The Louisville Cardinals basketball program is about to drop $8-10 million on the transfer portal alone, and here we are at Colorado hoping FCS and NAIA transfers will get us through March. I love Elijah Malone, but let’s be real—this is not how you build a sustainable winner in modern college basketball.
Tad Boyle is a fantastic coach. He’s built Colorado into a consistent tournament team, but we’ve seen what happens when we don’t invest. We either make an early exit or don’t make the tournament at all. Meanwhile, schools like Arizona and USC are throwing money around to stockpile talent, and now even programs like Louisville are setting the standard at eight figures. If we don’t step up, we’re going to get left behind.
Football is the moneymaker, no doubt. Coach Prime has transformed CU into a national brand. But we need boosters who care about both football and basketball. We can’t just hope that whatever scraps are left from the football program will be enough to keep up in hoops. That’s not how this works anymore.
Look at what James Harden did for Arizona State. He made a high six-figure donation to their NIL collective. ASU is hardly a basketball powerhouse, but they have NBA alumni willing to invest in their success. Meanwhile, Boyle has developed guys like Alec Burks, Spencer Dinwiddie, Derrick White, and Jabari Walker—where’s their support? If Colorado basketball is going to compete with the big boys, we need our NBA alumni to step up.
Boyle has done more with less for years, but he shouldn’t have to. If we want to be serious about basketball in the NIL era, it’s time to put our money where our mouth is. Otherwise, we’ll keep watching other programs buy their way to March while we pray for another miracle.