Seton Hall AD addresses current landscape of college sports: ‘Every day is a battle in the NIL world’

NEW YORK — Seton Hall athletic director Bryan Felt knows it’s hard on his school’s men’s basketball fans these days — and on the fans of college sports in general.
Back in the glory days of the Big East Conference, stars like Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing, St. John’s Chris Mullin and Seton Hall’s Terry Dehere would spend four years at the school before declaring for the NBA Draft. They would come in as heralded freshmen and then lead the program through various ups and downs over a four-year span as the fans grew to love and root for them before they moved on to the next phase of their lives.
In more recent times at Seton Hall, Myles Powell came in as a freshman from Trenton and improved every year at the school until he became the Big East Player of the Year in 2020. His Pirates team under Kevin Willard was seemingly poised for a deep run in the NCAA Tournament that year before the Big Dance was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But in today’s modern world of Name, Image and Likeness and the transfer portal — to say nothing of early entry into the NBA Draft — fans will probably never see players like Ewing, Mullin, Dehere or Powell (who is currently playing in China) again.
“You can watch an athlete like a Myles Powell come in as a freshman and become what he became by the time he was a senior,” Felt told NJ Advance Media at last month’s Big East media day. “Those are going to be very few and far between to ever see that again
“And that hurts. It’s tough for a fan and then it’s tough for a fan to have to learn a new roster every single year but that’s the reality. It’s not a reality that I think everybody wanted, but it is what it is.”
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As The Hall gets set to tip off the 2024-25 college basketball season on Monday night against Saint Peter’s at Prudential Center, it is a prime example of what happens to teams in the NIL and transfer portal world. The current roster has eight new transfers along with two freshmen. Only two scholarship players remain from last year’s team that won the NIT championship — graduate student guard Dylan Addae-Wusu and sophomore wing Isaiah Coleman.
Two of the stars of last year’s team — point guard Kadary Richmond (St. John’s) and wing Dre Davis (Ole Miss) — transferred out, in part because of better NIL opportunities at other schools. The Pirates will have to face Richmond at least twice this season when he suits up for Rick Pitino and the Red Storm.
“Honestly, it’s never easy,” Felt said. “It’s just the reality of the situation. It’s really hard, it’s not only hard on the people that work in the industry, it’s hard on the fan. I’ve been a fan, I get it, you get attached.”
The St. John’s NIL collectives were able to pay Richmond, the No. 1 transfer in the portal, handsomely, and Pitino is a big fan of NIL. Top transfers in today’s market can get in the high six-figures or even low seven.
“I’m a big proponent of NIL. We’ve been paid millions of dollars through the years and players got nothing, and I think that’s totally unfair,” Pitino said at media day. “We’ve been able to move, they’ve been unable to move. … Back when I first started coaching, there were a lot of programs running an NIL when NIL was not legal. I like the fact that it’s all legal now. They are professional athletes that are being treated like professional athletes who are getting an education. That’s the ball game.”
Felt says Seton Hall remains in a constant “battle” for NIL resources but says things have improved and the landscape will likely look dramatically different a year from now.
“Listen, every day is a battle in the NIL world to try to continue to be as great as we can be,” Felt said.
“I think we’ve made incredible strides, incredible strides, to where we started raising money in year one to where we are now and it continues to get better. And I think we’re seeing that because more and more of our fans, more and more of our supporters are getting comfortable with it. I think it’s so much more of a reality to them. I think there was a lot of resistance from certain folks in the beginning.”
There are no official NIL rankings, or rankings of Big East schools in terms of NIL budgets, but Felt did not dispute the widespread perception that The Hall trails programs like UConn, Creighton, Villanova and St. John’s.
“In the great landscape, it’s no different than the landscape Seton Hall’s always been in,” he said. “Seton Hall, we’ve never been in the top quadrant of the league, the cards are where the cards have always been. It stacks up the same way it did overall, how we were in facilities, how we were in this, how we were in that, we’re always never in the top half.”
Pirates coach Shaheen Holloway was asked about his school’s NIL situation during media day, and he basically said it is what it is.
“We got what we got, I do my job with what I have,” Holloway said. “I don’t complain, who’s gonna listen if I complain? I just go out there with the people that are in front of me. The resources I have, I’ll use them and we’ll go from there.”
Said Felt: “We have some people that have been incredibly supportive of [NIL] and they have been the engine to continue to fuel it and I think they’ve brought more and more people on. We’re doing more and more things and I think between Sha and I, we’ve both made a lot of strides with more and more people to get them to be involved with it so it continues to grow.”
Felt also expects things to look dramatically different a year from now when revenue sharing hits college sports.
Under the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit, a revenue-sharing agreement will allow schools to distribute roughly $20-23 million annually to their athletes beginning in 2025. While Power 5 schools are expected to use the lion’s share of their money on football, the Big East doesn’t have football and can now distribute money directly from the university to the basketball players (and other athletes); it will no longer have to come through a collective like Onward Setonia.
“We’re going to go to revenue sharing which Seton Hall is 110 percent completely into,” Felt said. “By the fall of 2025…you’ll be in the middle of revenue sharing.
“The biggest message to our fans will be they can make their gift to the athletic department like they were always doing and that now essentially is an NIL gift because that’s all going to revenue share which is essentially the same thing. Your gift now to Pirate Blue will be utilized like an NIL gift would have been utilized.”
Meantime, the roster on opening night will look virtually unrecognizable from last year, but that’s the way of the world in this modern landscape.
“We’ve gotta figure out how to operate in that reality,” Felt said, “and it’s a challenge but I think we’re making strides every day.”
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Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media. You may follow him on Twitter @AdamZagoria and check out his Website at ZAGSBLOG.com.