I wound like to be compensated for loosing players to the portal. We invested 3 years in Conner and if Indiana wanted him I feel that they owe us for our 3 year investment in him. Say it cost 20 thousand a year at Bradley (low) then Indiana would have to pay Bradley the 60 thousand we invested. Every player in the portal would have a price attached to them according to their years at that school. I know it’s a crazy idea but this is the times we live in.
It would end up being net zero in the end. Lets say we have a player leave for another school. That school compensates us for 3 years of development. But we still need another player! So we basically have two choices. Recruit an extra incoming freshman. Or recruit from the transfer portal. The issue with recruiting an additional incoming freshman is that incoming students from high school are typically recruited much earlier than April of their senior year. So either we're recruiting a player out of high school that is a Junior, leaving us a hole in the roster for an entire year. Or we're recruiting from an extremely tiny pool of senior high school students who have yet to commit. How many good or even decent players held off on committing until the April before they graduate high school one month later?
That leaves the transfer portal. If we recruit a player from the transfer portal, then we are also going to owe a fee to another school for the investment they made in developing this player. So if we get $60k from the school that took one of our players. We're probably going to end up paying $60k to the school where this player transfers in from.
In summary, you either take another kid from high school and leave a hole in the roster for a year. Or you take a kid from high school who is probably pretty bad and wasn't going to get any offers. Or the transfer portal is still utilized, money changes hands, but if the $60k you were paid goes to pay the school you're taking from, does it really matter?
As a bonus thought exercise, you could put the responsibility on the player. Sort of like how employers say they will pay for you to attend school but the tuition amount has to be reimbursed if you don't work X number of years. But then that also effectively is the same, because schools then offer to pay these debts for students as a part of their transfer and its the same thing but slightly different.
Extrapolating further, you may ask about non-competes so I will point out the fact that in Illinois, non-competes are unenforceable if they cause materially adverse harm upon the individual signing. So unless you have a seriously wealthy basketball player signing the non-compete. The non-compete is effectively worthless unless the University decides to pay this player directly so they meet the materially adverse claim in court.
