After years of denial, the spring the Ivy League feared finally came to pass. 

The first domino fell in mid March, when Penn men’s basketball’s Tyler Perkins, a freshman phenom who had recently broken the Quakers’ first-year scoring record, announced that he would enter the transfer portal. It was a seismic move from Perkins, a crushing blow to Penn, and a sign of things to come. 

In the weeks that followed, other hardwood stars joined the exodus: Harvard’s Malik Mack — the conference’s Rookie of the Year and the nation’s second-highest-scoring freshman — was in the wind, as was his Crimson teammate and the team’s leading scorer Chisom Okpara. Even Yale, just weeks after a stunning March Madness upset of Auburn, lost its top dog as All-Ivy first team selection Danny Wolf hit the road. 

In quick succession, all four players wound up at schools that punch in college sports’ heavyweight class: Villanova, Georgetown, Stanford, and Michigan. And while the NCAA’s recent relaxation of transfer restrictions certainly played a part in the mass migration, the primary culprit is even simpler: cash. 

As the upper crust of the NCAA has jumped head first into the player paying pool via the rising prevalence of name, image, and likeness, the Ivy League has remained recalcitrant; a stubbornness which cost the conference a group of stars in the span of one offseason and could threaten its place in the hierarchy of Division I sports. But according to some former players, the ultimate question is not whether the Ivy can survive in a money-dominated landscape, but whether the conference will move to change its fate. 

“In terms of sports like football and basketball, with high majors offering scholarships in addition to NIL, there’s no way the Ivy League can compete,” former Penn men’s basketball guard Clark Slajchert, who currently plays for USC as a graduate transfer, said. “And that’s something the Ivy League knows.” 

In many ways, the Ivy League’s present predicament is self-imposed. The conference’s lack of NIL collectives — school-specific funds which allow donors to pool their money in order to facilitate NIL deals for their athletes — is one factor. The conference’s ban on athletic scholarships, which was recently upheld in federal court, is another. 

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These policies relate to the conference’s foundational principles, which place academics above all else and which big-money recruiting is seen as an affront to. Earlier this year, Princeton Athletic Director John Mack said that collectives did not align with the school’s institutional values. In the conference’s defense against the scholarship lawsuit, it cited its desire to “foster campus cultures that do not prioritize athletics over other aspects of their educational mission.” These standards have been in place for over a century, but the nation’s oldest athletic programs now risk falling further behind against willing-to-spend competitors. 

“[Ivy League schools] don’t even value their athletes enough to give them scholarships. They just don’t think that’s important to their institution,” Slajchert said. “[At USC], everything’s paid for. You don’t pay for school, you don’t pay for housing. Now they have NIL stuff they’re paying you for.” 

While this year marked the first widespread set of Ivy League departures since the advent of NIL in 2021, the conference’s first major loss came even earlier. In 2023, Penn men’s basketball guard Jordan Dingle announced he would leave the program for St. John’s, making him the first Ivy Player of the Year in the conference’s history to undergraduate transfer immediately after winning the award. 

Though Dingle attests his decision was motivated more by a desire to further his basketball career than by NIL, he also said that he anticipated that his choice could have a domino effect in the conference at large. 

“For me, I would be lying if I said I didn’t know [my decision] would have some kind of effect down the line,” Dingle said. “It’s something that was in the back of my mind. … I was just trying to do what I thought was best at the time, and that’s what these kids are doing now. … They have a lot of money on the table.” 

During his time at St. John’s, Dingle scored high-dollar NIL deals with brands like Bose and Applebee’s. According to the NCAA’s NIL dashboard, the average men’s basketball starter in a power conference earns roughly $171,000 annually through NIL opportunities, while the average among the rest of Division I is roughly $20,000.  

By contrast, Dingle said that his NIL opportunities were limited at Penn, with many of the benefits amounting to “some free meals or some clothes.” One such partnership was the men’s basketball team’s deal with since-defunct cheesesteak chain Delco Steaks, which involved the team handing out coupons on Locust Walk. Though Slajchert stayed at Penn for all four of his undergraduate years before being forced to transfer due to the conference’s ban on graduate student-athletes, he recalled a similar experience. 

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“At Penn, for me, NIL was a non-factor,” Slajchert said. “I had a few small deals where I would post something on Instagram and get 50 bucks — I think I did that once or twice.” 

After Dingle’s departure, many in the Ivy League came to its defense. Penn coach Steve Donahue called Dingle “an outlier,” while Yale’s James Jones said NIL had “not done anything to Yale basketball.” Soon after, both teams lost stars to the portal. Following Perkins' departure, Donahue said that despite his decades of college coaching experience, the "the new world of ‘he’s-in he’s-out’" was a difficult adjustment. 

All eight Ivy League men’s basketball coaches declined to comment for this story. 

Men’s basketball also faces a heightened portal risk compared to other sports due to its significant value at larger schools. According to the NIL dashboard, men’s basketball players earn the most money per player of any sport. 

“Basketball players good enough to make it are going to get a lot of money,” Wharton Statistics professor Abe Wyner, who also heads the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative, said. “And if we bump into one [in the Ivy League], they’re going to get a lot of money elsewhere.” 

Not every Ancient Eight team lost its stars to the portal. Notably, Princeton managed to retain last season’s Ivy League Player of the Year, Caden Pierce, as well as All-Ivy first teamer Xavian Lee, who tested the NBA draft waters before returning to the Tigers. Brown also kept its two All-Ivy selections, Kino Lilly Jr. and Nana Owusu-Anane; the latter was successfully lured back to Providence after initially entering the portal. 

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The Tigers and Bears combined to receive all 16 first-place votes in this year’s Ivy League preseason poll. In a sport where an individual player makes such a marked impact on their team, keeping top talent is key to competing on the League level. But for the conference as a whole, maintaining its place in the national pecking order could mean sacrificing on the long-held Ivy League tradition, a price the conference may not be willing to pay. 

“Those Ivy League values, I think they will hold the league back in terms of competing athletically,” Slajchert said. “Which is okay if the Ivies don’t mind sacrificing [athletic] success.” 

As the conference decides what it values most, athletes are forced to make a similar evaluation. Defenders of the Ivy League way have long touted the conference as an unparalleled long-term investment in one’s career, but Wyner says that in the age of NIL, the Ivy’s leaves aren’t quite so green. 

“The Ivy League has always had an appeal because of the long-range value of an Ivy League degree,” Wyner said. “NIL is reversing that. So if you can get a big chunk of money from another school, you can arguably say it overcomes the advantages you get outside of it. … This is the only opportunity in their lives to capitalize [financially] on their success.” 

In a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn Athletics and Recreation wrote that it is “supportive of NIL opportunities for student-athletes when they are aligned with the frameworks of Ivy League values and NCAA policies.” It also emphasized the school’s steadfast belief in the value of Penn’s “world-class education,” alongside athletic opportunity. Penn Athletics did not respond to specific questions from the DP about the expansion of NIL efforts or the formation of an NIL collective. 

Some believe the Ivy League can survive without compromising on its current model. Wyner says that while high-major schools may poach the Ivy’s “creme de la creme,” the bulk of the conference’s recruiting will survive. Dingle emphasized the quality of the conference’s coaching, crediting Princeton and Yale’s schemes for their recent success in the NCAA tournament. Slajchert says that he never would have left Penn if he did not have to. In this way, the League can feel confident in the merits of its existing approach. 

But next spring, when a new class of Ivy Leaguers faces a life-changing dilemma, the conference must be prepared for the consequences. 

“The Ivy League is losing kids to high-major schools that are offering them NIL collective money — money the Ivy League just isn’t ready to support yet,” Slajchert said. “And I don’t know if it ever will.”