Matt Painter, Purdue face adjustment to rapidly changing landscape
On one hand, Matt Painter's approach to the almost wholly transformed landscape of the college sports model is to keep on keepin' on.
Whether it's transfer reform or the NIL Era, Purdue's veteran coach doesn't want to deviate from his program's identity or track record of continuity.
"We want to keep signing the players we have been signing," Painter told GoldandBlack.com Monday. "That's kind of our forward thrust. We're not trying to use the one-time transfer or Name, Image and Likeness in any capacity to do something different. We feel like we're on the right path. We've made strides in recruiting; we've made strides in our development of our players, and we're still graduating all our guys. There are a lot of good things that are happening."
On the other hand, Painter's no fool, fully understanding that as everything changes underfoot, to adjust is to subsist.
"It's kind of a tough hill to climb," Painter said, "but everybody's got to climb the same hill."
There's much to adjust to, after this remarkable convergence of sea changes to college sports, college basketball affected as much as any.
The one-time transfer rule — allowing athletes to transfer once without having to sit out the previously requisite year in residence — came along right on top of state governments forcing the NCAA's obstinate hand on allowing athletes to profit financially off their brands and accomplishments. That all this came right on top of a pandemic made this perhaps the wildest past 24 months or so in the history of the game's structure.
"You can't control COVID, and Name, Image and Likeness was coming down the chute — they should have put more guardrails on it, but they didn't — but they should not have done one-time transfer whatsoever," Painter said. "But even if they did it they should have put a guardrail on it that you couldn't do it until after their sophomore year at their (first) school, with their initial eligibility. They didn't."
Painter's become an increasingly prominent voice in the basketball coaching community, with platforms to amplify that voice. He's been part of numerous NCAA committees, including the one-time transfer sub-committee. He's a member of the NABC board of directors and has been a figurehead within USA Basketball for many years now.
Prior to transfer reform being enacted, he penned a letter to the National Association of Basketball Coaches membership urging opposition, his concerns being the predatory effect he felt open transfers would have on low- and mid-major NCAA programs, as well as the toll he felt the new system would take on player development and college sports' academic intentions.
"It's hard for our roster management, but it's hard for those individuals," Painter said, repeating a common refrain since the issue came to the forefront. "When they reflect back in 30 years and they played at three schools in four years, what did they really get? Did they really help themselves? Because it doesn't look like they've been able to stay anywhere and battle that adversity."
NIL came right on top of it, with perilously little direction from an NCAA smarting from a series of court-room defeats and fearing even more legal precedent being set against it.
"Now, we are dancing in a sea of chaos, and you don't really have the answer," Painter said. "I think anything that gets implemented from a rules standpoint, there should be guidelines, (answering the question of), 'OK, so how should we navigate these rules that you just changed?' I don't think anyone who implemented those rules can give you an honest dissertation on how you should proceed.
"I was in the front row on a lot of those things with the committees that I'm on and those were the questions that I asked and I never got good answers to that, and that's disappointing, because if I make a decision about what goes on in Purdue's basketball program, I should be able to whole-heartedly give a dissertation on why it's best for our student-athletes."
This spring, the warped-reality of this moment in time came to bear, and no one knows that better than Purdue, which saw its No. 1 transfer target, Nijel Pack, essentially bought by a University of Miami booster, who boasted of the $800,000, two-year deal he struck with the player to associate with his businesses. The booster went so far as to essentially announce Pack's commitment to the Hurricanes.
Such stories were made possible by a largely unregulated NIL marketplace that almost immediately jumped from the spirit of NIL to thinly veiled violations of long-standing NCAA recruiting rules.
"The one thing we could have controlled was the one-time transfer rule," Painter said. "Never should have happened. Name, Image and Likeness, we should have that. They just couldn't keep that (out of) the recruiting space. They had to put a guardrail on that so it didn't kick in until first day of classes their sophomore year or the third semester after they transfer. You had to have something like that to keep it out of that recruiting space, or at least soften it.
"Now, you're talking about pay-for-play and you're just buying a kid to come to your place, and they haven't really done anything."
Recently, the NCAA at least engaged in some public saber-rattling, promising investigations into programs using NIL to recruit or retain athletes.
This is the world Purdue will be an active participant in, mind you.
"We'll get some consistency with it," Painter said of NIL. "The one thing I want to be sure about is that the people already in our program who've done work for us in the classroom and on the court, we want to get something where we have consistency there, and then once individuals get there, now they can grow however they want to, because there's going to be opportunities there for us in the system that we'll have.
"We'll be very successful with it, but we're also going to have our own guardrails on it and not get away from the big picture of education and what it means to be at Purdue on the basketball team."
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