The transfer portal is a form of free agency for college players, and players are beginning to ask for ridiculous fees to join programs.
Prices continue to go up for the top available talents in the portal. Great Osobor signed one of the biggest transfer portal deals last year, joining Washington from Utah in a $2 million package. With that being said, the figures continue to rise this year.
How Much Does It Cost to Sign College Players?
Following the market landscape, it now costs between $800k and $2.5m to sign players in the transfer portal. Point guard Dedan Thomas joined LSU over Florida, Kentucky, and Syracuse in a package reportedly worth $2.5m. As a sophomore at UNLV, he averaged 15.6 points and 4.7 assists.
“The transfer portal is crazy. There are kids asking for $2-3 million right now,” Villanova head coach Kevin Willard said in an interview. “The money has exploded crazy because we have no guardrails. We have no rules. It’s been as badly of a rule implemented as ever. And agents are taking advantage of it.”
“We’re seeing some outrageous numbers on some kids that are marginal at best,” an SEC assistant said. “Like, unproven.”
“And the number goes up every week whoever you’re talking to,” said an administrator who negotiates NIL deals.
There’s a lot of money in the market and some programs are operating as if they need to spend all excess funds controlled by their current collective.
KEEP READING: 2025 Men’s College Basketball Transfer Portal Tracker
Sean Frazier, the athletic director at Northern Illinois, suggested a solution that might make the market fair, but it might be unpopular among athletes.
He suggested that the colleges receive a “transfer fee” while the players also receive compensation. That way any program losing a player would be able to afford a replacement of some sort.
“At the end of the day, the kid deserves the compensation and support,” Frazier said in an interview with The Associated Press at the NCAA convention this week. “But the institution, to keep the cycle going, they deserve something as well. We’re not in the situation to continue to do that if we keep losing our best and brightest.”
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