Kansas head coach Bill Self talks with media members following the Jayhawks' arrival at the team hotel in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Photo by Nick Krug

The forthcoming House v. NCAA settlement has already radically reshaped the way college basketball teams build their rosters, as the nation’s preeminent programs prepare to pay their athletes directly for the first time.

But as of Wednesday, as Kansas coach Bill Self and Houston coach Kelvin Sampson sat at a podium at the Waldorf Astoria in Orlando, Florida, speaking to reporters on the first day of the Big 12 Conference’s spring meetings, the legal provisions that had already prompted so much drastic change still hadn’t actually become official.

“The biggest thing is for me, and I don’t know about (how) Kelvin feels, is let’s get this settlement signed,” Self said, “so at least what we know what we’re operating with and we can move forward.”

The nation’s top basketball programs have spent much of their offseason operating in a kind of intermediate space in which the previous system of name, image and likeness payments to compensate athletes has been able to persist until the settlement goes into effect, and all the while schools are still penning contracts to share revenue with their athletes going forward.

That’s dependent, of course, on Judge Claudia Wilken actually providing the final approval, which had long seemed like a formality, so that revenue sharing goes into effect on July 1. But Wilken has had misgivings about the settlement’s imposition of roster limits that would result (and have resulted) in many athletes losing spots on their respective teams, and wants the parties to allow those athletes to retain their places on their various rosters, even if it means temporarily going over the limits.

This lengthy holdup for the settlement has resulted in Self and his fellow coaches “dealing in hypotheticals,” as he put it.

Many of those hypotheticals, inevitably, have involved large amounts of money.

The coaches were asked on Wednesday about how their conversations with players have changed amid a rapidly evolving landscape. The coaches reiterated that their fundamental passions for and approaches to coaching have to stay the same even if external factors don’t.

“Kids still want to get better,” Self said. “They still yearn for discipline deep in their core. They come to their respective schools with, still, the thought of it being a springboard to the rest of their lives, putting them on a platform to have the most success and achieve their goals. We would be doing kids a disservice if we didn’t coach them in a manner that we should in order to allow them to come as close as possible (to) achieving their dreams.”

Added Sampson: “The NIL, the transfer portal, none of that comes into play when I’m teaching defense, rebounding and offense or defining the difference between winning and losing basketball. My conversations still remain the same with our team.”

Self reiterated his long-expressed sentiments that all industries go through chaotic periods of change and he expects college athletics, which is doing so now, to “balance out” in due time.

“And for people, if they would ever say that our sport isn’t what it used to be. I don’t believe that at all,” Self said. “I think the quality of play this past year, with NIL, with the transfer portal, actually on the court was as good as I’ve seen it in a long time.”

Several additional topics were discussed in the brief media sessions following the coaches’ opening meetings, including the following:

• Big 12 Vice President of Men’s Basketball Brian Thornton said the league does not have another interconference event on the schedule to replace the now-defunct Big East-Big 12 Battle. He also spoke about the league’s decision to return to 18 league games after its brief move to 20 and said that the three teams each school will play against twice next season are still being determined.

• Self said there was a small amount of discussion among the coaches about the possibility of NCAA Tournament expansion, and that they would be in favor of it.

• Self once again sang the praises of his incoming freshman guard Darryn Peterson (who JayhawkSlant reported was set to arrive in Lawrence on Wednesday): “I’m probably as excited about coaching him as I am about anybody I’ve ever recruited. He’s probably the most prepared, equipped 18-year-old that I’ve had a chance to recruit.”