Why Mark Pope is embracing Kentucky’s reputation as the king of basketball NIL
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky's roster ranks as college basketball's highest NIL payroll near $22M.
- Pope frames Kentucky as flagship program and aims to lead NIL and titles.
- Players accept NIL payments discreetly while prioritizing Kentucky's ninth national title.
Back in May, the question that was on the minds of everyone who had followed the changes across college basketball — and Kentucky’s place within that new landscape — was asked.
What was the NIL valuation of UK’s newly assembled roster for the 2025-26 season?
Mark Pope didn’t miss a beat.
“It’s close to $200 million,” he quickly replied.
Pope was joking, and that answer — an obvious inflation of the actual number — elicited the laughter the Kentucky coach was looking for. Once the chuckles died down, Pope explained that he wanted to “win at everything” in college basketball.
“This is the flagship program in the country,” he said, noting that he expected the Wildcats to play the toughest schedule, win the most games, feature the best players and even wear the coolest uniforms in the sport.
Pope boasted that UK basketball gets the most media attention of any program in college basketball and contended that the school had the “most committed, generous fans and donors and supporters” in the country.
He didn’t actually answer the question, and it would have been a surprise if he had. Those types of numbers have not typically been made public — nor are they open to public records requests — since the recent, sweeping changes to the NCAA’s NIL guidelines have allowed for current student-athletes across all college sports to benefit monetarily from their play.
But Pope has also — when faced with any variation of this question, which has been asked several times in recent months — not shied away from the premise that Kentucky is the current king of NIL in college basketball.
The Herald-Leader has been told that UK’s “payroll” — for lack of a better word — for the 2025-26 season hit around $22 million before the House v. NCAA settlement was finalized over the summer. That development set up more specific guidelines for what colleges were (and were not) allowed to do moving forward in the realm of compensating athletes, but the months that preceded the settlement featured an “anything goes” mentality, especially in college basketball, and players for the upcoming season benefitted greatly from that environment.
According to interviews with personnel around the country over the past few months, no university has benefited more so far than Kentucky, which the consensus says will have the highest-paid roster in college basketball for the 2025-26 season.
In a sitdown interview with the Herald-Leader last week, Pope doubled down on his desire to lead the sport in NIL payouts to players.
“We should be the best at everything,” he said. “We should be No. 1 in everything. And so we have the best fan base, we have the best athletic director, we have the best tradition. We should be the best at all the things. And so if people will give us, ‘the best’ — I’ll take it. If people give me the most handsome head coach in America — I’m not sure that’s true or if we deserve it — but I’m going to take it, because I’d like to be the best at everything.”
Asked about the expectations that come with the mantle of “most NIL earnings in the sport,” Pope got to the meat of why he embraces that perception head on.
“I probably knew this job better than anybody that’s ever taken it. Is that possible?” he asked.
When it was suggested that perhaps Joe B. Hall — a longtime UK assistant and briefly a player himself before taking over for Adolph Rupp — knew it better, Pope conceded the point but went on to make his larger one.
“Maybe Joe B., but I knew exactly what I was signing up for,” he said, specifically referencing his familiarity of the UK basketball landscape as a former team captain and his knowledge of the way the sport was going when he accepted this job 18 months ago. “And I wanted it. You know, I had a ton of individual success as a player, and I transferred here as a player because I wanted to go to the most competitive place in all of college basketball. And I would have sprinted all the way across the world to come take this job, not because it’s the most money or because it’s the whatever, but because it’s the hardest job with the highest expectations in college basketball.
“And I don’t understand why everybody wouldn’t want that. It’s a blind spot for me to understand why somebody wouldn’t want the highest expectations. This is what we want, right?”
Pope went on to explain that he’d been at places where the expectations weren’t as high. His first head coaching job was at Utah Valley University — “the greatest experience” — and he smiled at the memory of hosting “Pacific Islander Night” and “Native American Night” promotions there as a way to try and reach into the community.
“Just to get 15 people to come to the games,” he said. “We didn’t have really high, lofty expectations.”
He spent four seasons as head coach at Utah Valley and five in charge at BYU before landing the Kentucky job — his dream job — last April, and, now that he’s running the Wildcats’ program, he’s not about to shy away from the expectations that come with the position.
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Kentucky basketball and NIL
Pope’s players are embracing the role of college basketball’s highest-paid performers, too, though that’s not how they want to be defined.
Otega Oweh, the Cats’ top scorer a season ago and a potential All-American for the 2025-26 campaign, was asked about reports over the summer that Kentucky’s payroll could be around $20 million. Based on what Oweh knew, was that number accurate?
“I feel like it could be,” he acknowledged.
As Kentucky’s top player, it stands to reason that Oweh is also its most well-compensated, but he said he didn’t really follow any of the details related to the House v. NCAA settlement.
“As long as, you know, we’re getting paid, that’s good for me,” he said.
Oweh also didn’t let on that he knew much, if anything, about his teammates’ earnings for this season.
He suggested while answering questions about NIL reforms that those on the outside spend more time talking about it than the players themselves. They’re getting paid; that’s great for them and their families, but — once the financials are taken care of during the recruiting and retention process — the Wildcats’ focus shifts to what happens on the basketball court.
Do players talk about how much they’re getting paid around each other?
“Nah,” Oweh said. “I feel like that’s something you want to keep to yourself.”
Do they see reports about how much they, their teammates, and players at other schools are making?
“Yeah. I mean, there’s stuff always on social media that you see,” he said. “And, I mean, you can’t always believe social media. But we really don’t talk about it, because it’s a weird conversation to have. Like, ‘How much you making?’ It’s kind of strange, so we just stay away from that topic.”
One of Oweh’s new teammates, Florida transfer Denzel Aberdeen — also a college senior — came to UK after three seasons with the Gators’ program. He was a member of Florida’s national title team this past season and seemed set for a larger role with the program in 2025-26. During his transfer process, it was widely assumed that he switched to Kentucky, in part, because of the much higher NIL payout offered by the Wildcats.
Aberdeen has framed the move as a basketball decision, and he says the team’s collective goal, in the short term, is to lead Kentucky to its ninth national championship.
“I don’t think we all look at it as NIL,” he told the Herald-Leader. “I just think that we all came to play basketball at the University of Kentucky. I mean, it’s just an amazing program. All the guys that have been in and out of here — everybody that’s been here has been to the league. Almost everybody. So I think that’s our main goal, is just trying to win No. 9 for the community and trying to get to the NBA. I think that is our main goal.
“The NIL part is amazing. I mean, obviously it helps us out with families and stuff like that. But I don’t think anybody came here for NIL. They just came here for the basketball.”
But what about the expectations that come with being the team assumed to have the highest payroll in the sport? Aberdeen smiled.
“I mean, that’s the expectation of being at Kentucky, in general. We got eight championships. Trying to win No. 9,” he said, craning his neck around a reporter to look at the NCAA title banners hanging on one wall of the team’s practice gym. “I mean, we haven’t won since 2012 — it says over there.”
Aberdeen has played against UK four times in his college career. He claims — citing firsthand experience — that teams prepare for the Cats a little differently than they do other opponents, due to their renown within the sport.
His point, and Pope’s: The expectations at Kentucky — both internally and from outside the program — are already as high as anywhere else in college basketball, so there’s no use in shying away from them.
Right next to that banner in the Joe Craft Center that celebrates the Wildcats’ eighth national championship in 2012 hangs another banner with a big “#9” on it. Underneath that number, the banner says, “The Assignment.”
A national title. That’s the goal for this Kentucky team, as it will be for all the ones that follow it.
That’s the expectation that Pope embraced from the moment he stepped onto the stage at his introductory press conference in Rupp Arena last year. He knew the standard when he took the job. And once you’ve acknowledged that as the standard, you might as well accept all of the other expectations that come with it.
“I think in this life — how could we not want to climb the highest mountain possible, right? And so I don’t feel like I deal with the expectations. I feel like I love the expectations. And it’s not because I’m — listen …” Pope said, pausing briefly before offering his final thoughts on the subject.
“I have failed more in my lifetime in basketball than probably any player that’s ever played the game. I’m not afraid of that. I just want to go. Like, let’s go tackle the biggest thing. And to do it here? That’s special. So I don’t feel like I deal with expectations. I feel like, to me, it’s a gift. To me, I’m excited about it.”
