The last time Indiana State had a basketball program worth getting this excited about, Mike Alley was an undergrad on campus.
Alley, a former bank CEO who now owns Patriot Investments, an Indianapolis-based venture capital holding company, recalls being a senior at ISU in 1978 when the most famous ISU basketball player, Larry Bird, was at the inception of his legend.
The next year, Alley had taken a job in Cincinnati, where he got to witness Bird and ISU win in the NCAA regionals en route to the school’s historic national title matchup, a loss against Magic Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans.
Since then, the program has only made three other NCAA tournaments, the most recent in 2011, and never past the second round.

“We did not adequately capitalize,” Alley said of Bird’s Indiana State tenure, which begat a bronze statue and footnote in the college basketball history books, but little in the way of program tradition.
The 27-5 Sycamores are set to play Saturday afternoon against Northern Iowa in the semifinals of the Missouri Valley Conference championship, looking to solidify their first NCAA tourney bid in a dozen years.

Lost opportunity looms large over ISU and its ramshackle hometown of Terre Haute, Ind., whose surrounding county of Vigo has the highest unemployment rate—and second-highest poverty level—in the state. The public university has also fallen on hard times: Over the last six years, enrollment plummeted from 13,045 students in the fall of 2018 to just 7,660 this spring semester.
As one of Indiana State’s biggest patrons and former Board of Trustees president, Alley is insistent that the unfulfilled promise of Bird’s success not be repeated in the NIL era of its latest generational hoops talent, sophomore center Robbie Avila and its third-year head coach, Josh Schertz. 
“Not only do we have a really talented player in Robbie—as well as [junior guard] Julian Larry and [junior forward] Jayson Kent and others—we have an extraordinary coach,” said Alley. “And we didn’t have that in 1979.”
After being hired in 2021, Schertz quickly revitalized a basketball program that had languished under its previous coach, Greg Lansing. The team’s year-two turnaround came thanks in large part to the signing of the 6-foot-10 Avila, who as a freshman last season was key to the Sycamores’ 23-13 record and College Basketball Invitational quarterfinals appearance.  After reeling off 10 straight victories to start this season, Indiana State landed its first AP men’s basketball top 25 ranking since Bird flew the nest 45 years ago.
The team’s national intrigue as a prospective Cinderella story has been signal-boosted by the unique allure of Avila, ISU’s roly-poly, bicep-tattooed, spectacle-adorned big man, whose methodical, below-the-rim guile has earned comparisons to Denver Nuggets MVP Nikola Jokić.
It doesn’t take a financier like Alley to know that keeping both Avila and Schertz in Terre Haute next year is going to take more money—and right quick.

That was the premise of a gathering convened last Monday with around 50 ISU alumni and boosters, which featured fundraising pitches for both the university’s foundation—to finance Schertz’s retention—and its dedicated NIL collective, Crossroad of Champions—to keep Avila happy.
Schertz is being compensated $365,000 per year (plus five-figures of incentive bonuses), according to a copy of his contract, which was already amended and extended last September. The school, which reported spending a total of $2.52 million on men’s basketball in the Fiscal Year 2023, is now in the process of renegotiating the coach’s deal again, in the hopes of warding off other suitors.
Avila, meanwhile, is receiving $30,000 this year through Crossroad of Champions, according to the collective’s chairman John Newton. The star center’s allotment is about a third of what Crossroad has committed to its full slate of ISU athletes, having thus far raised around $200,000. (In addition to the cash, an area car dealership, York Chevrolet, has outfitted Avila with a Chevy Blazer.)
Aside from one high jumper on ISU’s track team, who was given an NIL deal of $3,000 over two years, Newton said all of its other NIL spending, some $92,000, went to men’s basketball players. Schertz, according to Newton, has thus far mandated that no freshman receive NIL dollars through Crossroad, under the notion that they first must prove their worth.
The collective launched in June 2022, almost a whole year after NIL went into effect. The 77-year-old Newton came out of his second retirement to command the effort on a volunteer basis, after nearly a half-century working in various capacities for Indiana State, including as the longtime executive of the ISU Alumni Association.
These days, Newton spends many of his waking hours seated at his kitchen table, making phone calls and sending out mailers (“I buy my own stamps,” he insists) in an effort to cultivate ISU’s modest donor base for NIL dollars.
Newton says the collective is seeking to have at least $300,000 in the bank for next year, with the intention of offering Avila between $75,000 and $90,000. Newton acknowledges that this will still pale to the six-figure offers the Missouri Valley Conference all-league player could command at bigger schools, but hopes that the comforts, coaching and charm of Indiana State will make up for the shortage.
“We are small potatoes in the big scheme of NIL,” said Newton, “but this coach has created an atmosphere where we can put our arms around people.”
Is that and, say, $90,000 enough to keep Avila?
Though noncommittal, Joseph Nery, the Chicago-based attorney who serves as Avila’s marketing agent, called that pay range “admirable,” and suggested it could be sufficient in light of Avila’s other earning opportunities. 
After Indiana State’s Feb. 28 victory over Evansville, in which Avila had a dazzling 35-point performance, Kentucky sports talk radio host Matt Jones posted on X (formerly Twitter) a highlight video along with a new potential nickname for the portly post player: “Cream Abdul Jabbar.” Jones’ tweet went viral and the marketing floodgates swung wide open.
“We are getting bombarded by offers,” Nery said in a phone interview
In just the last several days, Nery told Sportico, Avila has signed on to collaborate with four merchandise companies; is close to finalizing a partnership/internship with a Major League Baseball team; and has entered discussions with several eye-glass manufacturers, including Oakley, about an Avila-branded line of protective lenses. Other recent business entreaties have come from as far away as Latin America.
Nery said the “conservative goal” now is for the player to lock in between $75,000 and $100,000 worth of NIL money from the recent spate of overtures, which would be in addition to Avila’s remittance from Crossroad.
“Robbie loves Indiana State, but like any college athlete, if there is an opportunity to capitalize on that, you want to do that—you would be crazy not to,” said Nery. “We want to make it fruitful for him, and the university wants to do the same thing. If the university collaborates with us, that is a great step towards making sure he stays there. The fact they are trying to raise that much is a great sign and obviously something we want to hear and see, as well.”
For now, Avila has made no decisions about next year, and Nery says it’s his intent to keep the player’s attention on the cornerstone of his brand building.
“I am trying to keep as much of the other stuff away and out of Robbie’s focus so he can completely focus on basketball,” said Nery.
Alley thinks Crossroad of Champions’ budget will exceed $300,000, perhaps by a multiple. Still, there are no delusions that Crossroad can ever battle with the bank accounts of the high-major programs’ multimillion-dollar collectives–even for a single player. And in the desperate effort to capitalize on the moment, Alley worries about a potential long-term chilling effect of taking a bold but failed attempt.
“It is a huge risk and a huge challenge to raise the money necessary to truly compete with some of the bigger players that have much more established programs, particularly in basketball, and we have had a pretty brief history of raising money for our collective,” said Alley.
In light of all that, York Chrevolet’s owner, Rob York, says that in a world of limited resources, the best money Indiana State supporters can spend is on Schertz. 
“If we were to lose Coach, or if he were to pursue a different opportunity,” York said, “I personally don’t think Robbie would stay here for even an unlimited amount of resources.”