College Basketball Crown a 'Good Chance to Make Some Money' for Nebrasketball

Nick: No, not at all. And, you know, it's interesting. There is a pretty significant commonality with all of these teams that you're seeing represented. You're not seeing any major college basketball blue bloods that just had an off season.

And I think this is not a one-off. This goes back to the conversation we were just having about all of these programs. Because remember, DePaul, if there's money to be had, DePaul's going to put it into basketball. But that's also a program in the Big East that is really trying to play catch-up when it comes to the other NIL dollars that are being put into other Big East rivals in that conference.

Cincinnati, yeah,they've had success at times,but I don't think anybody would call them a basketball blue blood. Georgetown, once upon a time and I think Georgetown's on the come up.

You're looking at programs that in the modern era of college basketball just have not had sustained success and so every one of them, just like Nebraska, is looking at this as a major opportunity to play the high stakes game of roster recruitment and being able to find those types of players that can take them to that next level.

I think it's a very attractive field because there's going to be a major sense of urgency when it comes to being able to win this thing and get that $300,000.

I think there is something about this where maybe earlier when we knew that this would be a postseason potential situation for any team that we kind of rolled our eyes because we remember the CBI, we remember the CIT. The tournaments that your athletic department has to come up with money to pay for your team to go to it. Well, this is one that's actually paying you.

Kaleb: And as long as they don't have a god-awful court like the Big 12 rolled out for their conference championships, people are going to tune in.

Think about bowl season and the number of just like – there's bad football teams. It's 6-6 against 7-5. But what do you do? You tune in because it's football. And for this, because it's at the end of the month, you're past this first weekend of March Madness. You've got two weeks until this even gets going. You're going to be through the second weekend.

So when you start to look at that aspect of it, that you will have dwindling basketball on the television, and then you will be able to roll this out all week. People are going to tune in because there's some good names in there.

And as you went through and you mentioned that there's not a lot of overall recent success for a number of these programs. I would say Butler and Villanova over the last decade, decade and a half have the best case for recent success.

Nick: Obviously Kyle Neptune now has been dismissed. Villanova has been a shell of what they were,
but I should mention them and their most recent success. There's no question with the multiple national championships, just under a different coach.

Kaleb: But it's a program that didn't turn their nose up at this. And we know that there are multiple programs who did. There are multiple programs who said, we're not playing in that. And you've got to think about West Virginia,ho should have been in the NCAA tournament. They're one of the teams that turned this down. Penn State turns it down. Indiana wasn't going to play any postseason. You don't see Ohio State.

But it is an opportunity for Nebraska here against an Arizona State team out of the Big 12 now, and then you've got Big East, Pac-12 represented, before you can potentially get into the semifinal. Good chance to make some money for your program.

Watch the entire conversation below.

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