It is very uncommon for professional athletes to donate money to their institutions, but in today’s NIL and transfer portal era, those donations can have a totally different impact.
According to a recent Front Office Sports piece, most NBA players prefer to give back to their school in traditional ways, such as through gear donations or facility support, but former Arizona State guard James Harden is a trailblazer in his willingness to donate directly to the school’s NIL Collective.
Harden’s six-figure donation last year helped the Sun Devils land superstar freshman Jayden Quaintance, who decommitted from Kentucky and was pursued by big name programs like Ohio State, Florida, Missouri or Memphis before settling in Tempe to play for a team that went 14-18 and had only made the NCAA Tournament five times in the previous 20 years.
Of fact, while Quaintance has been a game changer for coach Bobby Hurley’s side, his presence alone has not turned the program’s fortunes around. The Sun Devils are 13-17 overall and 4-15 in the Big 12 heading into their regular-season finale on Saturday at home against ninth-ranked Texas Tech.
And thus is the problem with sponsoring NIL for major funders and/or elite athletes. Donating to get an improved practice facility, as Carmelo Anthony, Richard Jefferson, and Kevin Durant have done, not only gets your name on a building on campus, but it is also a long-term contribution that will benefit the institution.
“Why would you invest your money in something that isn’t regulated?” Jefferson informed FOS. “You put money into a pool and give a kid a million dollars, and the next year someone may offer him $1.1 million at another institution, and he can just leave. If you want to make an investment in your school, consider a practice facility. Invest on something that can genuinely exist rather than just buying players. That, to me, is a waste of time.
It remains to be seen whether Harden is the start of a new trend or an aberration, but there is another potential development with this type of setup: contributors with the means to assist alter a roster suddenly have a lot of power over the program and the coaching staff, if they choose to use it.
Hurley’s future in Tempe is already uncertain after another poor season, but if the Arizona State athletic administration believes Harden – or any other major donor – will stump up some program-altering cash with a new coach on board, the process may be accelerated for the Sun Devils.
While Harden does not see it that way, there is a less-than-appealing aspect to this new era of college athletics.
“Good season, bad season, it doesn’t matter for me,” Harden told the crowd. “There are aspects of this sport in which you cannot be excellent every year. So, for me, it is simply having their back. But if they need support, it is available.”