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Great Osobor recently transferred from Utah State to Washington. Photograph: Icon Sportswire/Getty Images
In US college sports, the biggest money still goes to the coaches, like Jimbo Fisher, the Texas A&M football coach whose prize for failure over the past few seasons was a $77m buyout. But the players have begun to take a piece of the pie, too, for the first time in the 150-plus-year history of sports on campuses. And one of the biggest scores of all has just gone to a Spanish-born, English-trained basketball star.
Before becoming a star on the US college basketball circuit, Great Osobor played in England for Myerscough College in Preston. Osobor, a 6ft 8in forward, was not a highly touted prospect before coming stateside. He began his career in 2021 at Montana State, a lower-tier Division I school with almost no history of basketball success. Osobor was just a role player for the Bobcats, and after two seasons, he transferred to Utah State, another small DI institution in Logan, a little more than an hour north of Salt Lake City. Osobor was a breakout star of the 2023-24 season, leading the Aggies with 18 points and nine rebounds per game.
And in a newly liberalized college sports economy, the 21-year-old has cashed in. In the old days, athletes could not even switch schools without sitting on the bench for a season under NCAA rules designed to discourage transfers. That rule gradually stopped being enforced and went away officially in 2021. Now Osobor will play for his third school in four years, and he’ll be compensated handsomely for it. ESPN reported that Osobor will collect $2m in so-called “name, image, and likeness” considerations to play for the University of Washington. That appears to make Osobor the best-paid player in the collegiate ranks, and all for someone who drew almost no fanfare until a season ago.
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Osobor’s story is a good one. Growing up in Spain, he didn’t…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/great-osobor-english-basketball-star-090035568.html
Author : The Guardian
Publish date : 2024-05-21 09:00:35
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