Being a College Basketball Fan in 2025
How roster-building has made following the sport less fun and how we can make it better
Living in 2025 is a dissonant experience. I’d like to understand what it’s like to be living now based on the data that helps explain it and not just vibes or the real world equivalent of the “eye test,” which is why I want to be sympathetic with the Steven Pinkers and Ron Baileys of the world, who are always ready with a graph to show us how life is getting better, all appearances to the contrary.
For instance, the percentage of people globally who are living in extreme poverty has dropped from 84% to 8.6% over the last two centuries. Over about the same interval, the global literacy rate has improved from 10% to 90%. Americans in 1900 used to spend 80% of their expenditures on necessities, and that percentage is now just 50%, leaving much more room for discretionary purchases. Technology has improved to the point where things that were rare or unheard of 125 years ago — electricity, television, indoor plumbing, air conditioning — are now standard issue in the West.1
Life is objectively much more comfortable, easier on the body and fuller with entertainment (or some would say “distraction”) than it’s ever been, and yet it doesn’t feel like humans are flourishing in ways that transcend measures of pure physical survival. Alan Noble’s book You Are Not Your Own describes, as well as anything I’ve read or seen, the experience of living in a post-modern West that Noble calls “inhuman.”
“We weren’t made to live like this, and most of us know it,” Noble writes. “But either we don’t care, or we don’t think we can do anything about it. So the mode that best describes our day-to-day experience is ‘survival.’ … Existence is a thing to be tolerated; time is a burden to be carried. And while there are moments of joy, nobody seems to be actually flourishing — except on Instagram, which only makes us feel worse. Strikingly, even as our standard of living in the West continues to rise, our quality of life doesn’t. It is possible to make the case that our world is getting better. The dramatic decrease in extreme poverty is one clear example of our world becoming a bit more humane. … Often, the very techniques that improve our material lives are the ones that alienate us from each other or from creation. … And so, while our material well-being has improved in some important ways, judged by many of the qualities that truly make life worth living (meaning, relationships, love, purpose, beauty), the modern world is sick. Perhaps we are less physically sick than in the past, but spiritual and mental sickness is still sickness.”2
But to paraphrase Annie Kinsella in Field of Dreams, “What’s it got to do with college basketball?” My thesis is that, though many of the objective qualities of college basketball seem as good or better than ever, the lived experience of following the sport as a fan (or at least a “fan like me”) has degraded as a fallout from Name, Image and Likeness (NIL); the Transfer Portal; and other factors (such as perpetual conference realignment and the proliferation of legalized gambling).
Some of the smartest people in the college basketball world, whom I deeply respect (Ken Pomeroy, Gary Parrish and John Gasaway, to name a few), continue to make compelling cases for why the sport is better now in a world of NIL and unlimited transfers. And they have strong cases. The previous system was unfair to the players, with coaches, schools and TV networks raking in billions while players were only permitted receive an academic scholarship and, more recently, a cost-of-living stipend. This system not only created ethical problems of fundamental fairness but also developed a black market for under-the-table incentives for athletes that forced many coaches to feel they needed to break the rules to compete.
In addition, because even in a world of under-the-table payments, athletes were underpaid relative to their market value, many players left school early or never went to college at all so they could earn an income professionally, either overseas or in the G League, reducing the overall talent in the sport. Now, instead of an upperclassman leaving for a six-figure deal abroad, he can stay in college and make more (and that’s even the case with first-round picks — at $4 million, Texas Tech’s JT Toppin will be making the equivalent of a mid-first-rounder). And instead of a top prospect heading to Australia or the G-League Ignite as a bridge year until he is eligible for the draft, now he’s playing at Oklahoma or North Carolina or Maryland.
Writes Gasaway: “With NIL and player mobility, the college game is righting wrongs both large and small. Players are being afforded the opportunities they have earned but lacked for far too long. More prosaically, this new era of fairness and justice for all happens to make me blissfully happy as a viewer. I never want to see the college game miss out on another Amen Thompson.”
To bolster the case of the Gasaways, et al., not only is the talent pool larger (due to more players staying longer in college or deciding to attend at all), but player mobility via the Transfer Portal also enables teams to shore up weaknesses quickly rather than having to develop over multiple years. Missing a 3-and-D shooter or a rim-protector or a reliable veteran point guard? You have 360 other rosters you can scour to find the right player to fill your hole. College basketball used to be a bit more like international soccer — you need a right back, Englanf? better start developing some 8-year-old and you can get one in 12 years; whereas now it’s more like professional soccer — you need a right back, Liverpool? check out the Portuguese or Dutch league and pay a transfer fee to get the best one to fit your needs immediately.
I’m not sure if this actually has led to better play on the floor this season, but offensive efficiency is as high as its been in at least the last three decades, and points per game are as high as they’ve been since the mid-90s, except for a couple of seasons in the late 2010s where increased scoring was primarily driven by too many fouls being called (I equate this mostly to modernizing of styles, emphasizing higher-percentage shot attempts and fewer of the plays that lead to turnovers).
And for those of us concerned about the rampant and uncontrolled player movement, Pomeroy has this rebuttal:
Scott Van Pelt, a pretty reasonable media-type, complained this season that all of the player movement is bad for the sport. That it’s universal free agency every season, and no professional sports league works this way. That part is true, although it’s hard to see any negative impact on the interest in the sport, and certainly not in the quality of play. But setting that aside, let’s do an honest comparison of the professional and college restrictions on player movement.
College
- Players are free to change teams each offseason
- Players are NOT free to change teams in the middle of the seasonProfessional
- Players can sign multiyear contracts
- Players can demand trades against the team’s will (even in the middle of the season)
- Players can be traded to a different team against their own will (even in the middle of the season)
- Players can agree to contract buyouts to change teams (in the middle of the season)
- Players can be released (even in the middle of the season)So yeah it’s not the same. Universal free agency is unique, but it’s dishonest to leave out that college is different from the pros in that there are no in-season roster changes, either. And the trade of universal free agency for complete in-season loyalty is worth it. (I’d also add that universal free agency makes the first month of the offseason absolutely riveting in a way it never was before.)
I’m not going to imply that the current structure of the game is bad for interest in the sport, because I don’t think we know that it is, especially with legalized gambling propping up interest for those who need an 11 p.m. Seattle vs. Portland State game to save a rough night. A more “efficient” distribution of talent (and if you ever read Noble’s book, you’ll find that he makes a strong case that “efficiency” is the peak virtue in our world now, to the detriment of our flourishing) will eventually lead to the richest schools having the best players. And the richest schools are the richest because, in large part, they have the most fans (although a single booster with a fortune from developing flavored “vitamin” water can also have an outsized impact). So, if the schools with the most fans have the most success, that may be a net positive in terms of overall interest — though, that’s not too different than the pre-NIL era.
Now that I’ve steel-manned the argument for why this is a great time for college basketball fans, I’m going to tell you why that argument is flawed, or at least incomplete. Part of why I love the sport is because of how it is different. It’s now de rigueur to complain about the way college basketball, particularly its on-court rules, is worse than the NBA. For instance, every “smart” observer seems to think we should have quarters and a 24-second shotclock and that teams should be able to advance the ball on timeouts. I disagree with all of these suggested changes, not because they would make the sport worse — although I think they mostly would (hello, Bryce Drew and Tyus Edney) — but because college basketball’s distinctness is core to why I love it.
And so, though I’ve accepted the professionalization of college basketball as righteous, the way it has changed roster-building has damaged my joy as a fan. I’m not very interested in watching a minor league version of the NBA, and I don’t think that simply dressing young professional basketball players in Indiana and Duke jerseys and making sure the bands are prepped for some Mighty, Mighty Bosstones banger is a significant distinction.
Starting in the spring of 2024, which is when we lost even the soupçon of a notion that there were any restrictions on transferring, roster-building has become a bit too much like AAU, with teams tapping up players from other teams. Many coaches are strategically destabilizing other rosters by working through high school coaches and agents to entice players into the Portal even after those players have, in many cases, publicly committed to return to their teams (and even after some have put pen to paper on an NIL deal). And I realize that (as of now), transfers can only happen in between seasons, but whether it’s Bryce Hopkins or Tucker DeVries (or innumerable cases in college football), players are strategically sitting out to preserve eligibility if they don’t see their teams’ seasons going the way they’d hoped. This perverse incentive encourages the player to collect his NIL while not playing and then extend their career an extra season for an additional payday. There is no professional sport where the incentives are similar.
And then there’s the Transfer Portal itself. College basketball players are now like middle relievers in baseball (RIP, Octavio Dotel), signing the equivalent of one-year deals and testing the market each season to maximize their potential income as a college athlete. This roster instability makes it hard to follow any team outside one’s own or perhaps one’s conference, making it difficult for the casual fan to build a connection with a team.
The above chart and the experience of the last couple of seasons show that a preferable level of continuity (the % of minutes across college basketball that are played by the same player on the same team as the previous year) is somewhere between 48% and 42%. I’m not expecting to ever get back to the 50% level, but putting structures in place to get back above 40% is important to create a sense that teams are building something year to year. As of now, college basketball feels closer to a fantasy league with a new auction each year and all players thrown back into the pool for bidding.
I don’t deny that there is an unprecedented level of excitement and interest during this part of the offseason that comes from the Transfer Portal and the ability of any team — even my Providence Friars, after a forgettable 2024-25 season — to basically re-rack the team and work toward a better outcome the next season without the “debt” of the previous roster or the problem of a long rebuild.
But as passionate as fans are about their teams’ winning and losing, basketball is entertainment, and one key to entertainment is good storytelling, which requires a character arc and meaningful buildup to make the payoff worth it. I don’t think college basketball provides that payoff with its current style of roster construction. The sport already has a short season — barely five months, including postseason — and with much of the early-season games of major-conference teams serving as glorified scrimmages against overmatched competition, there isn’t a whole lot of time to build relationships with players, most of whom weren’t there last year and won’t be around next year.
I admit that I am at the age where I find it natural to get nostalgic about how things used to be. It's part of why I love sports history books and documentaries and spend many nights falling asleep to some college basketball or baseball game from 30 or 40 years ago. So, I understand why critics of my argument might assume I’m nostalgic for a bygone era when players were exploited for the benefit of schools and media networks. Perhaps I’m blind to how much the difference between the college basketball of today and from what I grew up with is driving my gripes, but I don’t think it’s fully explanatory.
Is there a reason we’ve created a system where Baylor — which had a perfectly normal season and didn’t see its coach leave or get fired — is going to field a brand-new team next year? That doesn’t happen in other sports. In other sports, when you sign a player to a contract, other teams don’t contact those players to entice them to break their contracts for a pay bump. Due respect to Mr. Pomeroy, this isn’t normal player movement and roster construction — it is a broken system.
But I’m not just going to complain about how they don’t make men like Ralph Sampson anymore — I’m going to be constructive. Subject to the outcome of pending court rulings, here are two simple rule changes that could happen to make roster-building work better for the sport and its fans:
Five Years and No More: Players can play five seasons of college basketball, but those must be five consecutive seasons starting with the first season they are on a college campus. This will provide maximum ability for players to earn NIL money while in college while not creating incentives for these “injury” red-shirts where players just stop playing if a season isn’t going well. And five years of potential earnings could boost graduation rates that are likely plummeting with all the transfers causing players to struggle to collect enough credits at any institution to get a diploma there.
Buyouts for All: There’s no longer a long-term benefit to identifying talent early and developing it, something that is particularly damaging to mid-majors or poorly funded major-conference programs. Even if a team has the best culture in the country, it can’t compete financially when it develops a player into a high-major talent in a year or two. The solution: long-term contracts and buyouts for both sides. We’re already hearing rumors of two-year deals being more common this spring, though it’s unclear how much teeth are in these deals when, say, Robert Wright can agree to return to Waco one day and end up in Provo the next. Long-term deals provide protection for both sides, and they can also build in flexibility with buyouts. Sign a 3-year, $500K NIL deal out of high school with a mid-major? Make sure you get a buyout that decreases each year to say $75K if you want to transfer after year 1 and $40K after year 2 (or maybe higher?). And schools can do the reverse: they can give multi-year deals with the ability to buy out of it if it doesn’t work out, and the player can take that payout and go get their next NIL deal, presumably at a more suitable level. It’s protection in both directions, and the buyouts for the players are going to be paid by the next team, just like coaches’ buyouts do. This allows teams strong at development to benefit by using that capital to recruit their next generation, similar to how clubs from smaller leagues operate in soccer. It will also create a good kind of friction on player movement that will promote continuity without exploiting players.
One suggestion that I’ve seen (and has been sent or said to me by multiple people) is that we can reduce turnover by limiting immediate transfers to be one-time only unless a head coach leaves. I do agree that that would be beneficial to improving continuity, but I also think it would run afoul of the Supreme Court ruling on restricting NIL opportunities, so I don’t think it would be possible unless through collective bargained, though perhaps #1 and #2 above won’t be widely adopted without some recognition of the players as employees and a collectively bargained labor agreement (CBA) as well.
CBAs and the inevitable strikes and lockouts and grievances are not what I want from my college basketball, but I do think that a more organized structure that would come from a CBA, particularly if they integrate my suggestions above, would ensure proper compensation for college basketball players while making the game stronger and more compelling.
Collective bargaining, tapping up players, four schools in four years. One can make a case using compelling data for why college basketball is as good as ever, but anyone who has experienced the last five years knows that the sport is not flourishing. Change is inevitable, but, selfishly, I’m hoping the next set of changes improve the fan experience of following the sport.
This data is from Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupy’s 2020 book Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting.
From Alan Noble’s 2021 book You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World.