Don't ALWAYS Go Big
Sooner or later, you might get sent home
The NCAA Men’s College Basketball transfer portal officially closed on Tuesday, April 21 at midnight. Nearly 5,000 players decided to eschew their current team — presumably for greener pastures, be it money, fit, or a combination thereof — to find a new suitors, a greener pasture.
I won’t debate the wisdom of assuming leaving one team, or employer, for another is smart. Rather, I caution you, as a leader or future leader, to be careful in asking for big bucks and promising big results assuming the road to victory REQUIRES more.
When you do, you better deliver. Otherwise, you may find yourself beneath the sharp edge of a career guillotine, looking up at your bosses ready to release the blade. Quickly, you’ll be looking to reattach your head or find someone who will.
Within the past decade, the NCAA Men’s Transfer portal upended the traditional manner to assemble a college basketball team — recruiting high school students. Today, coaches still recruit high schoolers but also look to European pros and experienced college hoopers on other teams to build teams.
Now, coaches can pay the players in a variety of ways, beyond the traditional athletic scholarship. For example, top-tier players like AJ Dybantsa, who some project to be the #1 pick in this year’s NBA draft, can make millions of dollars while still walking the quad with a book bag.
This year, Michigan used the transfer portal with aplomb, assembling a national championship winning team with a few key moves. Some have suggested that this is a watershed moment. Now, coaches who convince their schools to go big will dominate. I’m not convinced.
Before Michigan won, I wondered if spending big money to buy a team was worth it. I wondered how much money was too much money. I wondered how long of a leash coaches will be given in this new world, one in which a coach can spend upward of $20M to build a team.
Given all my wondering, I decided to analyze it, with a little help from ChatGPT and Excel. ChatGPT isn’t writing this article. I don’t outsource my prose. Rather, it was my assistant to compile all the data I needed to effectively.
Here are my conclusions and how it ties back to career.
Miss the NCAA Tournament, Prepare Your Resume
In a world where spending more than $8M to assemble a team, you can bet ADs, University administrators, and, most importantly, fans will not tolerate missing the NCAA tournament.
Last year, the Indiana Hoosiers, Auburn Tigers, and Oregon Ducks all spent ~$8M or MORE on their teams.
Indiana reportedly spent $32M total on its operating budget, nearly $9M more than the next closest team! After finishing below .500 in the Big Ten, the Hoosiers missed the NCAA tournament even though they assembled one of the best transfer portal classes in 2025.
According to CBS Sports, Indiana currently has the #1 transfer portal class for next year. Who knows how much they are spending? One, unverified Facebook source estimates that Indiana is in the top five at ~$12M. I’d bet that if it’s anywhere near that, and IU doesn’t make and win at least 1 game in the 2027 NCAA tournament, Darian DeVries will be jettisoned from Bloomington.
Spend More Than $20M, Better Be Elite
Kentucky reportedly spent more than $20M on NIL in 2025!!! That’ll buy you a lot of bourbon in the Bluegrass. It certainly didn’t buy them success on the hardcourt. Kentucky lost in the second round, after luckily surviving an upste at the hands of Santa Clara in round one.
If UK plans to spend that kind of cheese thinking it can bring teams to their knees in 2026, it better make the Elite Eight.
More Money Doesn’t Guarantee A Championship
In some sports, spending the most may buy you a championship. The Dodgers won the World Series in 2025 with a gargantuan spend of $515M. I believe that is the exception, not the rule.
Michigan won the 2026 NCAA championship behind an all transfer portal starting five that cost ~$10M. The other final four teams — Illinois, UConn, and Arizona — probably spent somewhere between $9M and $12M on their rosters. The coaches managed to reach the Final Four — the NCAA’s annual gathering of college basketball Olympians — behind good roster assembly, strong X’s and O’s, and team chemistry.
I’d argue that any coach pushing for more guap may want to stop, to think, to consider that being the biggest spender who doesn’t bring home the bacon is a perfect formula for failure.
Applying This To Your Career
During my time in the corporate world I’ve heard leaders make the cliche “gotta spend money to make money” claim dozens of times. Like a medieval military leader stating, “Give me more infantry, cavalry, and long bows man and I shall take the citadel!”, business leaders use it as justification.
They say, “We have a supply flexibility problem! We can’t innovate at our competitors’ pace! Give us hundreds of millions of dollars for new production lines, that’ll fix it, grow our share, vanquish the enemy!”
Or, “We have a brand portfolio problem! Our competitors have portfolios of products across the value spectrum. Give me tens of millions of dollars to launch a new one, even if we need to rob our healthy brands. That’ll fix it, it’s the path to growth!”
It doesn’t fix it. It’s lighting money on fire, like taking a toddler to the opera. You may be able to get away with the gotta go big pitch a couple of times. If you don’t deliver on one, well, you probably won’t be subjected to the guillotine. But, you probably will need to update the resume and catalyze the personal network for a new gig.
Thanks for reading!
Paul G. Fisher
PS - If you’d like to see the spreadsheet and methodology I used to analyze the NCAA tournament spending and my assumptions, SUBSCRIBE and shoot me an email. Happy to send it over.
Here’s a quick overview on my methodology.
First, I did my best to identify the top 25 teams in NIL spending. I had a range for each team and simply took the mid point. The Kentucky Wildcats were my highest spend at $22M. Four teams — Texas Tech, Ohio State, Michigan State, and Oregon — were the lowest at $7.5M
Second, I assigned a score for results. Michigan, the NCAA tournament champion, got 14 points. UConn, the runner up, got 12 points. Final Four teams got 10 points. Teams that missed the tournament got 0 points.
Last, I assessed performance. Teams were labeled “Big Over Performers”, “Over Performers” , “In Line”, and “Under Performers” based on a calculated ROI.