Wisconsin coach Greg Gard sounds off on state of college basketball

MADISON – As Wisconsin coach Greg Gard was walking out of the Kohl Center press conference room after the Badgers’ win over UW-Milwaukee, he exclaimed that “nobody asked me about the state of college basketball.”

Fast-forward to his first media availability of 2026, and Gard did not shy away from expressing candid thoughts on the state of college basketball, which is “not in a sustainable place.”

“We don’t have guidelines or rules, or we’re making them up as we go,” Gard said in an answer that exceeded three minutes. “We’re kind of all fending for ourselves. It’s survival of the fittest.”

Gard reiterated that he supports athletes being compensated and having “freedom of movement” with the transfer portal. (His teams have benefited greatly from the transfer portal as well.) But the uneven compensation between schools via revenue sharing and third-party name, image and likeness deals has drawn ire from the longtime Wisconsin coach (and former UW-Platteville and UW-Milwaukee assistant coach).

“There’s nothing that is equitable about it,” Gard said after the Badgers' Jan. 1 practice. “Our situation is completely different than Purdue’s that we’re going to play in two days. It’s completely different than, name the school, plus or minus. We have more than some. We don’t have as much as some.”

Gard contrasted the current player compensation environment in college sports to what would be permissible in professional sports leagues.

“In the NFL, Jerry Jones can’t go buy with his own personal money the best team. He has to play by the rules of the NFL salary caps, whatever. … But in college athletics, the Jerry Joneses of the world, the super boosters, can go buy the best team. It’s illegal in the NBA to be able to do that.”

As the highest-level players naturally go to the places that can compensate them at the highest level, the growing gap in on-court success has been evident. The 16 teams to advance to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament in 2025 all came from either the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 or ACC.

Now in 2025-26, Gard has “never seen a year where you’ve seen scores so imbalanced.”

“You rarely, if ever, see a mid-major team beat a high-major. Why? Obviously, the high-majors have the vast majority of the money. Where are the players going? Where all the money is.”

With the transfer portal specifically, Gard anticipates graduation rates soon taking a “big dip” as players move multiple times throughout their academic careers.

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“What’s going to happen when you go to three, four schools?” Gard said. “Credits aren’t transferring as much as you want. When you’re done playing or you’re going to graduate, the NIL money – most likely 99% of them – it’s not retirement money. You’re going to run out of it before you’re 30 years old. What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

College basketball, Gard said, has created a “fantasy world of what real life is about” for its high-earning athletes.

“The minute you take off your jersey here, you aren’t getting the Culver’s endorsement or whatever sponsorship there is. That’s gone. So what are you going to do? … They will never touch this amount of money the rest of their life unless they become the CEO or president of a company or they’re a lottery pick in the NBA and they stay there for 10 years.”

Greg Gard wants to see collective bargaining in college basketball

Gard’s preferred solution is to see college basketball do what professional sports leagues such as the NFL and NBA have done and implement collective bargaining, which could theoretically lead to a more enforceable salary cap.

“We have to have collective bargaining,” Gard said. “We have to have the athletes at the table. We have to have everything that goes on the employment side of professional sports. That’s the only way we’re going to get parity back. That’s the only way we’re going to get competitive balance back right now.”

Asked specifically whether that means he wants athletes to officially be employees, Gard reiterated that it is the “only way we’re going to be able to get parity” again in college basketball.

“I know there’s a lot of things that come with employment, with having more employees or whatever that label if they really are categorized as employees,” Gard said. “But we have to be able to get everybody at the table and most importantly the student-athletes at the table and be able to all sit down and come up with one book to be able to operate out of, not 350 different books like we got going on right now.”

What Greg Gard thinks about midseason acquisitions like Baylor’s James Nnaji

Baylor’s midseason acquisition of James Nnaji, the NBA’s No. 31 overall pick in the 2023 draft, has drawn criticism from many of Gard’s peers across the country. Nnaji played in the NBA Summer League, but he did not sign an NBA contract before playing overseas.

Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, most notably, said “shame on the NCAA” and “shame on the coaches” after Baylor’s acquisition. Gonzaga’s Mark Few and UConn’s Dan Hurley are among the other coaches to share their criticism.

“Do we need leadership? Yes,” Gard said. “Do I blame the coaches for trying to add midyear acquisitions? No, because you have to do what’s best for your program. And I think some of the comments that are being thrown out there – and I’m not going to go into individuals – are very hypocritical because they’ve done the same things in years gone by.”

Gard also is not one to criticize adding players with experience in professional development systems as someone who has added plenty of international players with experience in professional development systems.

Freshman forward Aleksas Bieliauskas played in the NKL, which is the second-highest professional league in his home country of Lithuania. Freshman guard Hayden Jones and sophomore forward Austin Rapp both have experience in the Australian National Basketball League.

“The players that have come from Europe all are on some sort of professional club, and they have to meet certain guidelines in order to make eligibility,” Gard said. “So what’s the difference? Whether they’re coming from a professional development league in the U.S. or they’re coming from a professional development league in Czechoslovakia, there’s no difference.”

NCAA’s ‘biggest mistake’

The NCAA’s “biggest mistake,” as Gard sees it, is not having the “coaches that have their boots on the ground” involved enough in the decision-making.

“They don’t put coaches on the committees deep enough into the process,” Gard said. “They kick them out the door when it goes time to make the decisions with the presidents and the athletic directors and all the people that are involved with the decision-making.”

Gard’s critiques that he hinted about on Dec. 30 and shared at length on Jan. 1 are not necessarily a reaction to one thing happening in the sport, but rather what “generally, holistically” is happening in college basketball.

“We have zero structure right now,” Gard said. “So that’s the biggest thing. We’re reacting to everything going on right now versus being proactive.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin coach Greg Gard sounds off on state of college basketball