Fran McCaffery speaks on a rapidly changing NCAA

When asked about the current landscape of NCAA athletics in a recent press conference, Iowa Hawkeyes Men’s Basketball coach Fran McCaffery didn’t mince words.

“Right. You know, and that was poor foresight by the NCAA. They blew it, bottom line. You can’t put the portal and NIL together and say it’s not going to become pay for play. Who didn’t see that coming? Anybody in this room, anybody on planet earth saw that coming, okay.

This is where we are. It’s not the players’ fault. They want a piece of the pie. They can read. The incredible dollars that are generated by their performance, so they need to be compensated.

Is there a right way to do it? Probably. Can everybody agree to that? Probably not. But we’ll see where we end up because we’re not in a very good place right now.”

College athletics has experienced rapid change in recent years with the introduction of Name Image and Likeness deals, as described in David Eickholt’s piece for 247Sports. We’ve seen just in the past few weeks thousands of players entering the transfer portal for college football. Just recently in college basketball, Texas Tech forward Fardaws Aimaq announced his intent to enter the NCAA transfer portal, despite not playing a single game for the Red Raiders.

While McCaffery says that Iowa has tried to refrain from NIL promises to players, the same certainly cannot be said around the league. As for the Hawkeyes, they’ve been able to take positives out of the entire experience. McCaffery points towards the players interactions with the business community and their community service work as a positive.

“We have great kids. They’ll represent companies well if they hire them. I encourage companies to reach out and engage in communication and hire our guys, and I want our guys to know and understand and appreciate those opportunities that are coming their way.”

As college athletics as a whole is experiencing a ton of chaos, McCaffery assured that his players are unaffected.

“Our guys are locked in. They’re making some money. Nobody is getting rich, but they’re understanding the importance of what NIL was supposed to be, as you pointed out. It was supposed to be opportunity to grow in the business world. I keep saying this, but one of the positives of it all is it really requires your student-athletes to be great citizens or else they’re not going to make any money.”