Mick Cronin Floats College Basketball Bird Rights

Mick Cronin has an idea to help schools have better retention in the transfer portal era, and it involves applying an NBA practice to college basketball. 

“You should be able to go over the revenue share [cap] to be able to retain players,” Cronin said after his UCLA team upset No. 9 Nebraska on Tuesday night. “Very few of these guys are going to be able to retire on (NIL money), so we need to encourage guys not to transfer.”

A near-identical rule exists in the NBA: Bird rights, named for Larry Bird. The NBA’s Bird rights allow a team to go over the salary cap to re-sign a player who has played multiple seasons with the organization and have three different types: Non-Bird, Early Bird, and Full Bird. 

The practice is synonymous with Bird after the NBA created the exception to its salary cap in 1983 to allow the Celtics to retain their franchise player without exceeding the league’s new financial restrictions. 

Non-Bird rights allow a team to re-sign a player after just one season with the franchise for up to 120% of their expiring salary, while Early Bird is after two seasons for a maximum of a 175% of the previous salary. Full Bird Rights are for players who have spent three or more seasons with the same team, which permits a maximum contract of five years with 8% raises. 

In the wake of the House settlement, schools can share up to $20.5 million in revenue with athletes; they can decide how to allocate that money among sports. Cronin’s proposal would allow schools to go above that figure to retain players originally recruited to the school. Plenty of programs have hired general managers with pro sports backgrounds who are used to byzantine cap rules. 

Cronin’s comments come at a time when just 22 seniors at high-major schools spent all four seasons with the same program, an indication of the transfer portal’s impact. 

“We should do everything we can to stop these kids from transferring too much because nobody is going to graduate,” Cronin said. “These kids aren’t going to have the grades if they’re transferring three or four times, so we got to do everything we can.”

The men’s basketball portal opens for 15 days on April 7—the day after the national championship game—and Cronin said he’s going public with his idea because he knows it has support within the conference. 

“I know there’s people at the Big Ten office that are for it, that’s why I bring it up,” Cronin said. “I told them I would back them.”

The Big Ten did not immediately respond to a request for comment.