St. John's massive NIL payment revealed after Tounde Yessoufou chooses transfer portal over NBA Draft
St. John’s men’s basketball has been reborn since hiring head coach Rick Pitino, but the college legend doesn’t have many years left leading the program. Pitino will turn 74 years old before the 2026-27 regular season, making him the oldest power conference coach in America by a couple years over Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Tennessee’s Rick Barnes, and Houston’s Kelvin Sampson.
Pitino led St. John’s to a No. 2 seed in the 2025 NCAA tournament, but the team lost in the round of 32. This past season, St. John’s repeated as the Big East tournament champions, but their March Madness run ended in the Sweet 16 as a No. 5 seed. Pitino is going all out to put a Final Four caliber team together before he eventually retires, and on Wednesday night the Red Storm landed the final piece of what should be another elite roster.
Baylor wing Tounde Yessoufou was thought to be a lock to enter the 2026 NBA Draft for most of his freshman year. Questions about his three-point shooting and playmaking eventually pushed him down the board, and when he entered his name in the transfer portal, many started to wonder if a college program would out-bid the NBA for his services. That’s exactly what happened: Yessoufou withdrew from the NBA and transferred to St. John’s at the college withdrawal deadline this week, and he reportedly got a huge sum of money to do it.
Yessoufou will reportedly make “upwards of $7 million” playing for St. John’s next season, according to reporter Aaron Heisen. It’s a shocking figure, but that’s what talent goes for in today’s era of college hoops.
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