Rutgers blazes a new trail for college basketball at Players Era Festival in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS – San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher strode past craps tables, roulette wheels and neon slot machines promising quick hits and jackpots as bells rang and cards popped to reach the MGM Grand Garden Arena’s court just before 9 o’clock on Tuesday morning.
His game of choice was basketball, and his Aztecs were in the opening game of the Players Era Festival, a first-of-its-kind tournament sanctioned by the NCAA. More than $9 million in NIL, or name, image and likeness, was on the table for eight teams that included No. 6 Houston, No. 9 Alabama, No. 20 Texas A&M, No. 24 Creighton and unranked Rutgers, Oregon, San Diego State and Notre Dame on digital marquees.
Each program’s collective was guaranteed $1 million for ancillary player appearances and content creation off court. An additional $500,000 was slotted for the tournament’s overall winner with $250,000 going to the runner-up and $150,000 to third place and $100,000 to fourth place.
In a city of losers and illusions, Dutcher, who led his team the NCAA Tournament championship game two years ago before losing to UConn, then watched his team upset No. 23 Creighton with a 71-53 victory. When asked about the experience, he allowed that even though he called the decision to come “a no-brainer,” there were moments when he wondered whether the event would come to fruition.
“The question was, you know, is the money really going to be there?” he said.
Much is a mirage in the valley, but basketball remains the closest thing to a sure bet to draw tourists and locals alike along the city’s crowded entertainment offerings.
The participants came for the combination of compensation and competition along the rapidly changing landscape since college athletes were allowed to be paid beyond athletic scholarships in 2021 and profit from their name, image and likeness. To comply with NCAA rules, tournament directors devised a three-day tournament and revised it multiple times since announcing in April. In the end, they slotted 12 games with two brackets, one called “Power” and the other “Impact.” They drew revenue from distribution partners (TNT, Max) and sponsorship, which includes Starbucks, before routing the money to NIL collectives at the colleges, which then routed the money to the players.
“We’re big believers in college basketball,” Berger said. “This is an undervalued asset and that the amount of money that these players are getting paid now is going to be really small in comparison to what’s going to be coming in future years.”
Berger maintains that the organizers have committed $50 million of guaranteed NIL opportunities and compensation over the next three years. In 2025, the field is expected to grow to 18 teams, including the return of this season’s entire roster. Baylor, Iowa State, Gonzaga, Michigan, St. John’s, and Saint Joseph’s have also committed to play.
Money moved as day cooled into the first night. The last session featured a pair of overtime matchups. Alabama outlasted Houston, and Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats likened the physical matchup to a “cage match” before noting his team’s strength coach visited UFC’s headquarters upon arrival. Then Rutgers beat Notre Dame as freshman Dylan Harper continued his early season star turn.
Afterward Harper embraced his father, Ron, a five-time NBA champion and veteran of many Vegas basketball nights.
Midnight was nearing at the MGM Grand.
“I gotta go play some blackjack,” he said.
The revenue-sharing revolution in college sports touched down this week in Las Vegas two miles west of Tarkanian Way, which is named for Jerry Tarkanian, the former UNLV coach who led the Runnin’ Rebels to four Final Fours before winning the 1990 NCAA Championship. His team-building methods of enticing players with remuneration beyond the NCAA rulebook drew great scrutiny over time. His flamboyant, freewheeling supporters once occupied courtside seats known as Gucci Row.
“Tark was so far ahead of his time,” said Gary Charles, who has coached in and run AAU tournaments in the city for decades.
Basketball, education and commerce have not always mixed easily in Vegas. Long trailed by allegations of arranging benefits for players, Tarkanian resigned amid another NCAA probe in 1991 after Richard Perry, a gambler involved with multiple sports bribery cases, was also linked to several of Tarkanian’s Runnin’ Rebels.
After 19 seasons in Vegas, Tarkanian was replaced by head coach Rollie Massimino, who brought his newly married assistant coach, Jay Wright. In the wake of Tarkanian’s gilded age, Massimino, who won a national title at Villanova in 1985, pledged to keep the program competitive but he found the landscape tough to negotiate. When Massimino benched star guard J.R. Rider for academic reasons, a local editorial faulting the staff. Interest in the program also encroached on Wright’s family. As his wife Patti was in labor with their first child, the doctor peppered Wright about basketball. “Patty looked up in disbelief,” Wright says.
The child’s first word was “Webel.”
“Vegas was the biggest education of my life,” said Wright, who went on to win two NCAA titles before retiring two years ago amid the implementation of NIL.
Non-scholastic and scholastic basketball teams have long made the journey. Top-flight basketball talent starts trafficking through Las Vegas at grassroots events in high school. In 1995, Sonny Vaccaro started the Big Time Tournament, and what once required two high school gyms has now expanded to 20 or so each summer. Charles, who wears a fedora in public at all times, marvels at the growth.
“I remember going to games, and there was nothing but dirt, dirt and more dirt,” he said. “All these areas are developing now. It can be the capital of sports.”
Plenty has changed in the decades since Tarkanian’s departure, including the arrival of and investment in professional sports. While Pete Rose, the all-time leader in hits for Major League Baseball took up residence in the city following his lifetime ban for betting on the game as a player, pro sports teams stayed away until recently.
Few things were more important to growing the games than when the city opened the T-Mobile Center in 2016, and the NHL granted the rights to owner Bill Foley to bring the Vegas Knights into the league. In 2018, the WNBA allowed the franchise in San Antonio to relocate to Vegas. Two years later, the Raiders became the first NFL team in town.
It wasn’t just the arrival of the teams and the construction of shiny, state-of-the-art facilities. Victories accrued and returns on investment came quickly. The Knights reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 2018 and won it all in 2023. The Aces claimed back-to-back WNBA Championships in 2022 and 2023. In February, the Super Bowl was played at Allegiant Stadium, which fits 61,000 fans for football games.
But basketball has been a constant before, during and after the boom. The NCAA, which maintained a policy prohibiting championship events in states with legal sports betting markets, remained outside the Vegas sphere. To reinforce its concern about gambling in the game, the NCAA posted signs in March Madness locker rooms that warned players not to bet with the image of an orange jumpsuit on them.
It was not until 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the statute that made sports gambling illegal outside Nevada, that the NCAA went all in on Vegas. While conferences like the Pac 12 and Mountain West already held their postseason basketball tournaments in Las Vegas, the NCAA’s had evidence of interest available.
“Our attendance in the Pac-12 went way up when we moved it here from L.A.,” Oregon coach Dana Altman said.
In 2020, the NCAA announced that T-Mobile Center would host the 2024 NCAA Tournament’s west regional. In 2028, the Final Four will be in Vegas.
Other competitions have moved in, as well. Three weeks ago, it was the Major League Baseball Awards show. The Oakland A’s plan to relocate to Las Vegas soon, and sports events, from exhibitions to the NBA Cup Championship, populate the calendar. Last weekend, Formula 1 put on the Las Vegas Grand Prix and temporary stands and scaffolding remain up. In three weeks, a golf showdown features Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffeler against Bryson Dechambeau and Brooks Koepka with a rodeo in between.
“It just kind of never stops,” said Lance Evans, the senior vice president for sports and sponsorships at MGM Grand. “That’s what this city does. The city is incredible at creating programming to drive visitation, get people here and show them a good time.”
When Berger and Orefice started talking about their festival in 2023, coaches and administrators were just starting to negotiate the new NIL terrain, which had come after decades of debates over the merits of amateurism. Rules came and went. The event organizers believed they could pioneer a new format. While early-season college basketball events had been held everywhere from Anchorage to Atlantis, Vegas would be a new frontier for this part of the calendar.
Berger and Orefice insist the NCAA has been easy to work with, and a blanket waiver was issued to allow the festival to have two teams from the same conference play each other.
“They’re telling us exactly what to do,” Berger said. “We’re doing exactly what they tell us to do.”
Concerns about the integrity of the game are being probed once again, too. Last year, Rutgers guard Jeremiah Williams pleaded guilty to underage gambling while at Iowa State, and eventually sued the NCAA to become eligible following a 15-game suspension. This month, word came that former Temple’s men’s basketball team player Hysier Miller is being probed by federal investigators for possibly betting on his own games and manipulating the outcome.
MGM Grand officials maintain that all visiting teams are made aware of the stakes in Vegas.
“We obviously have all the checks and balances as it relates to making sure we don’t have underage gambling,” Evans said. “The town is strictly governed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board so we follow that to the letter. We don’t mess around. It is not worth it for us to life like that.”
“Every game matters,” reads the advertisements for the Players Era Festival around Las Vegas. To coaches, every dollar counts, too.
Players possess unprecedented power and value. Recruits inquire about what they will be paid in NIL, and coaches argue for a salary cap to level the playing field. For now, all know they risk losing talented players to the transfer portal if they are not competitive with full coffers.
“When it was put out in the media that they had seven teams and they were looking for an eighth, we decided to investigate,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. “You’re out raising money from your boosters and your fans to support NIL so if you have an opportunity to do something on your own it would be pretty hard to look them in the face and tell them I didn’t pursue it.”
Questions remain, including whether fans will return for the championship game between Alabama and Oregon and consolation games on Saturday following a two-day layoff for Thanksgiving. Rutgers will face Texas A&M Saturday.
“The concept of three games back to back to back is really hard on the kids,” Berger said. “And there’s a lot of injury risk there. They don’t necessarily get a chance to give not only their bodies but their brains a minute to breathe.”
Berger and Orefice are planning for future iterations, which may include a women’s field and a summer event.
“My bet is next year there will be a lot of people saying we’re doing Thanksgiving in Vegas to go watch Players Era,” Berger says.