Alexander Brown
College basketball transfer trends are now touching on the last sacred corner of Division I athletics: The Ivy League has officially become a stepping stone for basketball prospects on their way to an NIL payday.
Entry of Harvard forward Chisom Okpara in the transfer portal on Tuesday is just the latest evidence of the trend, which has taken hold in the 2024 transfer cycle with players like Malik Mack (Harvard to Georgetown) Danny Wolf (Yale to Michigan), Tyler Perkins (Penn to Villanova) and Kalu Anya ( Brown to São Luís).
Does a two-year NIL earnings window outweigh the lifetime benefits of graduating from Harvard? This is debatable. But even the Ivy League and its legendary group of academically superior institutions are not immune to the roster poaching that is now the norm in college basketball.
As a 6-foot-1 forward who averaged 16.5 points for the Crimson in his sophomore season, Okpara has enough game to play at the highest level. Two years from now, it’s possible your degree will be earned from a state university with an 85% acceptance rate instead of Harvard. But he will leverage his talents in a way he can’t at Harvard, which doesn’t have a NIL collective.
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Ivy League outside transfers are nothing new in men’s basketball. A steady stream of them have reached new homes in the sport in recent years. But this is often because league rules not only do not allow athletic scholarships, but also prohibit graduate student competition. Thus, some players who wished to use their final season(s) of eligibility had no choice but to leave the conference.
The same thing is happening this year with Clark Slajchert (Penn to USC), Chris Manon (Cornell to Vanderbilt), Matt Knowling (Yale to USC), Justice Ajogbor (Harvard to Saint Joseph’s), Matt Allocco (Princeton to Notre Dame) and other graduate transfers.
But as these players leave the Ivy League, they do so with immensely valuable degrees from the most prestigious schools in the country.
Mack, Wolf, Perkins, Anya and Okpara are leaving with some credit hours and a big stake in their athletic future. They bet that the money they earn and the basketball development they receive at new institutions will ultimately prove more valuable than the lifetime status of an Ivy League graduate.
They were smart enough to get admitted to Ivy League schools. Therefore, it is safe to assume that they made good decisions after thoroughly evaluating the pros and cons of each side. Only time will tell if these were the right decisions, but they are decisions with ramifications for college basketball and the Ivy League.
In the short term, the trend of college stars transferring is a disaster for Ivy League coaches and programs. Where will Harvard coach Tommy Amaker find suitable replacements for Mack and Okpara, who were his two leading scorers in the 2023-24 season?
Even if there were plenty of uncommitted Class of 2024 players available, Harvard’s 3.6% acceptance rate would eliminate almost all of them, and the application deadline for admission has already passed. The university’s transfer acceptance rate is even lower. Harvard’s website notes that it receives about 12 transfers each fall, from a pool that averages more than 1,500 applicants.
Amaker can’t exactly scout America East or the NEC for reinforcements. Seven players with significant playing experience are expected to return to Harvard, but none of them averaged double figures. Amaker could end up counting on a four-freshman signing class to provide substantial contributions next season.
In the long run, perhaps this transfer cycle will be good for Ivy League programs. It could be the impetus to awaken a dormant sense of competitive drive in a class of immensely wealthy alumni who have the power to bring about change.
Certainly, graduates of schools like Harvard, Princeton and Yale have more important philanthropic causes on their hands than retaining all-conference basketball players. But they also have no shortage of money to spend. Brown was the only Ivy League school not to appear in Forbes List 2022 of the 11 universities with the richest alumni.
With the spare change left after donating to more pressing causes, they could come together to transform their basketball programs into formidable powers. However, the concept of collectives met with both institutional and alumni resistance in the Ivy League, as the Harvard Crimson recently reported.
The idea behind the hesitation is that the Ivy League experience is about academics first. If you’re paying basketball players for their talents, then why aren’t you also paying the future doctors, future technology gurus, and future world leaders who are also signed up? The diploma is your compensation. It is the key to entering doors that most will never be able to enter.
But if high-profile Ivy League basketball players continue to denigrate the value of Ivy League degrees by choosing to play at other universities, pride will eventually become a factor.
Even a single sports-obsessed donor could single-handedly launch an annual fund with enough money to keep players like Mack and Okpara at Harvard. A handful of athletically minded donors from an Ivy League school could pool their donations and create the purchasing power needed to turn their alma mater into the league’s dominant force.
The only constant in college sports is change, and perhaps the 2024 college basketball transfer cycle will be the spark that brings some of those changes to the Ivy League’s approach to the NIL.
Otherwise, expect to see more and more college basketball players leaving the country’s most prestigious academic institutions in the coming years.
