Arkansas–St. John’s Showcased the New Winning Formula in the NIL Era

Ahead of the highly anticipated Round of 32 matchup between St. John’s and Arkansas, which the Razorbacks won 75–66, Rick Pitino told reporters he and John Calipari didn’t have much in common. “We’re both Italian. We both love the game. I think that’s where the similarities end,” the Red Storm coach said.

But the teams had more in common than Pitino let on. Both shelled out for iconic coaches looking to continue their legacies, who, despite their old-school nature, built tournament-ready rosters using college sports’ new rules.

The Razorbacks, who pulled off an upset on Saturday, landed Calipari in the middle of last year’s Final Four, stealing the news cycle ahead of the championship. The team agreed to shell out $8 million a year for the former Kentucky coach, who led the Wildcats to a 2012 national championship but hadn’t brought the team to the Sweet 16 since 2019. 

Tyson CEO John H. Tyson—a longtime benefactor of Arkansas sports—reportedly bankrolled a $5 million NIL budget for Calipari to recruit, which he used to rebuild a roster from the ground up. (The roster was so depleted when he arrived that, at one point, he joked with reporters that “there is no team.”) But within a few months, Calipari put together a strong, if small, recruiting class of seven transfers and six freshmen.

Calipari certainly has concerns with the way college basketball works now. He said after the game that because of NIL, players have “a piano on their back” because of the pressure to perform in exchange for earnings. When a reporter reminded him the transfer portal will open Monday, in the middle of March Madness, he scoffed and said: “Welcome to my world.” 

But he still used the rules to build a Sweet 16 team.

Pitino has been in Queens since 2023, when he agreed to a multimillion-dollar contract rumored to be around $3.3 million per year.

Until the Razorbacks knocked them off, the Red Storm were the face of a team taking advantage of NIL and the transfer portal. His main benefactor was in the beverage industry, rather than the food industry: Vitaminwater and BodyArmor founder and billionaire Mike Repole. The team spent about $4 million in aggregate in NIL deals, according to multiple reports (though the number couldn’t be independently verified by FOS). After winning the program’s first Big East tournament in 25 years, Pitino said that “NIL didn’t get us this team,” but he has acknowledged on multiple occasions that he’s embraced these new rules.

“In some respects, it makes my job easier,” he said during Big East Media Day on Oct. 24. “In some respects, it doesn’t.” 

Only Arkansas is still alive. But both programs have proven that there’s a new winning formula in college basketball.