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NIL has taken over the college sports landscape. As a top program in college basketball, if you do not have $4-$7 million in NIL money in the war chest to spend on recruits and transfers, you are falling behind.

Now, a revolutionary event called the “Players Era Festival” is about to be finalized, according to reports, that will pay $1 million in NIL to each of the eight teams participating in the tournament. According to CBS, the players involved will also receive future NIL opportunities as well.

This multi-team event (MTE) will be held in Las Vegas and will likely be a part of the iconic “Feast Weak” that takes place during Thanksgiving week. The eight teams confirmed to be involved are Alabama, Texas A&M, Creighton, Houston, Notre Dame, Oregon, Rutgers, and San Diego State, with more big names on the horizon for future years.

This event will be good for college basketball for a number of reasons. First, the players taking part in the tournament deserve the payouts they are getting. They not only deserve these payouts, but the money could provide a massive boost to the programs in desperate need for a little NIL boost.

The extra $1 mil could help a team like San Diego State get a player from the portal that they otherwise couldn’t and that leads me to my second, and largest, point: parity in college basketball will be like no other sport in America.

For decades, the teams that won in college basketball were the blue bloods. Kentucky, Kansas, UNC, Duke, UCLA and UConn have won 22 of the last 36 national titles. We cannot act like players weren’t getting paid under the table by some of these programs, and they had the biggest banks at their disposal. Now that it is legal, any team across America that wants to spend millions on their team and players can do just that.

The transfer portal is so big right now and every coach in America is constantly trying to recruit their own team back to school while simultaneously trying to add to their roster. A tournament like the “Players Era Festival” could be a driving force to keep players at Rutgers, Notre Dame, SDSU, and other less prominent programs that join in the future.

Finally, the new MTE will add another elite event to the early season college basketball slate. “Feast Week” in late November is one of the best weeks on the college basketball calendar every single season, featuring events like the Maui Invitational, the Battle 4 Atlantis, the Empire Classic, the ESPN Events Invitational, and many more.

When the sport is desperately trying to steal eyes away from other competing leagues like the NFL and college football, more big names in primetime events will help the sport. My only complaint is that it isn’t earlier in the month of November. Feast Week is great. The beginning of the college basketball season in early November is less so.

Nonetheless, we have a new top-tier event in college basketball, and it will help the players, programs, and the sport as a whole as they usher in the new NIL era.