The Syracuse Orange basketball program, at least in some ways, definitely misses Jim Boeheim.
Maybe the ending days of the Hall of Fame coach's tenure weren't perfect. But almost every year of Boeheim's time at the helm, SU went dancing.
Now, Syracuse has missed three years in a row and is trending for more after a bad loss to Hofstra to fall to 6-4 in the early going.
Boeheim appeared on local radio to break down one of the problems: money.
In modern college hoops, Boeheim thinks a college basketball team needs $10 million for players to be competitive.
“You can still recruit but at the end of the day you got to be able to come really close money-wise or your not getting somebody,” Boeheim said. “They [football] probably need $20 million-$22 million and basketball needs $10 million.”
Jim Boeheim told us today that he believes Syracuse men's basketball needs a $10 million budget to be competitive in NIL🍊🏀
— Ashley Wenskoski (@AshleyWenskTV) December 16, 2025
He did not say how much the team spent this season, but said they had more money than last year - when the budget was reportedly slightly over $2M pic.twitter.com/ZPHE3zS9R9
It's interesting that Boeheim also acknowledges that the investment this season is somewhere higher than $2 million, but seemingly nowhere near that $10 million.
In the NCAA's new revenue sharing setup, schools get about $20 million total for all the sports, so this would have to be some kind of investment beyond that if you assume football gets the majority of that revenue money.
Players will go where the money is, especially if it's at marquee programs. That could leave Syracuse in the dust.
It would be interesting to see how Boeheim would've handled this new era. Instead, Syracuse can only wish their legendary head coach was back.
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