luckymcd wrote:

I like to see us going after top flight talent. We won't hit on many of them, but in basketball it only takes one to make a huge difference. Some might say chasing prospects that probably won't come is wasting time that could be used to give extra attention to lower rated recruits. Dru (and assistants) seems to be a hard enough worker that it's not having negative effects though. If we want to be the best we've got to go after the best. With most bigger programs going all in on the portal, we could possibly carve out a niche focusing on bringing in the best prep players and developing them.

The new NIL legislation is also changing the landscape.   VCU just picked up a commitment from a highly ranked player, Sammy Jackson, who selected them over Texas and Indiana.  There is some talk that VCU was able to put a NIL package together that was allegedly better due to the fact that Texas and Indiana also have to fund football out of that $20.5 million cap.  Having basketball only as your major revenue sport may provide an advantage (until the big schools find a way to exceed the cap without getting caught). BTW, the other school that was in the mix for Sammy was Saint Joe's (Sammy is a Philly kid who played at Roman Catholic).

There was ALWAYS money on the table.

In a strange way, one can say NIL evened the playing field in a different manner. If there were schools that gave players perks in the past, whatever those may be, and most schools did not, now everyone can legally provide $ or perks to players so those that didn’t can also play in the sand box. Just sayin’ …

FAM wrote:

In a strange way, one can say NIL evened the playing field in a different manner. If there were schools that gave players perks in the past, whatever those may be, and most schools did not, now everyone can legally provide $ or perks to players so those that didn’t can also play in the sand box. Just sayin’ …

Can the playing field be evened? Different sport, but here at UT (TN) , the QB was being paid $2M and left for UCLA anyway. Even if DU doesn't pay football players, there are many big - some being state (taxpayer) supported schools that can pay their basketball players with that magnitude of money. 

BTW, with Harvard in the news all the time, (private except for huge U.S. dollars pouring in for research etc.) has an endowment 100 times larger than Duquesne, if I read the right numbers from the DU financial statements.
 

In regard to the $20.5 million each University can spend on paying their players; this does not rule out additional privately acquired and managed NIL money going to certain players.  It seemed from the previous conversation that there might be a notion that the $20.5 million was somehow limiting the players earning power to the Universities direct payment.  The NIL will still be kicking in big private funds into the player pool.  So, I’m not seeing how that “levels the field” in terms of money changing hands.

It has been fun watching this process. Great to see that the Dukes are still in the running for a consensus Top 120 player. Many years Pendergrass would be the top recruit in the A-10.

Last edited by phil95 (8/26/2025 12:45 pm)