College basketball: Dick Vitale says NIL, transfer portal are ‘a major problem’
Dick Vitale said college basketball has a “major problem” with NIL and the transfer portal.
Vitale, 85, discussed the state of college basketball during a recent appearance on OutKick’s “Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich.”
“I think we got chaos going on in college basketball. Total chaos. The stability is out of whack. It’s wild west. Do you know in one day of the portal opening, which should never, never open during the heart of the NCAA tournament, that is a joke,” Vitale said.
“But the bottom line is over a thousand entered the portal, and they are asking, ‘How much money am I going to get?’ Everybody is chasing the bucks.
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ESPN analyst Dick Vitale before a game between the Tennessee Volunteers and the Alabama Crimson Tide at Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center March 1, 2025. (Randy Sartin/Imagn Images)
“I did a game recently. A kid (played at) four schools. Four schools. What is going on? I don’t know your feelings, but I think that the transfer portal and the NIL needs some rules. They need some rules. You know it’s the best free agency right now in all of sports, even if you’re a pro athlete. You are a pro athlete, you have a contract. Maybe they should do contracts with kids so you can’t leave that quickly.”
While Vitale is concerned about the transfer portal and NIL, he did say the players do deserve to make money.
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Dick Vitale at Coleman Coliseum for a basketball game between Alabama and Kentucky Feb. 22, 2025. (Gary Cosby Jr./Tuscaloosa News)
“I think this, you know, the bottom line is there’s no doubt players deserve some money with the cash being made. But I thought it was basically going to be, you do a commercial, you make an appearance, you get paid for it. I never in my wildest dreams … but millions of dollars, millions,” Vitale said.
“And what’s happened out there, take a look at the Sweet 16. Not one team, mid-major, has a chance anymore, really. Because of the dollars — the NIL dollars — the big guys are going to absolutely dominate.”
Vitale coached at the University of Detroit and talked about how, if NIL existed then, his best players might not have stayed.
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Dick Vitale attends the 2022 ESPY Awards at Dolby Theatre July 20, 2022 in Hollywood, Calif. (Leon Bennett/Getty Images)
“I was telling people when I was in Detroit we were pretty good, man. We won 21 in a row. We beat Marquette. We were national champs the year we beat them on their court. We beat Arizona. We beat some good teams,” Vitale said.
“We had some four NBA players that were in my program. When I’m thinking about Terry Tyler, John Long sitting out, but those guys would have been gone. They would have went to Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana. They would have been gone cause we could never ever have the dollars to pay them. So, I think, really, we got a major problem.”
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