The money changed everything. UAB basketball needs to keep up.

The average high-major college basketball roster costs $13.5 million this season. The average team in the American Conference — where UAB plays — operates on somewhere between $2 million and $4 million. The cheapest team in the SEC spends north of $10 million. The most expensive spend north of $25 million.

That gap is not new. What is new is how fast it is accelerating, and what it is doing to programs like UAB that have spent decades competing above their weight class.

After UAB's 97-65 exhibition loss at preseason No. 24 Vanderbilt on Monday night, Andy Kennedy sat down with Steve Irvine of the Birmingham Banner and said what a lot of mid-major coaches are thinking but few will say publicly.

"It's just such a vast difference in levels," Kennedy said. "You see it. I see it. If you think about our first few teams, we didn't see that. We had the first year with COVID, and then we had our two teams numerically that were the best our second and third year. Then we were able to get Yax, so we were able to keep hanging in there. All I'm saying is the caliber of player, size, strength, speed is evident. To overcome that, boy, you got to be really, really efficient and we were neither. As a result, you get beat by 30."

Kennedy isn't complaining. He's diagnosing. And CBS Sports just handed him the X-ray.

The numbers

On Tuesday, CBS Sports published the most comprehensive accounting of college basketball roster spending to date. Matt Norlander and Isaac Trotter contacted more than 100 sources across the sport to determine how much every Power Five program — plus Gonzaga — is paying its players for the 2026-27 season. The findings are staggering.

The average high-major roster costs $13.5 million. A year ago, it was $7 million. It nearly doubled in one offseason.

The SEC is the most expensive league in the sport. Its median roster is worth approximately $16 million. The cheapest team in the conference — Georgia — is still "easily north of $10 million," according to CBS Sports' research.

And here are the two programs UAB is playing in exhibition this month:

Vanderbilt, which just beat the Blazers by 32, sits in Tier 3 of the CBS report — between $15.1 million and $17.5 million. That number is driven in large part by the retention of Tyler Tanner, a preseason First Team All-American.

Ole Miss, UAB's exhibition opponent next week, is in the same tier. Between $15.1 million and $17.5 million.

UAB is not on the chart. The CBS study covers 80 programs. All Power Five (SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, Big East), plus Gonzaga. The American Conference is not included because it is not a high-major league anymore, at least in terms of finances. According to a separate market study by Opendorse, the average men's basketball NIL budget in the American falls between $2 million and $4 million.

The floor of high-major spending — Stanford, operating with the fewest resources of any school in the study — is $5 million. That is above the American Conference average.

Vanderbilt's roster is worth four to six times what UAB can spend. That is the "vast difference in levels" Kennedy was describing.

What the gap actually does

The raw dollar figure is one thing. What it does to roster construction is another.

The CBS report reveals that elite centers commanded $5 million on the open market this offseason. Top guards and wings approached $4 million. A single player at a high-major program can earn more than an entire American Conference roster is worth.

But the gap Kennedy is really talking about isn't the star at the top. It's the middle.

When DePaul — picked in the bottom half of the Big East — is spending between $7 million and $10 million on its roster, that means mid-major players, particularly upperclassmen, can earn mid-six-figure salaries as role players at high-major programs. In many cases, a player can make significantly more as the ninth or tenth man at a power conference school than he can as a superstar at a mid-major.

Efrem "Butta" Johnson is the example. Johnson played three seasons at UAB, started for two of them and was a key rotation piece on teams that won 67 games. Last spring he entered the transfer portal and signed with Clemson — a Tier 5 program in the CBS study, spending between $10 million and $12 million on its roster. Johnson appeared in 35 games, started nine and averaged 6.3 points per game. A reserve.

A few years ago, a player in Johnson's position might have played a few seasons in a professional league in Spain or South America. Now he can stay in college, move up one level and make more money as a backup than he could as a starter. That's the math.

Opendorse's research confirms it. Athletes who moved from mid-major programs to high-major programs saw a five-times earnings increase, according to the firm's 2026 college basketball market study. Five times.

The problem for coaches like Kennedy isn't losing the generational talent. He knows he can't keep a Yaxel Lendeborg forever, and he wouldn't want to. Lendeborg played two seasons at UAB, averaged 15.8 points and 11.0 rebounds, won two AAC Defensive Player of the Year awards, transferred to Michigan, helped the Wolverines win the 2026 national championship and went No. 11 to the Golden State Warriors. Kentucky offered him $7 million to $9 million in NIL, according to Fox Sports. That is a success story, and Kennedy would be the first to tell you so. A program like UAB develops a player like Lendeborg, he leaves for the highest level and everyone benefits — it proves the development pipeline works, and it helps the next recruit believe UAB can get him there.

The problem is losing the Butta Johnsons. The solid, experienced, productive players who hold a roster together. The guys who aren't leaving for the NBA — they're leaving for a pay raise one rung up the ladder. That creates a program in constant flux, rebuilding every year, replacing not just stars but the connective tissue that makes a team a team.

What UAB has built

It is worth pausing here to state what UAB basketball actually is, because the institution cannot protect an asset it does not understand.

In 47 seasons of existence, UAB men's basketball has a .632 winning percentage — 965 wins and 562 losses, according to Sports-Reference.com. That is the fifth-highest winning percentage among non-power programs that also play FBS football. The program has made the NCAA Tournament 17 times. It has 31 seasons with 20 or more wins. It has had five losing seasons. Five. In 47 years. And the worst of those was only four games under .500.

Think about that, and sit with it for a second. It's remarkable in the context of resources.

There are very few mid-major programs in the country with that kind of consistency. But it is also why UAB basketball is so underappreciated — they always win, they just haven't had sustained peaks. In the modern era, sustaining that level of winning is even harder. And that is where you hit the resource gap. UAB had already hit that gap before anyone strung the letters N-I-L together in a sentence.

Gene Bartow built it. He took UAB to the Elite Eight in 1982, just four years after the program's first game. He made the NCAA Tournament nine times. Mike Anderson inherited the foundation and added his own layer — taking Nolan Richardson's philosophy of relentless tempo and overlooked talent and turning it into three consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances from 2004 to 2006. When Richardson arrived at Arkansas, his message to the SEC was blunt: they could have their McDonald's All-Americans; he'd take his kids from Burger King and beat them. Anderson learned under Richardson and brought that same defiance to UAB. It worked. UAB beat No. 1 seed Kentucky in the 2004 NCAA Tournament. UAB beat top-25 teams routinely.

Kennedy has continued it. His first six seasons have produced a 145-62 record, two NCAA Tournament appearances, an NIT championship appearance, an NIT quarterfinal win at Vanderbilt and the development of a national championship contributor and NBA lottery pick. In the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons, Kennedy assembled rosters through the transfer portal that could compete with anyone — Jelly Walker from Seton Hall and Tulane, Trey Jemison from Clemson, KJ Buffen from Ole Miss. Those teams won 56 games in two years.

That was before the money changed.

Gonzaga can't happen here

There is a temptation to point to Gonzaga as proof that a mid-major can sustain excellence indefinitely. But Gonzaga exists in a context that does not apply to the Deep South.

Gonzaga does not pay for football. Every dollar the university invests in athletics can flow toward basketball. Gonzaga is not surrounded by SEC programs with nine-figure athletic budgets competing for the same recruits in the same geography. Washington and Washington State — the former Power Four programs in Gonzaga's backyard — are in Tier 7 of the CBS report, spending between $5 million and $7 million on basketball. Gonzaga, included in the study as an honorary high-major, is in Tier 3 — spending more on basketball than both of its in-state former power neighbors.

UAB operates in the opposite environment. Alabama, Auburn and the rest of the SEC are not indifferent neighbors. The SEC has five of the 15 biggest spenders in college basketball. Its average roster costs $16 million. Programs in the Deep South do not look at a rising mid-major the way the Pacific Northwest looks at Gonzaga. In other parts of the country, fans see a mid-major doing well and they think, "Oh isn't that cute? Look at that cute little puppy. Good doggy!" If you think it's that way in the South, well, you ain't from around here. Nah, someone from the SEC is taking Fido out behind the barn and you're not going to see or hear from that little yapper ever again.

The ask

Kennedy is not asking UAB to match Vanderbilt. He knows that isn't realistic, and he said as much Monday night. But there is a difference between competing with Vanderbilt and competing with your peers.

The American Conference programs that are investing — Memphis, South Florida, Wichita State — are spending at the top of that $2 million to $4 million range, and in some cases above it. If UAB wants to remain one of the most successful mid-major programs in the country, it needs to be competitive within that tier. It needs to be able to outbid North Texas for an impact transfer. It needs to be able to retain a Butta Johnson.

UAB doesn't have to match power budgets. But it must make the institutional commitment to an asset that has delivered 47 years of consistent winning and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of institutional exposure. CBS Sports' own closing question frames the stakes: "Can you make the Big Dance when you rank in the bottom 10% of spenders?" UAB isn't in the bottom 10 percent of the high-major hierarchy. It isn't on the chart at all.

The money changed everything. It changed who you can recruit, who you can keep and how fast you have to rebuild when someone leaves. Kennedy sees it. The data confirms it. The institution needs to see it too.

UAB basketball is one of the most valuable assets this university has ever had. Forty-seven years of winning built that. Protecting it requires investment — not at the level of the SEC, but at the level of the programs UAB is competing against every night in the American.

You don't have to hand Andy Kennedy a blank check. But you can't send him to a gunfight with a slingshot either.