Matt Jones pushes back on Kentucky’s alleged $20M NIL budget: “It is nowhere near that number"

Let’s go ahead and get one thing out of the way: Kentucky’s roster budget for the 2025-26 season will be among the highest in the country. Multiple reports have come out stating the Wildcats will spend more than $10 million on next season’s team. That much we know is true.

But just how much more than $10 million is it? One report surfaced earlier this week suggesting Kentucky will break the $20 million mark on Mark Pope‘s second roster as head coach. It quickly made the rounds on social media, only further sparking debate online. Even Dick Vitale caught wind of it.

But KSR’s Matt Jones shut down that talk during Wednesday’s edition of the KSR Radio Show. While Kentucky is expected to be among the top three schools in roster spending, according to Jones, he says the final budget cost is not close to the $20 million figure.

“I can say fairly definitively — I rarely say definitively — definitively, that is not true,” Jones said on radio. “It is a substantially less number. Now it’s a high number. It may be the highest number in college basketball. It probably is. But it is nowhere near that number. The idea that (Kentucky was) going to have a 20 million dollar roster, which would be 10 million dollars more than any other team, is not the case.”

I continue to believe that all publicly reported NIL numbers are incorrect.

The people leaking these numbers are all agents and they have an incentive to exaggerate to raise the market and look they got their client a huge number

— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) April 23, 2025

With Tuesday night’s news of Travis Perry transferring out of Kentucky, Pope now has 12 players (including Otega Oweh, who is testing the NBA Draft waters) on board for the 2025-26 season. He’s plucked five of them from the portal, headlined by potential lottery pick Jayden Quaintance, to create a transfer group that ranks number one in the country by On3. Pope has also added a pair of top 30 high school recruits, a prized international prospect, and is bringing back four key pieces from last season’s team. He could add another piece to the puzzle if he wants, too.

To build a roster as deep and as talented as Kentucky’s is expected to be, it’s going to come with a high cost. The ‘Cats will be among a handful of schools going over the $10 million mark next season, but the idea that the program is doubling that number is receiving pushback.