Fran McCaffery keeping roster-stability in turnstile college sports landscape

IOWA CITY — There’s a pro sports adage that says sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make.

Iowa has one of the few men’s basketball teams in the nation without a player who was on another four-year college team last season. Filip Rebraca is the only Hawkeye who has played at another Division I school, North Dakota.

Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery has repeatedly said he isn’t against transfers, and was one himself as a college player. A turnstile roster, however, isn’t his idea of a cohesive team.

You can’t tell the players without a score card. With transfers being made immediately eligible at roughly the same time the NCAA adopted a name, image and likeness policy last year, college athletics feels as crazy as a catfish in a car wash.

For forever and a day, the NCAA and the schools it represents denied athletes to monetize their NIL rights, profit off their own names. You know, free-market capitalism. Once the door was finally allowed to open, it was ripped off its hinges.

“That was poor foresight by the NCAA,” McCaffery said Thursday. “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, OK?

“This is where we are. It's not the players' fault. They want a piece of the pie. They can read. The incredible dollars that are generated by their performance … they need to be compensated.

“Is there a right way to do it? Probably. Can everybody agree to that? Probably not. But we'll see where we end up because we're not in a very good place right now.“

Keeping a team together, keeping players from focusing on dollar signs and their teammates’ dollar signs are part of a coach’s job in 2022-23.

“I can tell you this: Our guys are locked in,” McCaffery said. “They're making some money. Nobody is getting rich.

"We have great kids. They'll represent companies well if they hire them. I encourage companies to reach out and engage in communication and hire our guys, and I want our guys to know and understand and appreciate those opportunities that are coming their way.“

Iowa plays Southeast Missouri State Saturday. The Redhawks start transfers from Saint Louis, Georgetown and Florida International as well as two players from junior colleges.

They are on a 5-game losing streak.

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