October 16, 2025
How revenue sharing is changing recruiting at the top of the SEC
Dawn Staley: 'You got to be creative'
The House vs. NCAA settlement was approved this June, giving Division I colleges and universities that opted into the settlement the ability to pay student-athletes directly. Those payments are from revenue sharing — money paid from athletic department’s budgets, as opposed to third-party payments from NIL deals.
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Though the decision has largely been seen as a win for student-athletes, the impact on traditional methods of recruiting is already being felt across women’s basketball, including at SEC powers South Carolina and Texas.
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At present, the Gamecocks, who will have just 10 healthy players this season after Chloe Kitts‘ ACL tear, have recruited one player for the 2026-27 season. That reality is also reflected in other conferences; for example, UConn has yet to lock in a single recruit for next year.
South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley is taking it all in stride.
“As of today, we have one [recruit],” Staley told reporters at SEC media day in Birmingham, Alabama, this week. “But I’m OK. I think rev share is impacting everyone on different levels.”
She added that coaches and programs will need to change how they approach the transfer portal and recruiting in general. “You got to be creative in this space,” Staley added. “I certainly don’t overpromise when it comes to rev share and NIL. I’m only going to spread it out with what we have in hand, not necessarily trying to go out and get it.”
Staley, who is in her 18th season with South Carolina and has led the program to three NCAA championships, admitted this might mean that she could “lose some recruits in that regards. If it’s all about the money, they’re a lot cheaper the second time around, so I’m OK letting them go.”
Ultimately it comes down to a player’s priorities. “I do think we’ve got a quality program that produces pros,” Staley said. “When you are at a point in your career as a young person when that becomes the priority — like really becomes the priority — we always get a look the second time around. I’m OK with that.”
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Texas head coach Vic Schaefer, who played Staley and South Carolina in the Final Four last season, shares that view. He told The IX Basketball this week that there’s not “any question” about whether revenue sharing is having an impact on recruitment. He believes that “for the most part, young players still want to go somewhere where they can be developed. They want to get a great education, and they want to be in an environment that’s conducive to learning. They want to be pushed.”
But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t also thinking about “the money piece” — or that someone in their orbit isn’t.
“At the end of the day, some mother and father’s going to have to trust their daughter to go somewhere,” Schaefer said. “You can’t put a price on that. You can’t. You can’t put a price on your daughter’s, what she’s worth to you. She’s invaluable. I mean, so you’re going to have to trust somebody with her.”
Building that trust is baked into the recruiting process at Texas. “We’ve always worked off the premise of relationships in recruiting,” he said. “We’ve worked really hard on developing those relationships over years. And so hopefully that’s still a big component and a big piece in the decision-making of these young players that we’re recruiting.”
The Longhorns have recruited two players for 2026-27 so far — Amalia Holguin and Aaliah Spaight — without changing too much, Schaefer said. “We graduate our kids,” he said. “We win. We teach them life lessons through basketball and beyond that’ll help them be successful in the real world for generations to come. And, ultimately, you know what? That’s our job.”
Schaefer paused. “Yeah, we’ve got to win basketball games,” he said. “But our real job is to get these young ladies ready for the real world.”
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