UCLA Bruins women’s basketball head coach Cori Close is concerned about the state of NIL in college hoops.
Close shared with Yahoo! Sports this week that while she loves the growth of the sport and NIL is “long overdue,” she is not a fan of the current landscape. The UCLA coach believes the spirit of NIL has changed.
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“We just have no boundaries at all. There’s no salary cap,” Close said.
“There’s no competitive equity, and what’s happening is the people that are losing, I’m worried, will slow down the growth of the game because it’s shutting out high school athletes. It’s really taking away their percentages of opportunities, and I don’t like it. And you see less four-year development situations.”
Close shared that it’s her responsibility to keep the Bruins’ program at a championship level, but she doesn’t believe she can do so by recruiting freshmen and developing them over time. The UCLA coach revealed that she’s losing six seniors after the season, including star center Lauren Betts, and that she won’t be replacing them with freshmen. Close and her staff will instead focus on adding four to five transfers and a smaller group of first-year players.
“My responsibility is to adjust in the landscape that I’m given and lead well no matter what, ” Close said. “But I do think we need to be really careful that we don’t crush our game by being too greedy, by not having good boundaries and infrastructure.”
Close admitted that as much energy as she’s putting into recruiting high school players and transfers, she’s also paying attention to the current state of CBA negotiations with the WNBA. There’s a high possibility that some, if not all, of the Bruins’ senior class could be drafted in the first round of the 2026 WNBA Draft.
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“I’m really pulling for the WNBA right now to have a CBA that’s going to help us continue to build the momentum of that league,” Close said.
“I just think when money comes in, and greed comes in, you have a danger of losing what’s really special about the growth of the sport. And I’m hopeful, but I’m warning people: we have to make hard, right choices in order to protect the integrity of our game as well as the growth of our game. And if we get greedy and we get too selfish, we’re going to lose it before we know it.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: UCLA’s Cori Close warns about NIL greed in NCAA basketball landscape
