The Kentucky Wildcats are one of the biggest brands in all of college basketball, and they have the NIL funding to back it up. While the exact figure the Wildcats are spending on their roster this upcoming season is unknown, it’s safe to assume the number is very high.
Whatever the actual number may be, second-year head coach Mark Pope doesn’t appear to be giving any specifics. A reporter recently asked him to name the exact figure, and Pope responded in a very tongue-in-cheek manner.
“It’s getting close to $200 million,” Pope said through a very large grin according to On3’s Jack Pilgrim.
While the sarcastic nature of the response was very obvious, what followed offered a more serious look into Pope’s overall mindset surrounding not just NIL, but winning as a whole. For Pope, the best is the only standard at Kentucky.
“We would like to win at everything. We really would,” Pope said. “This is the flagship program in the country, so I’m fully onboard with all of it. We want to play the hardest schedule, we want to play the best teams, we want to win the most games, we want to have the best players, we want to have the highest NIL, we want to have the coolest uniforms, we want to have the most media attention. This is Kentucky,”
It’s honestly refreshing to hear a coach at a premier program like Kentucky speak so openly about doing whatever it takes to win. After all, Pope knows better than anybody that national titles are the only true measure of success for the Wildcats.
He was the team captain on Kentucky’s 1995-96 championship-winning squad, and now he’s made it his mission to hang another banner in the rafters at Rupp Arena. Pope may have been joking when he said that his roster was worth $200 million, but there’s no doubt he’d spend that much if that’s what it took to bring a national title back home to the Bluegrass State.
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