2025 Basketball Portal

[Falconwriter]

Trey Thomas is the 8th Falcon in the portal.

He has eligibility? Even with the COVID year, that doesn't add up.

I don't get it either. He's played 5 full seasons counting the COVID year.

At this point they probably just figure the NCAA doesn't know or will cave regardless. Didn't he do senior day in 2024? LOL

On the bright side, I think we all assumed he was out of eligibility anyway and had no expectation of his return when looking at roster projections.

If we actually have a budget of 200-300k this season, I'm starting to be less concerned about how things fall together. Simon is a good recruiter and has a great pitch on coming here to have a solid year and then securing a bag. Throw 50k at a big, a forward, and a guard and then fill out the rest. We have the wealth in our alumni to have a legit NIL budget, we are just painfully late to the game in securing it.

While we certainly have an alumni base that has money to make a meaningful impact on MAC athletic budgets, we've never done a great job of building the connection from students to the athletics. I think that's the brilliance in what DVDM has been efforting (and Dakich/Urban as examples previously).

IT doesn't matter how much money our graduates make as adults if they would rather watch OSU play they're not donating it to BGSU.

Look no further than this site, or the facebook group, etc...there are seemingly less than 100 people that want to spend any time discussing BGSU athletics, even in season during game threads. If there is no connection and no fan engagement, there will be no money.

I'm probably the exception to that rule. I live in Columbus and love watching OSU play (it's a byproduct of when I was a kid and my father took me to games). That said, I always watch BG when I can...and I have been generous with my donations to BG through the years, too, even creating a baseball scholarship. The only time I stopped was when the idiots decided to ditch baseball and did a horrible job of informing people like me ahead of time. Thankfully, the baseball alums came through and saved it.

You can be a fan of major college football and still be very supportive of your alma mater. The two are not mutually exclusive. Nor should they be.

[guest44]

Campbell is back.

[mbenecke]

Campbell is back.

Massive get.

[hammb]

Campbell and YoYo back is huge.

Now get us a pg and some more athletes let's go

[BillyLP]

Campbell is back.

When I saw Campbell give the eyes emoji on the Khayat announcement, I was wondering if he might be announcing sometime soon. Massive get and keeps us in the MAC conversation. He's a first-teamer.

[Globetrotter]

Is this where we are?

1 OPEN Pardon 6-4 Fr
2 Campbell 6-2 JR Xfer 26.5p 6.3r 31.8 3% OPEN Leach 6-2 FR
3 OPEN OPEN
4 Khayat 6-9 Jr Xfer 1.4p 1.1r 44 3% Spurgin 6-7 Jr Karel 6-9 FR
5 Towns 6-9 Sr 6.2p 5.8r Squire 6-11 So Xfer 8.6p 3.7r 37 3% Goins 6-9 JR

[Globetrotter]

What is that 3 pieces to a 8-9 man rotation with 3 wildcards?

[bghkyfan74]

I am told that Campbell's return most likely means the kid from Gardner-Webb will not be coming. Campbell's deal is for around $150K.

[OSUFALCON]

I thought the kid from Gardner Webb commented

[bghkyfan74]

I thought the kid from Gardner Webb commented

I have not seen anything suggesting this. He did post on X with a hashtag "#notcomitted" if that is what you saw as well.

[BGSU33]

Some more potential news regarding this program and possibly the Frack money being used... I was told in a Zoom meeting that the NIL budget is now between $200K & $300K. Their top target in the transfer portal is from the Detroit area and played for a Division 1 school in North Carolina for the past two years.

I don't have any inside info about how the Frack money is being used, but you would have to imagine that his gift is, or should be, being used differently than it was offered and intended to be used for when it was first donated. When Bill Frack gifted that money to BG a decade ago, a few main areas of focus for it was to go to things like better coaches salaries, scheduling better home games, increased recruiting efforts, etc. But since his passing, the landscape of college athletics has gone through drastic and massive changes. Those areas of need have been completely trumped by NIL and the impact of the transfer portal. While I have some doubts and concerns about the proper handing of this money towards true areas of need, I have to somehow believe that the people in charge of how that money is being used and allocated know and realize that as well. No one can obviously speak for Bill Frack now, but you would almost certainly have to believe if he were gifting that money to BG now instead of the decade ago when he did, a large part of that gift would be going towards NIL efforts over some of the areas it was once earmarked for.

[HoopsFan]

It seems that Frack gave BGSU money to see the team return to prominence. While we would all like to see a National championship, it's not like Hoosiers. Sweet 16 would be a goal, but just a Fracking appearance in the NCAA's would suffice...for now.

NIL is just a gimmick to make the rich get richer. It's a sad commentary that a team's 'payroll' includes scholarships, that the university charges the basketball budget for, AND the NIL money. I solved my problem by paying Disney $17 a month to stream men's and women's basketball online. I don't miss many games and it's way easier than driving 2 hours to the game, watching the game, and driving 2 hours back.

HoopsFan

[hammb]

Some more potential news regarding this program and possibly the Frack money being used... I was told in a Zoom meeting that the NIL budget is now between $200K & $300K. Their top target in the transfer portal is from the Detroit area and played for a Division 1 school in North Carolina for the past two years.

I don't have any inside info about how the Frack money is being used, but you would have to imagine that his gift is, or should be, being used differently than it was offered and intended to be used for when it was first donated. When Bill Frack gifted that money to BG a decade ago, a few main areas of focus for it was to go to things like better coaches salaries, scheduling better home games, increased recruiting efforts, etc. But since his passing, the landscape of college athletics has gone through drastic and massive changes. Those areas of need have been completely trumped by NIL and the impact of the transfer portal. While I have some doubts and concerns about the proper handing of this money towards true areas of need, I have to somehow believe that the people in charge of how that money is being used and allocated know and realize that as well. No one can obviously speak for Bill Frack now, but you would almost certainly have to believe if he were gifting that money to BG now instead of the decade ago when he did, a large part of that gift would be going towards NIL efforts over some of the areas it was once earmarked for.

I don't think any of us have ever gotten solid info about the uses of the Frack money. We know it's managed by a trust. I had some back & forth with Jordan Strack awhile back and he mentioned that the University was pretty tight-lipped answering questions about it. That was the Huger era where I contend fully it was used to fly the coaches around the country on "recruiting trips" and/or crazy amounts of "equipment" for coaches/players, etc.

I'm with you, and have talked about it in discussions with my wife/friends. If Mr. Frack gave that money to make BGSU basketball reach for a higher ceiling, by far and away the best investment in this environment is to allocate it to NIL. At the time Mr. Frack talked about buying better home games (hasn't happened much), getting into some travel/preseason tournaments (they have done some), increase coaching salaries (certainly have). As a season ticket holder I will always advocate for some better OOC home games, but in this environment I'd try to put half (or more) of that Frack allocation towards NIL.

I do think that it starts to get a bit squirrelly though as the Frack donation was to the department, and the NIL money is supposed to be coming from private donors. With the more recent ruling on paying players directly, that could obviously change in a big way. If that happens the BGSU basketball budget, thanks to Bill Frack, has been one of the top few in the MAC. Now we haven't seen much return on investment to that, but I still have faith in Todd Simon. If you put him in a position to spend $$ on recruits I think we'd be in pretty good shape.

[Flipper]

There's been litigation winding through the courts attempting to force Universities to classify athletes as University employees. That could change the NIL landscape considerably

[BillyLP]

Towns is officially back, per BG MBB social media.