{"id":427511,"date":"2025-12-05T23:23:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T23:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/427511\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T23:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T23:23:13","slug":"uclas-mick-cronin-says-agent-greed-drives-player-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/427511\/","title":{"rendered":"UCLA’s Mick Cronin says agent greed drives player movement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

UCLA<\/a> will experience something of a rarity Saturday at Pauley Pavilion when it faces Oregon, a former Pac-12 rival with two familiar stars. Jackson Shelstad and Nate Bittle have been with the Ducks for several years, providing the sort of stability largely lacking in college basketball.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the sort of thing that Bruins coach Mick Cronin<\/a> said will become increasingly infrequent barring structural changes.<\/p>\n

A big part of the reason?<\/p>\n

Agent greed.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just too much money to be made by player representatives pushing clients into the transfer portal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, you take a 10%, 20%, 15% of a guy\u2019s NIL money, that\u2019s Bernie Madoff level,\u201d Cronin said Friday, referencing the crooked financier who was convicted in a massive Ponzi scheme. \u201cSo that shouldn\u2019t happen anymore, and I bring that up because that needs to get illuminated because parents need to say no to that. I mean, that\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cronin said the only way to bring stability to the game would be the federal government mandating employee contracts for athletes, leading to collective bargaining and player protections as well as multiple-year deals.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, Cronin said, players will be subject to onerous fees from agents selling dubious agendas.<\/p>\n

Cronin said agents describe their cut as \u201cmarketing \u2018cause it\u2019s NIL,\u2019 but we all know it\u2019s not. That\u2019s pay for play. You know, if there\u2019s any agent out there and you give him a marketing deal, I\u2019ll give you 20% \u2018cause I\u2019ve got none. I mean, c\u2019mon, take 20% of these guys\u2019 stuff? Even 10%, it\u2019s ridiculous.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, if you could get to collective bargaining, then the National Labor Relations Board, if they would ever allow \u2018em to be employees, then you could regulate and cap agent fees to protect the players. But until then, the players and their families are the ones that need to protect themselves on this. Because why wouldn\u2019t you tell every guy to go in the portal if you\u2019re making 10%, making 15% off it? That\u2019s where we\u2019re at, so that\u2019s the definition of instability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cronin said the NCAA was powerless to intervene through no fault of its own.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what the NCAA does, other than put on the [basketball] tournament,\u201d Cronin said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what they do, period. And in defense of them, if they go to enforce a rule, they get sued and they lose more money. They can\u2019t \u2014 if they get sued, again, there\u2019s gonna be no NCAA.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they\u2019re like the kid that was told to sit in the corner or he\u2019s getting kicked off the team, so he just sits there. The [College Football Playoff] runs everything, they get all the money. You know, the Power Five [conferences] have autonomous rules, and they\u2019re sitting in the corner and they\u2019re not getting kicked out and that\u2019s kind of where they\u2019re at. You know, so it\u2019s really not their fault. They try to raise their hand and say, \u2018Hey, we should have a rule,\u2019 and they immediately get sued.\u201d<\/p>\n

Etc.<\/p>\n

Sophomore guard Trent Perry practiced Friday after missing the Bruins\u2019 victory over Washington<\/a> because of an ankle injury, potentially putting him on track to play against the Ducks. \u2026 Cronin, on his team\u2019s need to stay in perpetual must-win mode: \u201cWe were in we\u2019re-going-to-win-anyway-because-we\u2019re-really-good-we\u2019re-UCLA mode, and I tried not to let them get there, but they got there and we got out it and we\u2019ve got to stay out of it because the minute you go back you\u2019re going to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UCLA will experience something of a rarity Saturday at Pauley Pavilion when it faces Oregon, a former Pac-12…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":427512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[2322,198926,198928,1582,276,198924,71096,198927,5208,23590,2961,224,5337,118393,1317,198925,36700,99153,7840,2501],"class_list":{"0":"post-427511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-agent","9":"tag-agent-greed","10":"tag-bernie-madoff-level","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-cronin","14":"tag-ducks","15":"tag-employee-contract","16":"tag-friday","17":"tag-guy","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-mick-cronin","22":"tag-ncaa","23":"tag-player-movement","24":"tag-rule","25":"tag-sort","26":"tag-stability","27":"tag-ucla"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115669539516815105","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}