Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson used his Wednesday night presser, following a 24-point win over UCF, as a platform to vent about his program’s NIL situation in relation to the Big 12 and those around the country.
Of Houston’s athletic department, Sampson labeled the Cougars as “poor,” and stressed the pickle he’s in recruiting-wise moving forward. Houston landed inside the Big 12’s top-5 spenders this season; the money-dump era sees programs spending between $8-10 million on rosters alone.
You watch Sampson’s full comments after the UCF game below.
Houston spent an estimated $8.4 million on its roster, which includes two freshmen, San Antonio guard Kingston Flemings and New Orleans center Chris Cenac Jr., with a combined NIL evaluation of $2.9 million this season.
“We probably have the lowest budget of anybody in the Power Four,” Sampson said. “And, you know, the way our recruiting is going, we have to stop at some point, because we don’t have enough money to keep bringing in many good players. That’s not easy for us to do.”
Now, if you think $8 million is too much, maybe don’t go Googling how much Houston’s spending on the football field (you should Google it). Money talks louder than anyone in college sports these days, and Sampson is hardly the first Power 4 coach to criticize, or even just acknowledge, what the NIL age has done to college basketball and scholastic athletics at large.
It’s hardly the first time Sampson has spoken publicly on NIL, either.
In the two years since that clip, the NIL landscape has drawn even more eyeballs to our favorite players.
Kansas coach Bill Self previously defended Darryn Peterson and his earnings amid an age of rampant online criticism by anyone with a keyboard and a few minutes to churn out their opinion, whether it’s helpful or not.
But the amount of content we consume every day has exponentially increased with the internet, and folks aren’t going to stay on one topic, no matter how indefensible or unacceptable it may be, for very long once the next scoop or soundbite hits your feed. But that’s the world, and Sampson’s living in it.
