Welcome back to another year of CBS Sports' Candid Coaches feature. College basketball insiders Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander surveyed nearly 100 men's Division I coaches in the thick of the offseason; as always, interviewees were given the promise of anonymity in a swap for honest and enlightening answers on a medley of topics. Be it some of the most high-profile names in the game or assistants at low-major programs, Norlander and Parrish spanned the sport to get a wide range of feedback.
This year's survey had nine questions, and this is the second in our 2026 series. In previous years, back before NIL and revenue-sharing completely changed the sport, it was reasonable to assume most of college basketball's best players would leave just as soon as they were established. That's because, back then, all schools could legally offer were scholarships and cost-of-attendance stipends that could easily be trumped by pretty much any professional contract -- NBA or otherwise.
Did some schools offer more via rule-breaking coaches and/or boosters? Yes, of course. (And they'll do it again the moment anybody tries to put a hard cap on what college athletes can earn!) But the reality is that, for decades, once a college basketball player proved worthy of a six-figure contract in a professional league somewhere, with few exceptions, he would forgo all remaining eligibility and become a professional basketball player. Again, the combination of NIL, revenue-sharing and unlimited transfers has created a world where any college basketball player, other than something like a projected top-15 pick in the NBA Draft, can probably make more money in college the following season than they can in any professional league, the NBA included.
Not every player has taken advantage of this fact, for one reason or another -- but lots did this past offseason! The result is an increased level of talent across the sport -- and familiar faces to market. It's all good stuff and among the reasons it's likely that we'll have a non-freshman national player of the year this season for the first time in three years.
As we do every year, Matt Norlander and I asked college coaches the following question: Others receiving votes: Elliot Cadeau (Michigan), Silas Demary (UConn), Juke Harris (Tennessee), Caleb Holt (Arizona), Motiejus Krivas (Arizona), Milan Momcilovic (Kentucky), Braylon Mullins (UConn), Dame Sarr (Duke). What the results of our poll suggest is that Thomas Haugh is the favorite to be the national player of the year, at least according to college coaches. He got more than 40% of the vote, which is an even higher percentage than Cooper Flagg received when the same question was asked two preseasons ago in our Candid Coaches series.
Combine that with the fact that Haugh is also on the team projected by most to win the national championship -- FYI: Florida is No. 1 in the Top 25 And 1 -- and, yeah, the coaches we asked are predicting that Haugh will be the first non-freshman to win the CBS Sports National Player of the Year award since Zach Edey in 2024. It's a byproduct of exactly what I was writing about above -- how NIL and revenue-sharing have changed the sport completely. Ten years ago, there's no scenario, with few exceptions, where a player/prospect like Haugh would return to college for a fourth season.
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