Great Osobor: English basketball star set to make $2m before turning pro

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.

At USU, Osobor was a dominant force as a scorer and rebounder. A throwback power forward who barely bothers with three-pointers but loves to back his man down in the paint and score with either creativity or muscle, Osobor proved too much for the competition in the Mountain West Conference. Osobor was sometimes outright unstoppable, like when he scored 32 points on 11-of-14 shooting (plus 10-of-16 at the foul line) in a game against an overmatched Air Force in January.

Washington won the sweepstakes, beating out a group led by Louisville and Texas Tech. The Huskies have made just one NCAA Tournament in the past 13 years, and they are still looking for a breakthrough under seventh-year coach Mike Hopkins. Washington would not normally land a player that recruiting agencies considered the best player, or at least one of the top five, available.

It will make for a funny story: Three years into a world in which college athletes can be paid (albeit still by third parties, not their schools), the best-compensated player in campus basketball will not be a 17-year-old wunderkind with a five-star prospect rating. It will be a power forward who received his basketball training in England and then played his first three American college seasons at two universities, Montana State and Utah State, that many fans of the sport have never given a lick of attention. Now Osobor will be a centerpiece for a team in the Big Ten, the richest conference in college sports. (Another reason the Huskies may have been so willing to pony up: In their first year in a difficult conference after leaving the Pac-12, the school and its fans are eager to comport themselves competitively.)

College sports have always had haves and have-nots, and the advent of transfer culture and player compensation has allowed Osobor to shift to a brighter spotlight and make life-changing money. Without the ability to transfer freely, Osobor would have played an entire college career at Montana State, where he was struggling to emerge as anything more than a member of a supporting cast. And without the ability to take money for his services, the on-court value Osobor creates would have been left for others to collect. His story is a triumph for a new way of doing business more than it is a tale of lost tradition.