For many casual sports fans, college athletics has suddenly turned into the wild, wild west. The transfer portal. NIL money. Rosters turning over season after season. It has turned off many, who once thought of college athletics as the last true bastion of amateurism. Iowa men's basketball coach Fran McCaffery isn't fond of the new landscape in college sports, and he knows exactly who to blame.

For years, the NCAA stood for rules and would strictly punish any program that broke those rules. Sure, we all assumed there was money being exchanged under the table for some high-level recruits, but now the money is all above the table, in the form of NIL payments. But now the NCAA is just standing there like a dumbfounded parent who just found pot in their son's dresser. What? Who could have seen any of this coming? Fran McCaffery did. At his weekly press conference on Thursday HawkFanatic reports that McCaffery had unkind words for the NCAA.

You know, and that was poor foresight by the NCAA. They blew it, bottom line...You can’t put the portal and NIL together and say it’s not going to become pay for play. Who didn’t see that coming? Anybody in this room, anybody on planet earth saw that coming, okay

McCaffery also noted that it is too often the players who get blamed for the portal and NIL deals. But players wanted a piece of the pie. The billion-dollar pie that the NCAA gets to bake each year. McCaffery stated that the NCAA had plenty of time to make the new programs work, but either lacked the willingness to do it or simply wasn't willing to, according to HawkFantatic.


McCaffery stated that he is happy with the way that Iowa's NIL, The Swarm, works for his athletes. His players are rewarded with money for doing things in the community, rather than simply paying recruits to come to Iowa City. But as HawkFanatic points out, other programs don't feel that way. Iowa will play host to Southeast Missouri State on Saturday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

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