According to various media reports on Tuesday, adidas is already stocking up to make a play on current Kansas star Andrew Wiggins, with the shoe giant ready to the throw a 10-year, $140 to $180 million contract at him when he goes pro after this season. Wiggins is widely touted as the top prospect in the 2014 NBA Draft, so let’s move past any issues or claims of amateurism and instead look at the how and why of this supposed deal. Looking at the immediate future, when Wiggins is selected in the first round of the draft next June, he will get the guaranteed four-year contract that comes with selection as a first round pick, per the NBA’s recent collective bargaining agreement. Breaking it down to a simple annual take of salary ($4 million-plus per year) plus endorsements, Wiggins will make a minimum of $18-$22 million per year beginning next summer, assuming of course that he lives up to the overflowing hype while passing through Lawrence.

Why Is This Man Smiling? Nine Figures Waiting For Him Helps

For comparison’s sake, let’s look at some of the more lucrative endorsement deals offered to young professional basketball prospects in the last decade. It’s tough to find a good benchmark, but you have to start with LeBron James’ deal with Nike in 2003, which was reportedly worth over $90 million at the time. In terms of one-year collegiate wonders, Kevin Durant signed a seven-year, $60 million deal with Nike when he came out of Texas, and lest we forget, Derrick Rose signed a monster “lifetime” (actual: 14-year) contract with adidas last year worth $260 million.

And yet, none of those deals are as important as the one that Wiggins could reportedly sign. There are certain number of factors that go into it. First, a company being publicly locked and loaded with such a deal (of course, neither adidas nor Wiggins can confirm it) could set off a behind-the-scenes bidding war and set the stage for preemptive moves like this in the future. Everyone around the game knows that the business of basketball begins when top players are still in the AAU ranks. With the shoe companies having such deep and prolific roots in the summer circuits and associations with the major prep schools, it’s easy to understand how and why many players are predestined for adidas, Nike, Reebok, and so forth from the beginning. Kansas is an adidas school. Wouldn’t it make sense for Wiggins to represent the shoe company on the court this season with such a tremendous payoff waiting for him in the wings? Shabazz Muhammad, UCLA, Dream Vision and adidas all say hello.

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1. Injury watch — two more players received bad news over the weekend, as Xavier backup guard Brad Redford tore his ACL and will miss the entire season as a result.  Redford is a dead-eye three-point shooter (career: 44.7%) who shot fourteen treys for every two he attempted last season —  in fact, in a total of 417 minutes played in 2009-10, he took a mere eight shots from inside the arc all season.  His ability to stretch the defense will definitely be missed by Chris Mack’s team this year.  In other news perhaps less hurtful to his team’s fortunes, New Mexico’s expected starting center Drew Gordon will have surgery to repair the same meniscus that he injured two years ago at UCLA.  Because he was a mid-year transfer, he wasn’t going to be able to suit up for the Lobos anyway until the semester break in mid-December, but this injury also means that he cannot practice for the next four weeks.  He is, however, expected to recover in time to play in December.
2. Oklahoma State’s Matt Pilgrim has been suspended indefinitely by head coach Travis Ford for an undisclosed violation of team rules, as he was in street clothes during OSU’s “Homecoming and Hoops” event on Friday night.  Ford characterized Pilgrim’s possibility of getting back on the team as “maybe” and “we’ll see.”  Last May, Pilgrim was accused of rape by a woman who also served him with a protective order, but that order was dismissed in September and charges were never brought against him due to a lack of evidence.  It seems as if trouble isn’t having difficulty finding the 6’8 senior who averaged 8/7  in only 18 minutes per game last year for the Pokes, but we hope for his sake that he gets things together and finishes out his final season in Stillwater strong.
3. We were wondering why LeBryan Nash committed to Oklahoma State last week — no disrespect intended, but OSU basketball typically doesn’t appeal to out-of-state top ten recruits in the same way that some other schools do.  Well, we thought that until we saw this feature describing the new hoops facilities at the school.  We dunno about you, but the hairdryers built exclusively into the wall at a certain height for big men would do it for us [ed. note: Nash is 6’7, so maybe that was the clincher for him too?].
4. Gary Parrish gives us his top ten big men in America, and we have to say that we completely agree with who he chooses at #1.  The national media is fixated on Harrison Barnes and Kyrie Irving with good reason, but Jared Sullinger is going to be just as big a name as the others in very short order.  As for the rest of his list, the only quibbles we have are that Marcus Morris seems a few spots too high, while Trey Thompkins and Perry Jones seem too low.  Oh, and in case you missed it from last week and speaking of Mr. Barnes, here are Parrish’s top ten wing players.
5. Mike DeCourcy writes a great article examining the timeline for the Bruce Pearl revelations that came out last Thursday night and subsequently taking Tennessee officials to task for being dishonest, misleading and otherwise having engaged in gross misconduct.  Despite all of the top bigwigs in the school and athletic department having full knowledge that Pearl’s contract had been voided on September 9 of this year, not a single person in the room mentioned it during Pearl’s mea culpa press conference on September 10.  Have you ever watched an out-of-control child going berserk and wonder how he could be so obnoxious… that is, until you see how the parents handle themselves?  We shouldn’t wonder why Pearl felt like he could so willfully flout the rules there in Knoxville anymore — wethinks that mystery is solved.

1. Horrid news from Texas, as Texas A&M recruit and current prep senior Tobi Oyedeji died from injuries sufffered when the Toyota Avalon he was driving veered out of his lane and hit another car head-on at 6:15 am yesterday morning, killing the other driver as well as himself.  He was heading home after his senior prom and an after-party at a local Dave & Buster’s.  We hate to wildly speculate about this without knowing the facts, but we are very hopeful that his toxicity screening comes back negative.  A tragedy like this one doesn’t need additional reasons to hate everything about it.  RIP young fella.
2. This Chicago Tribune article about Big Ten expansion hones in on just how impressively the Big Ten Network has grown in its three-year existence.  The mere fact that we’re discussing expansion as a proximate cause of the success of the channel in such a short period of time shows the phenomenal foresight that the conference had to take the substantial risk and initiate this endeavor.  It’s potentially paying off in droves now.
3. While we’re on the topic of expansion, this is an interesting article we stumbled across that considers the endgame if the major NCAA football schools eventually break away from the rest of the organization.  NCAA Tournament stalwarts like Siena and Butler would no longer be a part of the Madness, a frightening proposition for those of us who think the little guys make up so much of the magic of the Tournament.
4. Mike DeCourcy points out some of the expected impact transfers we should all keep an eye on in 2010-11.  Speaking of transfers, 6’11 JuCo Eloy Vargas from Miami-Dade CC picked Kentucky as his destination of choice, likely vaulting John Calipari’s recruiting haul to the #1 spot for the second year in a row at the school.  Vargas began his career at rival Florida two years ago, seeing spot time in nine games prior to injuring his ankle and missing the rest of the 2008-09 season.
5. Last week the Hartford Courant listed some of the game’s top coaching salaries in light of Jim Calhoun’s new $13M, five-year contract.  This list is not exhaustive, as several coaches at private schools such as Coach K at Duke and Jim Boeheim at Syracuse are undoubtedly also in this range, but it is interesting to see nevertheless.

Average yearly salaries for some other men’s basketball coaches
John Calipari, Kentucky – $3.95 million (8 years for $31.65 million in 2009)
Billy Donovan, Florida – $3.3 million (6 years for $21 million in 2007)
Bill Self, Kansas – $3 million (10 years for $30 million)
Tom Izzo, Michigan State – $2.6 million (7-year extension in 2009)
Thad Matta, Ohio State – $2.5 million (10-year extension in 2006)
Tom Crean, Indiana – $2.36 million (10 years for $23.6 million in 2008)
Bruce Pearl, Tennessee – $2.3 million (6-year extension in 2008)
Rick Pitino, Louisville – $2.25 million (6 years for $13.5 million in 2007)
Rick Barnes, Texas – $2.15 million (10-year extension in 2007)
Roy Williams, North Carolina – $2.11 million (10-year extension in 2005)