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Confirmed: Ben Johnson was the NIL Problem for Gophers Men’s Basketball
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- Confirmed: Ben Johnson was the NIL Problem for Gophers Men’s Basketball
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The Minnesota Gophers men's basketball team has a new head coach leading the program, in former Gopher grad assistant and Minneapolis-native, Niko Medved. Out, is another local basketball figure, Ben Johnson, who graduated from DeLaSalle high school and played for the Gophers back in the early 2000s.
Ben lasted four years at the helm of the Golden Gopher program, posting a historically terrible 56-71 record (.441) before athletic director Mark Coyle finally fired him immediately after Minnesota fell to Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament.
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Johnson's biggest problem as Gophers head coach was the age he found himself coaching in. When Ben was hired, back in 2021, the wide open NCAA transfer portal was still a very new thing. So was Name, Image and Likeness — or in acronym form, what we more commonly refer to as "NIL".
Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
In the last few years, major division one college athletics have become less about recruiting high school talent through scouting and relationship building, and more about the amount of money a school can raise through collectives and boosters, in order to pay players.
Minnesota Gophers MBB NIL fell behind under Johnson
The University of Minnesota hired Ben Johnson to do the former. At the time, local boosters were sick of losing top MN high school talent to neighboring schools and blue blood programs. They saw Ben as the best possible solution to that problem. Unfortunately, they underestimated how much NIL was about to change college athletics forever.
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It wasn't long after his introduction over four years ago when it became clear that NIL was the new king of college sports. The schools/programs with an abundance of NIL money to work with were going to prosper. The NIL poor programs — as head football coach PJ Fleck laid out two years ago in a historic radio rant — were destined to become feeder teams for the rich.
"So, if we wanna keep players, all these guys we have, they won't be here next year [without more NIL]. Just making sure everybody understands. [Our best players] won't be here. So we'll be a Triple-A ball club for somebody else. That is the reality and the truth of the situation. So please, contact Dinkytown Athletes…"
And in the end, that is exactly what happened to the Minnesota Gophers men's basketball program, under Johnson. He reeled in talent like Jamison Battle, Cam Christie, Elijah Hawkins, Pharrel Payne, and Joshua Ola-Joseph, a few of which had Minnesota roots.
Then, he developed them into much better players than they were when they arrived back in Dinkytown. Once they were ready to take that next step, they left for major paydays elsewhere. Christie fled to the NBA Draft, but the rest left big NIL deals at Ohio State, Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Cal.
Related: Gophers NIL Problems Under Ben Johnson Were Even Worse Than We Thought
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Every year under Johnson, they ran into the same problem. Not enough NIL money. Instead of improving the core of their team in the offseason, Ben and his coaches had to find underdeveloped talent in the transfer portal and use it to cobble together an underwhelming roster. The next year, they'd lose their best players again. Rinse, repeat. Thus, why Ben Johnson was fired.
Who's to blame for Ben Johnson's failures in Minnesota?
But who's fault was it? Even up until the moment of his firing, local and pundits, along with current and former coaches were lining up to defend Johnson, deflecting Minnesota's NIL problems to those around him, specifically Mark Coyle, claiming he did not provide Ben with the resources necessary to build a competitive program.
Ben Johnson has done an incredible job with this team. One of the elite coaches in one of the toughest jobs in America. https://t.co/CIDksLbLZO
— Seth Davis (@SethDavisHoops) March 1, 2025
Then, one of Ben Johnson's biggest local media supporters, Marcus Fuller (Star Tribune), called up the founder of the University of Minnesota's official NIL collective, Dinkytown Athletes' Derek Burns.
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His investigative mission: to find out (a)how the push for more NIL funding is going under new head coach Niko Medved and (b)who's to blame for the failures under the previous regime. And guess what Fuller found out? That Niko has already raised more in a few weeks than Johnson raised all of last year.
How has he done it? Well, Mr. Burns told Mr. Fuller that it sure is nice having a Gopher men's basketball coach who has accepted the current NIL age of college sports, making this yet another example of the old phrase, "adapt or die".
"I'm optimistic about the near future of Gophers men's basketball," Dinkytown Athletes co-founder Derek Burns said. "With revenue sharing and us doing better in NIL than any previous year, when you combine those two things the disparity between resources is shrinking."
The Gophers' collective raised more money in a few weeks — in the millions of dollars — after Medved's hiring than it had all of last year.
"Niko and his staff have been incredibly active in fundraising since the moment they arrived," Burns said. "There hasn't been one day when they haven't engaged in some fundraising activity. That's absolutely encouraging. But more than that, they're willing to embrace the reality of college sports right now."
Why was Ben Johnson protected with such fervor?
What's been weird about the media's protection of Ben Johnson was the change in expectations, surrounding NIL. Since the moment Name, Image and Likeness became a thing, it's been widely assumed that a program's head coach was the No. 1 party responsible for raising NIL money.
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As far as we know, even after his original call to action back in 2023, it's been PJ Fleck driving the NIL bus for football, just like it is at most major football and basketball programs.
PJ and Dinkytown Athletes have built a partnership and funding base that allows the football team, not just to bring in better outside talent, but more importantly, to retain the players they grow and raise on the University of Minnesota campus, instead of losing most of its top talent to the portal.
Related: Niko Medved Receives Most Exciting Transfer Portal Commit Yet for Gophers MBB
Hopefully, this influx of funding continues. If the Minnesota Gophers do not find a way to catch up in the NIL game fast, they run the risk of their basketball program never again being a top 25 type team.
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Not all of Ben's failures were his fault. He built his reputation on recruiting, relationships and basketball acumen. In the end, none of that mattered as much as NIL funding. Immediately upon being hired, he was not in the best position to succeed. But he refused to adapt and that is nobody's fault but his own.
