Jay Bilas on College Hoops' New Math

Jay Bilas did not mince words about college basketball's current operating model. The transfer portal opened at midnight after the national title game, and Bilas said that was by design.

Dan Hurley asked after his media session if the portal was open yet. Somebody said 12:01 AM. Hurley asked if anyone was in it yet. Dusty May, earlier on the show, told Rich his staff was already scrolling through portal names in the locker room after cutting down the nets.

Rich asked if that was any way to run an operation. Bilas laughed and said no, but the coaches wanted it this way. The portal used to open weeks earlier, and coaches pushed to move it to after the title game.

Bilas' bigger point was structural. The portal is not something a court or a law imposed on the NCAA. The NCAA created it. The NCAA wanted it.

His prescription is simple. Strip the rules that prohibit schools from paying athletes directly. Sign them to contracts like coaches. Let the market work. The NCAA's problem is it does not want athletes to be employees. That is why its leadership is on Capitol Hill right now begging Congress for an antitrust exemption so it can unilaterally impose working conditions on players.

Bilas said you cannot have it both ways. He also said the world's tiniest violin is going to play for Dusty May and Dan Hurley, who have to take a few extra days to sort out the portal and cannot spend their $8 million salaries on vacation the way the rest of the world can. Everybody will get over it.

His Godfather line: this is the business we've chosen.

Bilas said the NCAA has run a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry for five decades, arguably 100 years, without paying the players, and they have had plenty of time to figure out a model. They still spend their time on Capitol Hill on bended knee asking Congress to give them back what they used to have. He does not think they are going to get it.

The tag was pure Bilas. He flew back from Indianapolis that morning and ran into one of the officials from the title game in the TSA line. He joked the officials had been in a real conundrum the night before, trying to figure out which team to screw. They wanted to screw Michigan because of Rich. They wanted to screw UConn because Hurley yells at them. Life would have been simpler if Duke had been in the game. Then they would have known exactly who to screw.

Clear-cut. Bilas' words.