We are entering peak offseason time where news about the Providence Friars will be sparse. We’ll keep everybody up to date as we hear things about the new staff, new players, and outlook on the 2026-2027 season.
With that said, we’ll take this slower news cycle to analyze certain aspects of college sports that are changing and how it’ll impact the Providence Friars and college sports in general.
Our first topic will be the introduction of multi-year NIL agreements. We detail below.
Background of NIL Multi-Year Agreement
The first order of business was an anecdote shared by Rick Pitino about the signing of reclassified 2026 big man Theo Edema to a multi-year NIL agreement.
It was somewhat of a throwaway comment, but I found it particularly riveting because the current landscape of college sports is having to re-recruit your entire roster every offseason. With NIL, every player is essentially on a one year deal, and they have the freedom to transfer to another school at the end of every year. The premise of “student athlete” is a farce at this juncture, as we see these college players going to three or four schools in four years.
NIL Eliminating the Old Way of Recruiting
Having to re-recruit your entire roster can be incredibly taxing, and I think the old guard of college elite coaches like Saban, Jay Wright, Roy Williams, and Coach K, amongst others, got sick of the massive shift in roster construction and decided to walk away from the game at close to their peak.
All of those coaches built dynasties on recruiting out of high school, developing these stud recruits over 2-3 years, and then unleashing them in college as upperclassmen ready to make a major impact.
The stash and develop method doesn’t work anymore. For better or worse, these college athletes want to play right away and won’t bide their time at one school unless properly incentivized.
NIL Issue: Donor Fatigue
Players coming and going annually also has led to fatigue from affluent donors. If a donor has six figures plus to give to their respective alma mater, they’d ideally like to see that money carry forward and be influential beyond 12 months. For instance, if you donated $500k-1m to Providence last year for NIL, are you thrilled with the output from Jason Edwards and Duncan Powell? Absolutely not. You have to wonder if your money is better spent elsewhere. That is the very definition of poor ROI.
If you can at least guarantee your NIL donation is for a player like Edema who will be around for two years minimum with a chance to be there for their entire collegiate career, that’s at least easier to digest as a donor than giving your money to a player who departs from your school after 9 months.
Why NIL Multi-Year Agreements Are Crucial for Roster Stability
On our podcast since the inception of NIL, I’ve long called for multi-year contracts as a means to stabilize a roster. It now seems these multi-year contracts are now happening with more frequency, and this is a great development for college sports. It will allow coaches to retain their core players and have less roster turnover year over year.
It also allows coaches to do what they are hired to do: coach. You don’t want to have to play a player if they aren’t ready just so they don’t transfer that offseason. With these new rules a coach can do what’s best for the team and program and allow aforementioned players to develop at their natural pace. I cannot point to this as a definitive truth, but I’m confident that coaches are playing players who shouldn’t be playing out of NIL obligations and fear for them leaving the program. A multi year NIL contract can eliminate this in theory.
NIL Multi-Year: The Providence Example
Bringing this full circle to Providence, the perfect example of the benefits of a multi-year NIL contract is Anton Bonke. Bonke left Providence and went to Charlotte to get more playing time, but rumors are he also wanted to stay at Providence with a higher NIL amount than he made in his first year. That ultimately led to him entering the portal and landing at Charlotte at a presumably higher NIL payment than what Providence was willing to give him.
We all know Bonke was a project whose best basketball wouldn’t be until he had a few years of college basketball under his belt. If PC had the foresight to sign him to a multi-year NIL contract, him going to Charlotte likely never happens as he is under contract to PC, and Providence has the back-up big behind Oswin with him in Year 2 under Kim English. A known quantity in Bonke in Year 2 would have been drastically better than the unknowns of Cole Hargrove and Peteris Pinnis. Bonke may even be the starting center in 2026-2027, as may be the case at Michigan State.
The multi-year contract also gives the coaching staff the ability to build a sustainable culture. Turning a roster over year over year is a hard task in and of itself, and it leads to mercenaries as recruits who are only there for the dollar bill and don’t necessarily care for the university. Getting these guys on campus for a longer duration cements the school as a home away from home (hopefully), and they’ll likely be more inclined to stay at the original school once their first multi-year contract comes up for negotiation (yes, that feels weird to write).
NIL Multi-Year: The Bear Case
The downside to these multi-year contracts for the school is if you sign a player at a certain dollar amount, and they don’t live up to the amount they are paid. It’s a risk I’d personally be okay with. For every recruit that doesn’t live up to their NIL allocation, there will be another recruit signed to a multi-year contract who would field 2-4x what they are making on the open market as a portal player.
Bryce Underwood will be an interesting case study here. The five star QB signed with Michigan out of high school on an apparent four year deal for over 10 million dollars. After his freshman year, which was objectively underwhelming given the hype, it may seem like this was a poor decision by Michigan athletics to commit that amount of money. However, if Underwood meets his five star ranking and becomes a Heisman candidate by the time he is a junior or senior, he could probably field offers on the open market of 6-8million dollars (or close to it) for one single year. For a player of Underwood’s caliber coming out of high school, I’d take Michigan’s stance every day of the week, even if he never nets 10 million dollars worth of performance on the field. It’s a well-calculated risk.
Also, it is not as if these one year NIL deals currently are financially prudent. These offers being paid currently are outlandish. So, I think the lesser of two evils is a school having to swallow an additional year of NIL payment to a player who doesn’t warrant it. Let’s not act like schools and universities are as a whole being good stewards of money for NIL currently for their respective universities.
The Quandary: Do Agents Want Multi-Year Contracts
My main question I have is if players and agents will accept multi-year contracts as the “norm” moving forward. If you are an agent, wouldn’t you advocate for one year deals exclusively? Particularly if the athlete you are representing is highly sought out and considered an elite talent. You’d want them to get a massive pay day every year rather than locking them into a fixed payment over 2+ years with a multi-year contract.
The college sports idealist in me wishes every player signs a multi-year contract, but unfortunately I think they will be the outlier rather than the norm. As a coach and staff, I would position multi-year NIL deals to every recruit; however, I think agents and players would highly prefer one year deals unless the offers in both years are so above what they were expecting to receive in NIL.
A way to combat this with multi-year agreements is offer variable compensation based on staying at the school. Paying the players to stay at the end of Year 1 with a one-time fee to ensure they stay for the subsequent year is astute contract negotiation. The other lever one can pull is around variable compensation based on performance. These players are more likely to perform in their second or third year in college so dangling the proverbial carrot on payment based on making the All-Conference team, your team making the NCAA tournament, etc. is a subtle way to get the player to hang around.
Summary
I am a huge advocate of roster continuity and consistency. This multi-year NIL contract approach is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. I hope this becomes the norm so we can go back to the days of players staying at one school for the entirety of their career.
Go Friars.