One major offseason question for the Syracuse Orange men’s basketball team is now answered.
After several rumored candidates, Gerry McNamara will be the Orange’s next head coach. After underwhelming endings for the program in the last five years under Jim Boeheim and Adrian Autry, McNamara will look to be the person at the helm who can turn the trajectory pointing back up.
All that said, there’s another big-time uncertainty looking ahead, and it’s a word that came up plenty of times during this brief,
but active, coaching carousel for Syracuse: NIL.
When the news first broke via Pete Thamel of ESPN, one line in his article really stood out concerning Syracuse’s investments into NIL.
“Syracuse officials stressed during the process a commitment to NIL that projects in the top third of the ACC, sources said.”
As the staff at TNIAAM noted in our group chat, the last bit of the sentence stands out the most. The phrasing is most important to note.
On the one hand, improving NIL is clearly a major theme regarding the state of Syracuse University Athletics.
In the time period leading up to finding the next athletic director to take over for John Wildhack, money making was a top priority. SUA’s newest man in charge, former Toledo Athletic Director Bryan Blair, clearly brings a reputation from his previous school as a money raiser and someone with a sharp eye for finding new opportunities to bring in revenue.
And during his introductory press conference, Blair made that point loud and clear, using phrases like “modernize our enterprise” and “attacking revenue generation and NIL.”
On the other hand, going back to the Thamel line earlier, there is clearly a lot of progress left to be made.
Syracuse’s NIL situation came up when a report came out that University of South Florida coach Bryan Hodgson turned down the Syracuse job. The program’s finances came up in the national media spotlight repeatedly during the search for a new coach, with figures like Jeff Goodman blasting the Orange for its resources not being “where they need to be.”
Previous reporting suggests Syracuse’s roster costed around $8 million for the 2025-26 season. That figure includes both revenue share and third-party NIL. One year prior, it appears the amount of money spent was 25% of the 2025-26 figure.
Now, go back to the Thamel line from earlier. Notice the phrasing at the very end of the sentence. It didn’t say top-3 or top-5 in the conference. It wasn’t a detailed projection.
Instead, it says “top third in the ACC.”
While that shouldn’t be a concern, let’s put that into context.
On3 recently cited a study, which found the Power Four schools are spending between $7 million and $10 million on average for their rosters. Prior to this year, 10 P4 schools were already reportedly spending at least $10 million. Those averages are most definitely higher this season and will continue to grow larger in the coming years.
Top third in the ACC compared to recently history is, to be fair, a small step in the right direction.
But in the bigger scheme, there will need to be a lot of those smaller steps to get to a point of competing at a strong level again. In this day and age of college basketball, a coach can only do some much. Bringing in highly-ranked recruits can only do so much.
If there’s any saying that accurately depicts where Syracuse basketball goes from here, it’s this: “you have to spend money to make money.”
So yes, likely adding on Gavin Doty to the team and retaining some of the key names from the 2025-26 roster is a start. And yes, maybe extra money could come from familiar figures like Adam Weitsman, who invested in McNamara during his two-year stint at Siena. Maybe the answer comes from Blair’s vision with SUA.
Wherever it is, that’s the biggest key to being successful this decade and going forward. A coach is only the beginning of returning to glory, if that ultimately is the objective.
