Open For Business 1/17

What a week. Iowa State dominated Kansas, Jerry Jones is flirting with Coach Prime, and revenue sharing in college sports may have hit a major snag. 

We’ll tackle it all in today’s Open For Business.

What You Need to Know

• The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights dropped a potential bomb on revenue sharing in college athletics. They sent a memo to schools saying revenue-sharing payments from schools to athletes must be “proportionately” distributed to men and women athletes, or institutions risk violating Title IX. Most schools have around 80% of their revenue-sharing money earmarked for football and men’s basketball.  

• There are conflicting reports about the likelihood that Colorado head coach Deion Sanders will take the Dallas Cowboys job. NFL insider Ed Werder says that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is “enamored” with the idea and that Sanders would “almost certainly” take the job. The Athletic’s Dianna Russini isn’t so sure. 

• Arizona State has officially signed head coach Kenny Dillingham to a contract extension that will raise his salary to $5.8 million for the upcoming season. The board of regents approved the deal on Thursday. Dillingham made $4.1 million in 2024.

• Kansas forward KJ Adams suffered a shoulder injury that knocked him out of Wednesday’s loss in Ames, and head coach Bill Self says he would be fortunate to avoid missing any time. Adams is averaging 8.5 points and 4.5 rebounds per game. 

• Iowa State will be without starting forward Milan Momcilovic for 5-6 weeks due to a hand injury. Momcilovic is averaging 10.3 points per game and shooting 44% from three-point range.

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What’s Going On at Kansas?

I know what you’re thinking. Of course, the K-State guy is going to write the “Has the game passed Bill Self by?” piece. 

Fair enough. I’ll give you my conclusion first–no, I don’t think it’s fair to say the game has passed him by. But I think the Kansas struggles (by the Jayhawks’ elite standard) reveal some harsh realities about the current college athletics landscape that everybody is dealing with. 

Watching Iowa State thump Kansas in Hilton Coliseum down a starter on Wednesday night wasn’t entirely surprising, but it was staggering. 

The Cyclones led by as many as 18; Kansas never led by more than two. Only one Jayhawk scored in double figures. This Kansas team legitimately struggles to score, which is something I would never expect to say about a Self team.   

The Cyclones are simply that much better than Kansas right now. Head coach T.J. Otzelberger seems to have mastered the intricacies of the NIL/transfer portal era, crafting an affordable roster with just enough talent that is overflowing with effort and intensity.  

Since winning a national championship just before the dawn of the current NIL/transfer portal era, Self hasn’t been beyond the second round of the NCAA tournament, and this team seems likely to miss out on a Big 12 championship for a second straight season. 

Perfectly acceptable for almost any other Big 12 program, but this is Kansas we’re talking about—winners of 14 straight conference titles from 2005 to 2018. 

Rival fans smell blood in the water after two straight decades of getting their brains beat in, so the jokes have been flowing. 

But I don’t think it’s quite as simple as reducing KU’s regression from elite to very good to pointing out that everyone can pay players now. There’s more to it than that. 

Self has always been a master of development. Every player in his starting five on the 2022 national championship team played their entire career at Kansas. Only two of the five that started in Ames can check that box. 

His best teams were spearheaded by program guys like Devonte Graham and Frank Mason, who developed from second or third-tier recruits in All-Americans. 

It’s much more challenging to keep the 2025 version of Mason or Graham on your roster when they only play sparingly as a freshman. They can be easily lured by the promise of more playing time and money at a second or third-tier program.

Carrington raises a great question. Would Kansas recruit Graham or Mason out of high school today? Would Graham or Mason stick it out for four years with the Jayhawks in this era?

The answer is probably no in both instances because of the transfer portal. 

Part of this is on Self. He’s gone all-in on the portal like many have. There’s less emphasis on high school recruiting when you can reload with more experienced talent every offseason. 

As you might expect, Self has the re$ources at Kansas to be great in the portal. According to 247 Sports, he signed the number one and number three transfer portal classes each of the last two years. 

But the portal is trickier than what high school recruiting once was. High school recruits used to be (for the most part) stuck at their initial school of choice. They were a blank slate waiting to be gradually molded by a hall-of-fame coach. There wasn’t the allure of a bag of money and more playing time elsewhere.

In the portal, you’re getting hired guns that can easily leave at any time, and they come with ingrained habits shaped by a totally different coaching staff. And the money introduces an entirely new dynamic. 

Under those circumstances, it’s much more difficult to consistently develop and find the right fit, which neutralizes one of Self’s biggest strengths. 

Of course, elite talent is becoming more evenly distributed with the advent of NIL. Just ask SEC football teams how that works. 

Schools like BYU wouldn’t dare break an NCAA rule by paying a player illegally, but now they can, in good conscience, give the number one player in the country (AJ Dybantsa) a seven-figure NIL deal to come to Provo. 

Shoe companies no longer hold all the cards to steer the best high school prospects to blue-blood schools.

Having said all this, my money is on Self figuring out how to get back to the top. He’s too good, and Kansas cares too much to let it slip for long. 

And the fact that we’re having this conversation about a Kansas team that’s likely to win 25 games when it’s all said and done is a testament to the machine Self has built in Lawrence. 

But if the transfer portal/NIL era can bring Bill Self and SEC football down a notch, it can get anybody. Self’s dip is a sign of the times. We’re in totally uncharted waters that even the steadiest hands struggle to fully grasp.

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