South Carolina Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley once weighed in on the current NIL era of college basketball with regards to the challenges that could arise. In Nov. 2023, Staley appeared on “The ETCs” show (via the Boardroom YouTube channel), where she was asked by host Eddie Gonzales about her stance on NIL being tremendously beneficial to players but difficult for player-recruiting by teams.
Staley said she doesn’t want money to be the biggest factor for a program to recruit a player. However, she acknowledged the challenges that come with it and the potential advantages and disadvantages that coaches will have to take into account when it comes to recruiting.
“As coaches, we have access to, you know, so many sponsors. We got relationships with companies, and we utilize that to make it more appealing. There are things that are called collectives now, and we have to work through the collectives. To be completely honest, collectives do a lot of work for football because football is the, you know, they’re the main breadwinners, and I get that,” Staley explained (5:53).
“But when we’ve had as much success as we’ve had at the University of South Carolina, we should be rolling in it, and we’re not. So, there are still ways in which we can do that. I like it; it’s a challenge. I look at the NIL space as a challenge. We may not have the most, but I want to be competitive when it comes to recruiting young people, and I don’t want that to be the factor, you know, if someone beats us out by $25,000 or $50,000, I don’t want that to be the determining factor,” she added.
Staley is coming off a 2024-25 season in which she and her Gamecocks squad finished with an overall record of 35-4 (15-1 SEC). They went all the way to the 2025 national championship game to try and defend their title, but lost to the UConn Huskies by 23 points, 82-59.
Dawn Staley has won two national titles in the NIL era of college basketball
It seems as though coach Dawn Staley has adjusted well to the NIL era of collegiate hoops, as she has turned her South Carolina Gamecocks program into one of the premier ones in the sport with their recent success.
In the last five years, Staley and the Gamecocks have won two national titles, the first being the 2022 iteration with a 64-49 win over the UConn Huskies and, more recently, with an 87-75 victory over the Iowa Hawkeyes in 2024.
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