—
Paying Attention to Retention
—
The Transfer Portal for basketball officially opens Tuesday, the day after the National Championship game, and will be open for two weeks.
For the Buff Nation, though, the effects have already been felt. Three of CU’s starters from this past season – Isaiah Johnson, Bangot Dak, and Sebastian Rancik – have already announced they are leaving for greener pastures. As fate would have it, the trio left with CU still having a game left to play, with the three leaving CU shorthanded against Oklahoma in the College Basketball Crown tournament.
The remaining Buffs played well without their three starters, leading most of the game against the Sooners before falling in overtime, 90-86. CU was led by Barrington Hargress – a player who is coming back next season – who scored 31 points. Some fans took this as a good sign, with the remaining roster able to be competitive with an SEC team and almost win.
Yes, Virginia, that’s where we are with CU athletics.
We’re down to being encouraged that the core of the 2026-27 CU men’s basketball team is good enough to hang … with a team which finished 12th in the SEC standings.
On3Sports ran a story this week with a list of teams which will be spending $10 million or more on their basketball rosters this off-season. From the Big 12, there were mentions of Arizona, Houston, BYU, Texas Tech, and Cincinnati.
No surprise that CU was not on the list.
Not for a school which in the past season had an operating budget which was ranked last in the Big 12. Sports Illustrated reported CU is funding a team with about 1/3 the dollars of what Arizona spends on its basketball program.
Long story short: The Buffs simply couldn’t afford to keep their three starters. “It’s disheartening,” head coach Tad Boyle said. “I’ll leave it at that.”
There have been stories that CU athletic director Fernando Lovo intends to double CU’s commitment to men’s basketball. Good news if true, but even that pledge would only bring the Buffs into mediocre status, both nationally and in the Big 12.
This all just goes to underscore how far behind CU is in the latest arms race for building a roster and retaining talent.
It’s one thing to get excited about bringing in new players. CU’s football team signed 43 transfers this past off-season. CU’s men’s basketball team announced this week that two players from Australia – forward Goc Malual and guard Alex Dickeson – would become Buffs next winter. Hope springs eternal, as Buff fans can always speculate about what new players are bringing to the table.
What can’t be ignored, however, is the talent drain on the other end of the spectrum – the transfers going out. CU has been particularly inept at retaining talent, with 36 football player joining the three basketball defections in walking away from the Champions Center this off-season.
Transfer Portal losses are not new to CU, or to collegiate sports as a whole in this new era.
But the gap between the haves and the have nots is growing wider, and not just between the Power Four conference schools and the Group of Five conferences, but between the Power Four conferences themselves.
Heartlandsports.com this week ran a story about how many first- and second-team All-Conference players from last season transferred to another school. The findings were both telling – and not surprising.
Group of Five programs lost a staggering 70.5% of their first- and second-team All-Conference players to the Transfer Portal. For the Big 12 and ACC, the numbers dropped, but only down to 43.2%.
The real eyebrow raising number from the study was that only 2.6% of the top performers in the Big Ten and SEC conferences left their schools.
Or, to put it another way, first rate talent from the Big 12 and ACC were almost twenty times more likely to leave their schools than were stars from the SEC or the Big Ten.
A loose translation: If you are an All-Conference player at one of the Big Two Conferences, you’ve already made it – there’s no reason to go looking for a bigger bag. You have already gotten as high on the collegiate ladder as you can get.
For first- and second-team All-Conference stars in the Big 12 and ACC, however, there was reason to still be looking around – and up.
Now, the study doesn’t indicate how many of the Big 12 and ACC players transferred to other schools within the “Little Two” conferences, so the numbers aren’t quite as dire as they seem … but the point is well taken.
In the Coach Prime era, there have only been a handful of first- and second-team All-Conference players not named Travis Hunter or Shedeur Sanders:
- In 2023, Travis Hunter was a first-team Pac-12 defensive back (and second-team all-purpose/special teams)
- In 2024, Shedeur Sanders was a first-team Big 12 quarterback, with Travis Hunter a first-team wide receiver and defensive back. Defensive lineman BJ Green was first-team All Big 12, while linebacker Nikhai Hill-Green was second-team
- In 2025, wide receiver Omarion Miller and Jordan Seaton both made the All Big 12 second-team.
Most Buff fans know that Jordan Seaton will be playing this season for LSU, while Omarion Miller is following in the footsteps of Jordyn Tyson (a likely first-round NFL draft pick later this month) in heading to Tempe to play for Arizona State.
The previous off-season, BJ Green left Boulder for the NFL, joining the Jacksonville Jaguars as an undrafted free agent, while Nikhai Hill-Green left CU to play at Alabama.
Of those CU players in the Coach Prime era who were first- or second-team All-Conference who had eligibility remaining, only Travis Hunter didn’t defect. The other three left for other schools – two to the “Big Two” – with one leaving for a Big 12 rival.
Long story short … it’s difficult to build a program when your best players are not being retained.
So … In order to build a war chest to retain players, what is CU doing?
Well, recently, there was a “Buffs All In” campaign. The week long event raised just over $300,000 … but it wasn’t even that good. There were $200,000 in matching funds waiting for donor numbers (donors, not their pledges) to meet certain goals. At the end of the day, CU pulled in just over $100,000 in new money.
For a program with a $100 million athletic department budget, $100,000 is not a triumph … it’s a rounding error.
CU has excellent medical care for its student-athletes. CU graduates 90% of its student-athletes. CU has all 15 of its varsity sports posting cumulative GPA’s over 3.0, and this past semester, CU student-athletes posted their highest cumulative GPA, 3.296, in school history.
And Boulder is, well, Boulder.
But all the extra stuff doesn’t seem to be making much of a difference for potential transfers … or … even … the players once they get here.
Bill McCartney always said that if he could get a recruit to Boulder, he could sign them.
Now, it’s not enough to get them here, CU has to figure out how to keep its better players from leaving.
It’s time for CU to start paying attention to retention.
And it all comes down to dollars. Folsom Field remains without a naming sponsor. Patches with sponsors advertisements are now allowed on collegiate uniforms. Utah has private equity funding, buying, amongst other things, national championships in skiing. Cody Campbell has Texas Tech in the college football playoffs. BYU is buying players – both in football and basketball – as fast as it can.
When will it become CU’s turn?
When will the turnstile out of the Champions Center slow?
Fernando Lovo has only been on the job as athletic director for three months. CU has the services of Rick George for three more months.
Two athletic directors.
One mission.
It’s time to figure out how to attract – and retain – top talent … before it’s too late.
–
—–