it. You can't give somebody five bucks for anything or you're breaking the rules. Right? And those were the rules and people broke them, but like, those were the rules and everybody understood them. And if you broke them, like you're taking a chance, but those were the rules. Then we got to a place where there were basically no rules. If you wanted to give, you know, P.J. haggerty $4 million to play basketball for you, you just call it nil and he's yours. You could spend as much money as you could generate, and that was wild and chaotic, but at least you understood everything. At least you understood, well, I know why he's there, and I know why he's there, and I know why he transferred to there. And. And even coaches in press conference were talking about, well, like, well, that's what we pay him to do. We pay him to shoot, so he needs to shoot. Like, that's like Rick Barnes said one time. So I know people, not everybody loved that, but at least everybody knew what the score was. And it was in many ways up to the school or the coaches to generate revenue, to go out and roster build, and you could do it as well as you could position yourself to do it. Now we're at a place as of July 1st where, and I'm oversimplifying it here, but just you get the point, every school has like $20.5 million to spend up to 20.5 minutes to spend on their athletic departments if they want to. Not everybody will. Some, some schools will spend zero, some schools will spend the 20.5. A lot of schools will spend somewhere in between zero and 20.5. But you can go up to 20.5, as you know, at like an SEC football school, Alabama, Auburn, LSU, they're going to spend 70, 75% of that on football, leave only 25 for men's basketball at most, and in many cases even lower than that. Meantime, in the big east, like St. John does doesn't have a football team, so they can spend all their money on basketball if they want to. So different budgets, different caps at different places and, and the core belief that nobody's really going to follow this stuff anyway, it's a recipe for cheating. And I know again, some people didn't like the way it was a year ago or two years ago where big nil deals were flying around. But I like that better than this, because this I'm. I told you in June, before it even went down, how it was going to go. Now we're here probably faster than I thought, and I can keep telling you how it's going to go. The transfer portal is going to open after the season, and you're going to hear people, you're going to see people on the Internet breaking down what they like, doing the numbers, and they're going to say, this SEC school can't possibly, in the budget have as much money as this Big east school we know is offering. There is no way this SEC school can match that number. Not legally. But then the kid's going to commit to the SEC school, all right? And then you know what? Then I'm going to get a phone call from the Big east staff and you know what they're going to say? GP Those assholes spent all of their money on football. They're supposed to only have 4 million to spend on basketball. And they just outbid me for a kid and I was offering three. So tell me how they did that. You know how they did it. That's where we're going to be. That's where we're going. Who is this good for? Nobody. It's silly. And the coaches answer to this question I think illustrates that pretty well.

[Cal Boone]

And just to kind of highlight what you said there. 20.5 million per athletic department. Correct. This is not 20.5 million per basketball team, per football team.

[Gary Parrish]

No, it's 20.5 million period. For your athletic department, you spend all 20.5 on. You can spend all 20.5 on softball.

[Cal Boone]

Right.

[Gary Parrish]

Every dollar you spend here is a dollar you cannot spare. And that's where like I think if you actually want to have a salary cap, first collectively bargain it, negotiate, sign a CPA and then make it a solid number for every program and then have, you know, for lack of a better term, police officers out there and make the punishment severe that if you get caught trying to circumvent the salary cap, it's like it's. The punishment is so severe you wouldn't even think about doing it. I know the Clippers story has sort of complicated idea, but in professional sports, the NFL, the NBA, we don't really hear about people under the table deals too often. And like circumventing the salary cap, they play by the rules for the most part because if you don't, you there's no telling what could happen to you. You've got to get college athletics to that place because for a long time people just weren't scared about. They didn't think they'd get caught if they didn't get caught. If they did get caught, they thought they could figure out a way out of it or minimize the damage. If you do that, I hard salary caps on individual sports and the punishments are so severe, people are scared to even think about breaking them. That might work someday, but this will not work. Not like this. Not when St. John's is going to have in. In some cases a lot More money to spend annually than ACC, Big 12, Big 10 and SEC schools. Not when VCU. I can't tell you how many Power conference coaches told me at Peach Jam right now because I did a story on Sammy Jackson, the VCU commit. And so I was asking other coaches about all this stuff and I had multiple Power Conference coaches say VCU has more money than me right now. You go. VCU got that kid and outbid schools from every power conference. Sammy Jackson had offers from every power conference. But VCU was able to put the most money on the table. That is not a world that's going to last. Either the rules will be changed so that that can happen or the power conference schools that don't have that much money in their budget, well, they're going to find money and they're going to put it under the table and they're going to get things done. And that is what the coaches told us they believe is going to happen. And honestly, it's probably already happening.

[Cal Boone]

Definitely one quote that stood out to me from the story and again, you can read [e-mail] it's under Gary's author page. From a SEC coach. Of course, this is anonymous. This is candid coaches says, I don't trust our competitors to recruit within the rules at all. Parentheses we are in the sec. Remember, a fair salary cap at our level should be around 8 to 10 million per roster. So talking about 8 to 10 million per roster in basketball, you're not accounting for an SEC football team which is absolutely spending more than 10 million per roster. No question.

[Gary Parrish]

Let me, let me just tell you this real quick and then let you continue. There is, there is not an SEC school, I don't think that is going to be able from revenue sharing to put $10 million into the basketball program. Now you're going to have nil opportunities, but those have to be cleared. And they're not as easy to get through theoretically as they, as they used to be because they used to be you could push anything through. Now that's supposedly not the case. So yeah, like if an SEC coach is telling us, and that's a quote Norlander got, not me. So I don't know who that came from. But if an SEC coach is telling us we really need somewhere between 8 and $10 million, well, these same SEC coaches are largely getting about 25 to 30% of their budgets. So it's just like not that it's not that much money. And so there's your problem. There's your problem. You have that what that coach is telling, what that coach told Norlander mostly is that with the money I have allotted by my athletic director, it is not enough to compete with some of the other schools I know I'm competing against. It's not enough. It's not enough. And these guys aren't just going to throw their hands in the air and say, well, I guess then I can't get the player. I guess I'll just lose. They're going to do what they've always done. They're going to figure out a way to get things done. And it's just, we're going to be right back where we were, but with just different rules and a bunch of lawyers fees paid. You know, a bunch of attorneys made a whole bunch of money off this stuff. But we didn't fix anything. We just traded in one set of issues for a different but similarly complicated new set of issues. But nothing got fixed here. Nothing got fixed here. And the coaches are telling us that that's right.

[Cal Boone]

And so you're. Essentially, what you're doing is going from a completely free market. It's the wild West. It's largely unrelated, regulated. There's not people who are policing this to a salary crap cap. I mean, that's exactly what it is. It's very hard to put that genie back in the bottle. I think once, once it has already been unleashed. And I think as the results show from this poll, it's unlikely that the genie will go back in the wall. I can't imagine that if, you know, an SEC program that was spending 8 to 10 million per roster is, is suddenly given, for example, 5 million per roster. They're not just going to go back to, okay, well, let's just rein in our spending. You know, we can, we can get it under the numbers. Exactly what's going to happen is exactly what you just laid out. This money is going to be spent one way or another. It may be under the table, it may be skirting rules, it may be outright cheating. We may have some schools calling aspirations say, hey, we'd like to plant some trees and we've got some connections, right? They may pull a Steve bomber. But I think the quote here that was telling was, do you believe that your other coaches, opponents are going to cheat? One coach said, hell no. Ask Steve Ballmer right now.

[Gary Parrish]

That was exactly right. That was a quote that came to me. That came from a power conference quote. But like that coach. But like, that's the thing. They just don't. But if nobody believes in the system it makes it very hard to get people to follow the system. And the other thing we have heard from coaches throughout this process, you know what else makes it difficult? And you sort of hinted at this with Jeanne back in the bottle type of thing in the period of time that preceded this, where there were basically no rules and people were literally throwing around millions of dollars to just like Coleman Hawkins and PJ Haggerty, like millions of dollars. Now, what coaches are telling us is that even if you try to talk to players or their families or their agents and explain to them, that is a different time. Now, I know it was just six months ago, and if you had got with me six months ago, or if you'd have been two years older, you could have cashed in for 3 million, 5 million, 8 million, whatever. But we can't do that anymore. That money is not allowed. We don't have it in our revenue sharing. And I mean, we could give you $2 million in nil, but the second we submit the contract to this regulator, they're going to deny it because. Because you have no actual nil value. So they're not going to let us give you $2 million. So we just. I hear what you're asking for, but, like, we can't do anything close to that within the rules anymore. And you know what the agents are saying, largely telling the coaches, yeah, yeah, I don't believe you. I think you can. And then you know what they followed up with? Well, you better, because everything, even if everything you're telling me, coach, is true, I've got another coach telling me they'll figure it out.

[Cal Boone]

Exactly.

[Gary Parrish]

All right, so if you don't do what I'm asking you to do, just know I've got another coach who is telling me they'll figure it out. One way or another, they're going to get the money that I'm asking for. So now you're. This other. Now what? Now what are you doing? That is happening every day now. Every day. The agents don't believe I've had multiple coaches tell me. I have tried to explain. The rules are new. These are new rules. There are new regulations. There are new restrictions. And that money that your. Your buddy got, like, here's the thing, you got kids playing on the same grassroots team. One kid's one year older than the other one. That kid came to college last year and got $4 million or $2 million or $875,000. He. He watched his friend go get this money, and now he's like, well, I want that money. I know what. I know what Joey got. Well, I want that money. And now the coaches are saying, but that money is not here anymore. That was a different time. And the players or the families or the agents are saying, I hear you, but I don't believe you. That money's gonna have to be here. We'll find it somewhere. Somebody's gonna give it to us legally or illegally. Somebody's gonna get us that money. And if it's, if you're not comfortable doing it, just know that. Just know that a lot of people you're recruiting against are. And that's just, that's. That's an impossible system to navigate. If you don't have people to believe in it, then they're not going to follow it. And right now, what you have more than anything, I would, I would argue the most common belief about this stuff among college coaches is that you can't follow the rules because most people aren't going to follow the rules. And when most people aren't following the rules, if you're the person doing it, you will lose and then lose your job. So I don't even want to do this. I'm not comfortable with it. But here we go. That's how this stuff happens. You. You get comfortable doing things you swore you would never do because you feel like it is necessary to survive. And that is, that is the position the profession is in right now. And I don't, I don't know that anybody. I don't want to say I don't know that anybody loves it. Maybe there's somebody out there, but I, it's not me. I, I don't prefer. I would. I would rather go back to six months ago than sit. Sit in this system. And to be clear, we, again, we will not be here long. This the second Big Ten and SEC schools start actually losing recruits to Big east and A10 schools because they genuinely don't have the money in the revenue sharing budget. Somebody's gonna. They're going to change the rules because you just, you're not going to allow that, right? We've been building these things up for too long to just allow this little rule to make it where Duke and North Carolina are at a recruiting disadvantage against Big east and A10 schools like that ain't gonna. It ain't gonna stay that way for long. So this will all get changed, but until it gets changed, the rules will just be broken over and over and over again. Can I tell you a quick story before we get out of here?

[Cal Boone]

Tell me A quick story.

[Gary Parrish]

Okay? Nada knows this story because I sent it to him last night. Fun little. Fun little moment. Last night, I'm sitting at home watching Yankees, Red Sox, and I get a FaceTime call from a buddy of mine who I've known my whole life. We grew up together. Anyway, he's in New York, and he's there with his wife. I think they're celebrating their anniversary. And he's just, like, settled into a bar in Manhattan watching Yankees, Red Sox, you know, as you do. And so, because it's Yankees, Red Sox, any bar in Manhattan is going to have it on. And you're just. You're going to be around Yankees fans. Maybe some Red Sox fans, too. So my buddy is sitting there, and he just happens to be sitting at the bar next to a Yankees fan. And they just start talking. The way you start talking sometimes when you sit right next to somebody at a bar. Hey, you know, hey, so who you rooting for? Hey, did you see that? You know, jazz, chisholm throw or whatever. You just start talking. Anyway, my buddy is an Ole Miss grad, and he had on, like, an Ole Miss shirt, right? They're ranked top five in the country. There was ever a time to wear an Ole Miss shirt. This would be the time. So that strikes up a conversation. He's like, oh, so you went to Ole Miss? And my buddy's like, yeah, with Ole Miss, Grew up in Mississippi, still live there, all that stuff. And so then they start talking baseball. I don't know every detail, but I gather the story went something like this. And the guy goes, so you're a Yankees fan or whatever. And my buddy's like, no, I'm actually a Mets fan. You know, I grew up a Mets fan. And he's like, a Mets fan from Mississippi, like. And the guy goes, this is like, I don't think I've ever heard about a Mets fan from Mississippi. Except for. Except for this one guy who hosts a college basketball podcast. I listen to a guy named Gary Parrish, and my buddy goes, that's my boy. Let's call him. Next thing you know, I am on a FaceTime call with. With my buddy Hunter and Brian, a Yukon fan from New York City. And just the randomness of that. Can you imagine? You're sitting in a bar, you have me sitting next to an Ole Miss grad who tells you he's a Mets fan. You're like, I. I only. I never heard of a Mets fan in Mississippi. Except for this one guy who hosts this podcast. And the guy and the guy goes, yeah, that's my friend who lives down the street from me. Let's call him right now. And I'm just sitting here, sitting in my recliner, FaceTiming with Brian from. Brian from NYC, the big UConn fan. So he's excited about the season. He said he will run through a brick wall for Dan Hurley and that the Huskies still own New York City. I said, you're gonna have to take that up with Rick Patino.

[Cal Boone]

That's right.

[Gary Parrish]

That's between you and Rick Patino. But what a. What a pleasant experience. And then, of course, we end the call. He told me that. He reminded me there is more of us than there are of them. So it was very. The whole thing was just sweet. Isn't that a sweet story?

[Cal Boone]

That is a sweet story. Shout out to Brian. Shout out to the two Mets fans in the entire universe from Mississippi.

[Gary Parrish]

I. I think. I think there's actually three of us.

[Cal Boone]

Okay.

[Gary Parrish]

It would be me, my buddy Hunter, and then former Ole Miss quarterback Romero Miller, who is probably most famous for being the quarterback that started his senior year while Eli Manning sat on the bench.

[Cal Boone]

Okay. Yeah.

[Gary Parrish]

Romero and I, like, we were in college at the same time, and so we just. And he lives near me as well. And so we've just sort of become friends over the years. And so we're like, in a group text, like Mets fans in Mississippi. And we're like, we just complain all the time back and forth to each other about how miserable it is being a Mets fan, because they always disappoint us. So I think there's three of us. Me, Hunter, and Romero Miller. But I'm glad Hunter and Brian got to connect in New York City last night. And though I don't spend a lot of time on FaceTime, I'm actually terrified of it. If anybody tries to FaceTime me other than my wife or my kids, I get very nervous. So my instincts were not the answer. But I'm glad I got him on the phone and we had a fun conversation.

[Cal Boone]

It's a great reminder that there truly are more of us GP More of us.

[Gary Parrish]

There's more of us.

[Cal Boone]

Way more of us.

[Gary Parrish]

As illustrated last night in Manhattan. New York City shouts to Devin Downey. Shout out to Chester scouts, South Carolina shouts to Terry Teagle. He's a legend. Huck Larnell. Thank you guys once again for watching listening to the I Own College Basketball podcast. If you're not subscribed, please go subscribe to the college basketball podcast. Wherever you subscribe to podcast you can do it at Apple, you can do it at Spotify. There is more of us than there are of them. That should be reflected in the comments. So please do that. And we will talk to you again next week. I don't necessarily know what. What the schedule is or even who I'm going to be talking to, but this is what I can promise you. At some point, next week is going to be me and one of my buddies, and we're going to sit down and I think start ramping up for the season. Conference previews, like they're on the way. I've got, I think, Big Ten Media Day or Big 12. Big. Either Big Ten or Big 12. Next week. I should probably.

[Cal Boone]

I don't know if it's next week, but you're definitely on the Big 12.

[Gary Parrish]

I'm definitely going to Big 12 and Big 10. And one of them. One of them is next week. I'm going somewhere next week.

[Cal Boone]

Next week's been Big Ten.

[Gary Parrish]

Okay, then I'll be in Chicago next week. All right, so. But before I head to Chicago, we will have another episode of the Island College Basketball Podcast, and that is expected to come. Let's call it on on Monday. Cal Boone, thank you for being here. I owe you forever. You're the best. Appreciate all you guys joining us. We'll talk to you again real soon. Till then, take care.

[Cal Boone]

Paramount Podcasts now streaming.

[Gary Parrish]

Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery. We don't know what we're looking for. The bodies are the scene of the crime. No symptoms in history or clues. You saved her life. We're doctors and we're detectives.

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I kind of love it, if I'm being honest.

[Gary Parrish]

Solve the puzzle, save the patient. Watson. All episodes now streaming on Paramount. Plus.