As someone who cringes every time there is an update to the Portal topic, I wanted to start this one that is just about our comings and (hopefully no) goings.
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Good idea.
Three mid-major stars Kansas State basketball should monitor this offseason Three mid-major stars Kansas State basketball should monitor this offseason
Nate Johnson left Akron to take the money at Kansas State. He ended up getting paid to play for a 12-20 team.
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I can’t fault any player who decides to leave for money that could jump start their lives (high 6/low 7 figure offer)… I just hope they do so in a thoughtful manner and consider all the factors.
I do wonder what happens if once back from break TS signs the extension and then gets an Elmer type player to commit to coming back. Does it have a similar impact like Suder coming back might?
With all due respect to Peter Suder – who will go down one of my favorite Miami players of all time – I think the value of Elmer right now pretty well exceeds what Suder might have expected to get on the open market after last season.
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Agreed - largely a different landscape this year
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Revenue share and NIL is still a total black box, so operating on rumors and speculation, but Akron was said to be around $1m last year. Serious mid-major contenders like Utah State, High Point, St Louis were said to be north of 2m.
If Miami is serious about being in the second group and really competing to be the “best of the rest”, Elmer shouldn’t be out of range. I think it’ll say a lot about where we are at on where Elmer and Byers go (or don’t go). If it was mostly talk and we are looking to just be “top of the MAC”, going to be really hard to keep either of them.
Decker claimed we offered to match TTU for Trick in football, which is said to be a 1m+ deal. If that’s really true, and he said it on a public radio interview so I would hope it is, would we be willing to match a 500-700k type offer for a basketball player? Going to learn alot about where the program is over the next couple weeks.
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Hoosierhawk did a much better job of what I was trying to get at in a previous post. We are all of course just making wild speculations, but there has to be NIL activity going on at this juncture, and part of Steele’s negotiation and/or agreement to a new Miami contract has to include support for not only the Coaching staff, but overall financial support to retain our best players.
Any such agreements on NIL may not be a part of the written contract agreement per se, thus as offers start coming into our players, Steele may be assessing Miami’s commitment and ability to retain our better players before he commits to a new contract extension.
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Just to put some perspective here since someone just mentioned them. SLU’s roster budget this year was 4 million. It will be well north of that this year. I have a good friend who is a SLU booster very involved with that. This year alone SLU had 1.7 million going to just 3 players.
Miami’s assistant coaching salary pool for this season (for six coaches) was $545,100. A 33% raise across the board would put that pool at $725,000.
If we are investing $280mil in a new arena, then we better be investing in our PEOPLE. In my opinion, $6.5 million is needed for next year.
$1.75 mil for coaches
Steele $1mil
Staff $750k
$4.75mil for players
Elmer $1mil
Byers $750k
Skaljac $550k
Ipsaro $500k
Kirby $200k
Perry $200k
Atlason $200k
Robbins $100k
Waltz $75k
Stowers $75k
Fresh $50k
Horton $50k
Portal (1 or 2 players) $1mil
Edit: Forgot Ipsaro on my original list
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I realize the new arena is exciting. There is a difficult balancing act on the timing of payment and outlay for the physical facility and then the paying of staff and NIL. The better the Athletic Dpt hit the right levels of allocation…..
I’m not giving answers - I’m just talking about the game board - which includes some less effective answers and more effective answers.
Hawk Attack. Somehow your posts did not show as I composed mine. Sorry about that.
I think we’d be very lucky to have a third of that to spend.
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Again, we don’t know the black box of revenue share (I hate to use NIL anymore as thats not what this is) values, but I think thats overestimating alot of guy’s worth, and especially the budget Miami would have.
Utah St. is one of the few mid-major schools that have clear said in public (coach at a presser) what they spent: 2.4m. They were the cream of the MWC and almost certainly would have gotten an at large. I don’t think we could go straight from where we are to there in a year, but I think matching the top of the MAC in the 1-1.5m range would be a realistic and ambitious goal.
Speculation in the press was that Miami was not in the top 3-4 teams in the MAC in roster spend last year. Just getting to the top to be peers with Akron and UMass would probably be a good sign.
I love the game of Evan and Luke (and Perry and Kirby too) but they are not 500k market guys at all. Evan is coming off an injury that often really changes an explosive guard like him, especially in the first year back. Luke, recovered from his multiple hand/wrist injuries, may have a first team all-MAC season ahead of him, but not sure he’s built to step up in league power defensively (even though his defense isn’t bad in the MAC).
Remember, Craft commanded such a high valuation as a former highly touted recruit, who proved he was healthy after a big injury, and has 6’6 size. And even he really struggled when he moved up. As good as Luke and Evan are, the market on 6’2 and 6’0 guards is just totally different than shooters with more size like Craft, Elmer, and Byers.
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A friend of mine’s brother is an assistant coach in the MAC. When Craft left last year I asked him what type of money his brother thought Craft got and he said “decent six figures”. When he was in the OVC, he said that a decent player for the conference was getting $50k-$75k and only a handful of players on the team were getting cash.
Things obviously move quickly but hopefully that frames the type of money basketball players can command.
If it were my business decision, I’d begin by calculating all of the incremental ticket revenue Miami generated this year, throw in incremental concession and clothing revenues, payback from the NCAA for the Tourney qualification, make an intelligent guess as to dollar value of goodwill generated by all the media attention etc, etc. and then make sure to reinvest all of it back into the program and see where I stood after doing that. Any shortfall should be covered by “a cost of doing business” and Sayler and Crawford need to find those dollars and show they are totally committed. It’s quite possible that the goodwill component alone is worth at least $1 MM…and perhaps a lot more in incoming future financial support.
Miami cannot afford any loss of momentum…it’s happened a few times in its past and the recovery is painful, both monetarily and in esteem for both the University as well as for athletics.
Fair points. I am flying blind and just spitballing on these numbers. Just wanted to get some conversation going. I am also operating under the assumption that football is spending $8 million on their roster next year and I feel strongly that Men’s basketball SHOULD be getting close to 50% of that. It would be malpractice to allocate $8 million to football and less than $2 million to basketball. The likelihood for success on a national stage is much higher for basketball, as evidenced by this season. The Snoop Dogg Bowl is cool and all, but it pails in comparison to being on SportsCenter multiple times per week like hoops was this year.
So based on HH’s comments, it seems we should be allocating as much money as possible to retain Elmer and Byers, as they offer a unique skill set that is more valuable on the open market. After those two, we should be going after a big man in the portal. I would love to take care of the others guys on the current roster, but we may not have enough funds to do so.
Final point, some wealthy alum with a business should hire Suder and Woolfolk during their offseason from pro ball, and grossly overpay them, as a thank you for what they did for the school.
As to your numbers, I think they are pretty close to what we need to keep this roster intact. I think a little high on Skaljac and Ipsaro. I would think more in the 300 range each. And the coaches salaries. That said, I am not sure Miami has quite reached the 5 million roster money yet, as far as what we can afford. Hopefully I am wrong.
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