In today’s day and age of college basketball, money reigns supreme, and with NIL becoming a driving factor in player commitments, programs with larger budgets have an advantage. In an attempt to help level the playing field, the Memphis Tigers recently increased their NIL budget with head coach Penny Hardaway contributing $2.6 million of his own money to up the fund, as per College Basketball Review.

“We had $5 million, and then I had to put $2.6 million of my own money to try and build the roster up to be able to be competitive enough to get to a Sweet 16,” Hardaway said. “You still got to go through conference, win a conference championship. Even if you win some P4 games, if you lose one game in conference, you drop 19 spots in our conference. It’s so different.

“And the old Memphis was before NIL where you could go out and recruit the top guys. I had two No. 1 recruiting classes in the first four years, over Duke, over Kansas, over Kentucky … but now that the money value is there, it’s a big difference. But we’re still shooting for the same thing.”

Penny Hardaway is entering his ninth season as head coach at Memphis. Across that time, he’s compiled an overall record of 175-87. The Tigers have reached the NCAA Tournament in three of his nine years, but have not advanced past the round of 32.

His first No. 1 recruiting class was in 2019 and included the likes of James Wiseman, Precious Achiuwa, Boogie Ellis, Lester Quiñones, Damion Baugh, D.J. Jeffries and Malcolm Dandridge.

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His second No. 1 recruiting class was in 2021 and consisted of Jalen Duren, Emoni Bates, Josh Minott, Jonathan Lawson, Sam Onu and John Camden.

But in this new landscape of college basketball, Memphis is going to need strong NIL opportunities to continue attracting top recruits.