In U.S. college sports, the biggest money still goes to the coaches, like Jimbo Fisher, the Texas A&M football coach whose reward for failure in recent seasons was a $77 million buyout. But the players also began to get a piece of the pie, for the first time in the more than 150-year history of campus sports. And one of the biggest scores of all just went to a Spanish-born, English-trained basketball star.
Before becoming a star on the US college basketball circuit, Great Osobor played in England for Myerscough College in Preston. Osobor, at 6-foot-3, wasn’t a highly touted prospect before arriving in the United States. He began his career in 2021 at Montana State, a lower-tier Division I school with almost no history of basketball success. Osobor was just a player for the Bobcats, and after two seasons he transferred to Utah State, another small DI institution in Logan, just over an hour north of Salt Lake City. Osobor was a star of the 2023-24 season, leading the Aggies with 18 points and nine rebounds per game.
And in a recently liberalized university sports economy, the 21-year-old has profited. In the past, athletes couldn’t even change schools without sitting on the bench for a season, according to NCAA rules designed to discourage transfers. This rule gradually stopped being enforced and officially disappeared in 2021. Now Osobor will play for his third school in four years and will be handsomely rewarded for it. ESPN reported that Osobor will raise US$2 million in so-called “name, image and likeness” considerations to play for the University of Washington. That appears to make Osobor the highest-paid player in the college ranks, and all for someone who drew almost no fanfare until a season ago.
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Osobor’s story is good. Growing up in Spain, he didn’t play basketball beyond the entry level. His family moved to Huddersfield, which wasn’t exactly a basketball hub, when he was 12. Atlético reported that it was only through the grace of a physical education teacher who spotted Osobor at the gym that his basketball career began. The teacher recommended a move to a basketball academy in Bradford, and Osobor was finally off to the races. Osobor became a dominant player in the English youth ranks and generated enough interest to carve out an American college career.
Don’t confuse this with quite of interest, however. Osobor received virtually no consideration from major programs, which explains his initial arrival at Montana State. Even MSU didn’t see huge potential in Osobor, who played less than half the minutes in each of his two seasons with the program. It wasn’t until he went to Utah State that Osobor took off.
At USU, Osobor was a dominant force as a scorer and rebounder. A forward who barely cares about three-point shots but loves to back his man down in the paint and score with creativity or power, Osobor has proven to be too much for the competition in the Mountain West Conference. Osobor was downright unstoppable at times, like when he scored 32 points on 11-of-14 shooting (plus 10-of-16 from the foul line) in a game against a defeated Air Force in January.
But Osobor was excellent in big positions against quality competition. San Diego State, a conference opponent that played in the national championship game the previous season, was also unable to stop Osobor from scoring at the basket. The Mountain West was the sport’s best conference outside of the old “Power 6,” where the best teams play, and Osobor won the league’s Player of the Year award as Utah State finished at the top of the standings.
So when Osobor announced his intention to transfer to another college during his senior season, it was off to a bonanza. Osobor was an extraordinarily valuable player. He has three years of college experience, but was only a first-team player for one season. This suggests he may have a lot more room to grow in his final season before turning pro. Osobor is a known commodity and a well of potential, and he entered the transfer portal at a time when teams would fall in love with both. National championship contenders don’t just win with star freshmen, and Osobor offered guaranteed production to his suitors.
Washington won the toss, defeating a group led by Louisville and Texas Tech. The Huskies have played in just one NCAA Tournament in the last 13 years and are still looking for a breakthrough under seventh-year coach Mike Hopkins. Washington typically wouldn’t sign a player that draft agencies considered to be the best player, or at least one of the top five available.
What changed was not so much Washington but the nature of recruiting. Old-school charm, persuasion and gambling opportunities are still very important when trying to attract players – especially in basketball, which lacks the level of funding offered in football. But the best players can get a big payday third-party “collectives” formed by passionate fans, who pay athletes to play for specific schools. The workaround is still necessary because of archaic and still-unchanged NCAA rules that prohibit schools from paying athletes directly. But this is a distinction more of logistics than of spirit, and universities whose supporters can mobilize resources are now positioned to hire the best players. Elite players who can attract big sponsors can get even more money, although there aren’t many of them in college basketball. The biggest college star, Caitlin Clark, just turned pro.
Enter Osobor, who will receive a huge payout for his efforts to help Washington overcome the obstacle. The Huskies and their supporters have done substantial work to shore up their financial operations, and Osobor’s recruitment represents a huge victory for an athletic department that has endured a difficult few months. (Washington’s football team lost the national championship game, and the head coach left days later to replace the legendary Nick Saban at Alabama. Then the athletic director left for Nebraska.) Getting Osobor won’t just help the basketball team , but also fan morale being asked for donations.
It represents a significant expense. Even a deep-pocketed basketball program’s roster will only cost about $3 million a year. While it’s unknown how much of Osobor’s compensation will come from the supporting organization and how much will come from independent ventures, the Huskies (and their friends) are making a big bet on Osobor to turn the program’s fortunes around.
It’ll be a funny story: Three years into a world where college athletes can get paid (though still by third parties, not their schools), the highest-paid player in college basketball won’t be a 17-year-old wunderkind. with a five-star prospect rating. He will be a forward who received his basketball training in England and then played his first three American college seasons at two universities, Montana State and Utah State, that many sports fans never paid any attention to. Now Osobor will be the centerpiece of a team in the Big Ten, the richest conference in college sports. (Another reason the Huskies may have been so willing to pay: In their first year in a tough conference after leaving the Pac-12, the school and its fans are eager to behave competitively.)
There are traditionalists who will not like the story of Osobor. They see the rise of the transfer portal and player payments as twin evils that have sucked the soul out of college sports. There is a glimmer of truth in this: Osobor’s loss is devastating for Utah State, which helped unlock his greatness and will now not benefit from taking his talents to a much wealthier school. USU can only hope that Osobor’s development serves as an advertisement for future interested parties at the school — even if those players are looking to make another move, just as Osobor did. After all, schools like Utah State have lost coaches to bigger schools for generations. Now players are just following suit.
College sports have always had haves and have-nots, and the advent of transfer culture and player compensation allowed Osobor to gain a brighter spot and earn life-changing money. Without the ability to transfer freely, Osobor would have played an entire college career at Montana State, where he struggled to emerge as anything more than a member of a supporting cast. And without the ability to receive money for his services, the value Osobor created in the courts would have been left for others to collect. His story is more a triumph for a new way of doing business than a story of lost tradition.
