He may be considered the winningest coach in college women’s basketball and is known for his no-nonsense approach to coaching, but UConn head coach Geno Auriemma does raise a few eyebrows from time to time. The 12-time national title winner sat down with Hoops HQ’s Andy Katz for an interview, and he addressed one of his most controversial comments.
Katz asked Auriemma about what he thinks about what is happening in college sports right now, particularly about all the “money, agents, poaching and transfers on the men’s side.” This led the legendary Huskies coach to recall likening it to human trafficking previously.
“I made this comment one time and I was kind of saying it in jest — it’s almost like human trafficking, in the sense that you’ve got a kid who plays on a certain team and this person runs the team during the summer and they may have three or four really high level players. They go to college and get paid to go to that school. Does that person get a piece of it or not? I don’t know. I don’t ask.”
He also lamented about student athletes now having their own agents, revealing that some of these agents have already been talking with representatives and coaches from other schools and that they already have plans for that student to transfer by January. This was about the constant player movement in the transfer portal, which allows players to transfer schools to find greener pastures.
Geno Auriemma Talks About Agents Talking About Money All the Time
NIL has certainly changed college sports forever, and even a legendary coach like Geno Auriemma is feeling it. During that same interview, Andy Katz asked how much money these agents asked for, and Auriemma was blunt about it.
He revealed that the usual they ask for is around $300,000 in NIL value. However, these agents often haggle and say that another school is willing to pay a million dollars for that student athlete to transfer, which certainly raises the price. However, the coach noted that while this is common in football, those numbers could bankrupt college WBB programs.
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