Houston Coach Sampson Admits NIL Numbers Influence Recruiting

Cougars basketball coach Kelvin Sampson recently talked NIL compensation and recruiting

The Houston Cougars are one of the best college basketball teams in the country. Coach Kelvin Sampson has built a program that can recruit just about anyone it wants.

In their first year in the Big 12, the Cougars enter the weekend with a one-game lead on Iowa State in the standings with five games remaining before the Big 12 Tournament.

Player development has been key for the Cougars, most notably guard Jamal Shead, who has been with the program his entire career and could be the Big 12 Player of the Year. So has the transfer portal, where the Cougars lured guard L.J. Cryer from Baylor after he played three seasons for the Bears, including their national championship run in 2021.

But what about Name, Image and Likeness?

Houston has support in the area, thanks to collectives. Hoop and Holler Houston specifically supports Cougars basketball. There is also HOU NIL, which focuses on football, and Linking Coogs, which focuses on football and baseball.

Sampson knows that NIL is part of the process now when it comes to recruiting and retaining players. It’s not clear how much his players are netting off NIL, nor is he saying.

But, he does admit that the Cougars have opted to not pursue certain players once they’ve heard that the NIL numbers are.

"I don't like to talk numbers, but I live with the numbers,” Sampson recently told the Houston Chronicle. “We've had kids we've just stopped recruiting — our name's attached to them for a long time and we stopped recruiting them probably two months ago — because we heard what the (NIL compensation) number was. We're not doing that. If he can get that, God bless him. Go for it son. I don't do that stuff."

That stance hasn’t hurt the Cougars so far. They went to the Final Four in 2021 and have been one of the top teams in the country the past few seasons. They’ve made their transition from the American Athletic Conference to the Big 12 look relatively smooth, even though the conference is considered the best in the country.

So Sampson seems willing to leverage NIL. It just appears he had a limit to how much he’ll leverage it.