When all-league center Oumar Ballo left Arizona for Indiana and an NIL deal worth well over $1 million last spring, the reality of modern college basketball hit home for the Wildcats once again.
These days, recruits and their agents sign agreements not just with a school but also with its NIL collective, ensuring the best players collect compensation that often extends into six figures. And, every spring, everyone can be a free agent, able to transfer or threaten to transfer anywhere, with extra leverage given to those who enter the transfer portal.
Boundaries are changing everywhere. NIL payments are increasing rapidly every year, expected up 72% in men’s basketball for 2024-25 compared with a year ago, according to Opendorse, a NIL marketplace/technology firm that works with collectives.
Meanwhile, legal wrangling continues over a landmark case that opened the door in May for a revenue-sharing agreement in which schools of major programs could directly pay athletes up to $20 million a year starting as early as next season.
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None of this fazes Matt King. He’s diving straight into it, leaving his job running a Phoenix sports marketing operation and the Arizona Assist NIL collective to become UA’s new president of basketball operations last month.
“I love the game of basketball, I love all the things around it, but I want to be part of the business of basketball,” King said. “I’m not trying to be a Division I head coach. That’s not my trajectory. I think it’s a relatively good fit because of that.”
A former walk-on player at New Mexico, King actually was a coach, for 13 years at high schools in New Mexico and Arizona before turning to sports business. He became president of a holding company that ran Position Sports, which produces and publicizes sports events, such as the upcoming UA-UCLA series that will be played at neutral sites over the next three seasons.
King also served as executive director of the Arizona Basketball Coaches Association. In that role, he organized the massive Section 7 recruiting event, in which high school teams from the western half of the country that have Division I prospects are invited to compete at Glendale’s State Farm Stadium every June.
For King, as well as the players and coaches involved, it was a networking event on steroids.
“Section 7 just became such a beast that there’s no high school coach in the western United States that I don’t have a significant relationship with,” King says.
King’s experience in organizing high school and college events, working with Nike and ESPN, and also running the Arizona Assist collective gave him a skillset that appealed to UA coach Tommy Lloyd. While moving special assistant TJ Benson to a full assistant coach role last month, Lloyd hired King to become UA’s de facto general manager, in charge of everything outside of coaching.
“The addition of Matt to our staff will enhance every aspect of our program, both internally and externally,” Lloyd said in a statement.
The hire was the sort of move that is becoming more common in college basketball. Opendorse co-founder Blake Lawrence told the Associated Press that “properly managing payroll” is a key function of a collective – and a skill that will be needed at every school.
King said he will also oversee any future direct school payments to players and described his current duties in five parts: Leading the business strategy of the basketball program, often in concert with Arizona AD Desiree Reed-Francois; overseeing player compensation; scheduling nonconference games; handling external relations with donors and managing all non-coaching staffers within the UA men’s basketball programs.
“Anything that you would imagine that a president of a company would do from a business standpoint, I’ll do that for Arizona men’s basketball,” King says.
All of his duties were part of the old-school college game, except the one about compensation, which is changing rapidly. The Arizona Assist sprung out of the 2021 legalization of NIL, its original directors aiming to collect about $1 million annually so as to pay each UA scholarship player about $80,000 each.
But that was so 2021. Now, the top 25 players at each position in college basketball can expect to earn $349,492 this season, according to Opendorse’s 2024-25 NIL report, an amount that is up 72% from a year ago.
King declined to say what the Arizona Assist’s NIL budget is, and UA declined to release NIL-related contracts in response to a public records request from the Star, citing student-privacy law. But King said the collective’s budget is “100 percent on par” with those around other elite programs.
Actions back that up. Fifth-year forward Keshad Johnson reportedly spoke of receiving more than $400,000 in NIL compensation while playing for the Wildcats last season, while returning guard Caleb Love passed up a potential two-way contract that might have paid him more than $500,000 by returning to Arizona this season. (On3 estimates returning Love has an NIL value of $812,000.)
It’s clear a $1 million budget doesn’t cut it anymore for NIL collectives around elite men’s basketball programs. Maybe not even three times that. In fact, Opendorse said the collectives around power conference schools in 2024-25 average $13.9 million, with 22.6% of that allocated for men’s basketball, implying an average budget of $3.1 million for the sport.
“The one thing that I would tell you is if you’re to take a major college Division I player, the amount of money that they are securing in NIL this year as opposed to two or three years ago is significantly more,” King says.
King says Lloyd has been clear that NIL “is not going to be the first conversation” he has with recruits but that the Wildcat players can be offered competitive NIL packages thanks to Arizona Assist members.
“There’s a group of hidden heroes in Tucson, Phoenix, LA, those areas, that are out there” contributing to Arizona Assist, King said. “They never went to social media. They never tried to sing their praises.”
When King ran the Arizona Assist, part of his job was to find and expand that group of donors. The collective now features a “Wildcat Village” membership for $3,000 a year that includes events with UA players and two tickets to the Arizona-UCLA game in Phoenix this season, among other benefits.
Since schools aren’t allowed to directly run NIL collectives, King can’t manage the Arizona Assist anymore, so longtime fan and Tucson businessman Paul Volpe has taken over leadership. Instead, King’s charge is to educate and make sure players are compliant in their NIL dealings, and working as a liaison with Arizona Assist.
“Right now, obviously we can’t be a part of doing those deals,” King said, “but we are very attuned to the reality that is to come and making sure that we are preparing ourselves to be a next generation college basketball program within a really innovative athletic department.”
King says he won’t get involved in scheduling until 2025-26 since Benson already set this season’s schedule. It includes home games with Duke and five mid- to low-major teams, along with three games in the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas, a game in Phoenix against UCLA in Phoenix and another at Wisconsin.
King’s other ongoing duties include external relations and managing the non-coaching staff, reflecting a new organizational structure in which Lloyd does not directly oversee the non-coaching staffers. King says Evan Manning, the operations director who worked under Benson last season, will serve more as a traditional operations director, handling issues such as travel and dining arrangements.
King will also work with player relations director Jason Gardner, communications director Nate Weichers, creative media director Chris Richards, and internal operations director Marissa Elias-Castaneda.
Basically, King is overseeing the business that is Arizona basketball. And what that business will keep evolving into.
“I think if we were to sum up where we’re headed as the Arizona men’s basketball program, it’s that Tommy has a vision of building a next generation men’s basketball program that that lives within a modern day athletic department and is rooted within a historic university,” King said. “I’ll oversee all of all of the elements of the new world of college athletics.”
Contact sports reporter Bruce Pascoe at bpascoe@tucson.com. On X(Twitter): @brucepascoe
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Publish date : 2024-09-07 08:30:00
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