Feast Week in flux: How money is reshaping college hoops Thanksgiving contests
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Maui Invitational loses blue-blood programs as money and NIL reshape MTEs
- Players Era offers million-dollar payouts, forcing schools to chase revenue
- Programs pursue schedule flexibility and TV exposure to boost ACC media shares
ACC legend Dave Odom has been part of the Maui Invitational since the beginning — long enough to watch it grow, endure and take on the same resilient spirit as the island itself.
“If you don’t believe that, just go over there and watch as they rebuild Maui from the fires,” said Odom, the three-time ACC coach of the year at Wake Forest who is now the Maui Invitational chairman. “It’s an incredible spirit. And you go and catch it.”
Odom was an assistant coach on the No. 1-ranked Virginia team that famously fell to Chaminade in 1982, a loss that helped launch the Maui Invitational two years later. More than four decades later, however, college basketball’s once-premier Thanksgiving-week tournament is struggling to maintain its prestige. No. 23 N.C. State is the only ranked team in this year’s field.
Still, Odom insists the Invitational’s best days are still ahead.
“I have no fear that our tournament is in any jeopardy,” Odom said. “My thought is that it will get better as we move along.”
The Maui Invitational has been forced to move along, to adapt. For decades, Thanksgiving week (known as Feast Week to college hoops fanatics) meant Maui. Now, increasingly, it means Las Vegas, eye-popping payouts and made-for-TV matchups at the Players Era Festival — a manifestation of how quickly money and NIL have reshaped college basketball.
This week, the Triangle’s three men’s basketball teams find themselves spread across a marketplace in transition: No. 16 UNC at the Fort Myers Tip-Off for Tuesday and Thursday games; No. 4 Duke headed to Chicago for a CBS Sports Thanksgiving Classic matchup against John Calipari and Arkansas; and No. 23 N.C. State competing in Maui, where the Wolfpack lost 85-74 to Seton Hall on Monday.
The landscape is in flux, and each program is navigating it in their own way.
“I mean, Maui is the second-best tournament right now,” N.C. State coach Will Wade said, also pointing out that the Wolfpack committed to the invitational before he was hired. “If you look at Players Era, obviously they’ve got the best teams, but Maui has the second-most top-50 teams right now…we’re happy to be in it. It’s a great tournament. It’s a historic tournament.”
‘They’ve all gone a different way now’
For years, Maui could count on blue bloods like Duke and UNC the same way it counted on sunshine and surf. The Blue Devils were a tournament fixture about “every four years,” Odom said.
“We could count on having Duke,” Odom said. “We could count on having North Carolina and some of the others — Kentucky and UCLA, teams like that — but they’ve all gone a different way now. I understand. We understand, and what we’ve got to do is keep working.”
Money, Odom said, is a “bigger player than ever” in multiple-team events — especially as schools feel the pressure to raise as much capital as possible.
Houston coach Kelvin Sampson made that much clear when asked about his commitment to the Players Era Festival.
“We had no choice,” Sampson said, according to the Houston Chronicle. “Have you seen our budget? Have you seen our fundraising? We had no choice. We have to raise our money. In recruiting right now, the schools with the most money get the best.”
Some programs have cut costs by hosting their own MTEs (see Duke’s Brotherhood Run) or chased higher payouts at events like the Players Era Festival.
That was the case for Kansas. The Jayhawks are one of 18 men’s teams competing in the Players Era Festival — up from eight teams last year — and one of nine ranked squads in the field. Organizers for the Las Vegas-based event have committed upwards of $20 million in participation and prize money, per CBS Sports.
The Triangle schools haven’t taken the bait — at least, not yet — but Self predicted it’s going to be “a necessity” for programs to play in “true NIL opportunities” like Players Era. Traditional MTEs like the Maui Invitational may also need to adjust.
“It would be up to the organizers and the event promoters, to see if they can do whatever the Players Era is doing,” Self said at a Nov. 21 press conference. “So I don’t think they’re in danger, unless maybe they don’t make some adjustments.”
Players Era has promised $1 million to each team, with additional prize money for the top-four finishers. That money can then be used by programs for player payments, a process overseen by NIL Go — a compliance platform operated by the College Sports Commission with assistance from Deloitte.
“If the stories that we hear about the amount of money that each team and individual players are getting [at Players Era], then that has completely flipped the way MTEs have been run in the past, or will be run in the future,” Odom said.
Odom said the cost of securing teams for MTEs like the Maui Invitational has changed “dramatically” over the last few years.
This year’s field reflects that. No. 23 N.C. State headlines an otherwise unranked pool of Seton Hall, USC, Boise State, Washington State, Chaminade, Arizona State, and Texas. In 2026, Arizona, BYU, Ole Miss, Clemson, Colorado State, Providence, VCU and Washington are slated to play.
Odom said the Maui Invitational is working to “remedy” the loss of blue blood programs and maintain what he considers “the best MTE in the country.”
The fields for the next three years are nearly full, Odom said, and adjustments — like easing the three-games-in-three-days format — are under consideration after input from schools. Notably, UConn head coach Dan Hurley said there was “zero chance” he’d participate in a three-game MTE again after the Huskies lost all three contests at last year’s Maui Invitational.
Odom declined to elaborate further on other specific changes the Invitational is considering for future years.
“We’re looking for ideas about how we can put a better product out, which would entice the teams to want to come back, right?” Odom said. “Our meetings are not always about money. Surely we don’t turn our heads and pretend it’s not there, but we think we put a really good product out — one that all the teams are going to want to be involved with.”
‘We can work on us’
Last year, North Carolina played its fourth game of the season in Manoa, Hawaii, followed by three straight in Lahaina as part of the Maui Invitational. By comparison, Hubert Davis’ team enjoyed a five-game homestand to open this year, followed by a full week without games ahead of UNC’s contest against St. Bonaventure on Tuesday at the Fort Myers Tip-Off.
“I’m excited that we get to practice on us,” Davis said after UNC’s win over Navy on Nov. 18. “I felt like over the last two to three weeks, we’ve been practicing, but we’ve been preparing, having games… we’ve got a full week where we can work on us.”
Fort Myers may lack the glamor of Maui or Battle 4 Atlantis, but it makes up for that in predictability. Long blocks of practice. Manageable travel. A rhythm that might prove impossible in a trip built for TV showcases.
In that way, UNC is following a blueprint Duke has embraced in recent years: choose strategically, not sentimentally. Build a Thanksgiving week schedule around internal needs, not tradition. Avoid overextension and prioritize freshness entering league play.
That restraint offers its own form of leverage. Thanksgiving week is one of the most valuable windows for live sports. College basketball is no exception. Nielsen data since 2010 shows the two highest-rated regular-season games aired on Thanksgiving in 2023 and 2024: Michigan State v. Arizona drew 5.18 million viewers; Illinois v. Arkansas drew 5.17 million. Only 11 other games since 2010 have surpassed 4 million — seven of which were UNC-Duke matchups.
That’s why sports marketing agency Intersport is hosting North Carolina and Duke in a pair of nationally-televised network games on Thanksgiving. UNC faces Michigan State as part of the Fort Myers Tip-Off at 4:30 p.m. on FOX, followed by Duke and Arkansas at 8 p.m. on CBS.
“In this particular case, I’d argue that you’re probably going to have the highest-rated regular-season matchups of the season on both Fox and CBS,” said Drew Russell, executive vice president for properties and media assets at Intersport. “That not only has to do with the caliber of opponents and programs, but it’s fortuitous scheduling as it relates to the NFL Thanksgiving Day games as well.”
November is still one of the most crowded months in sports, with pro and college football in full swing. That means prime windows for college basketball have been scarce in the past, said Intersport general manager of basketball Mark Starsiak.
But Starsiak said an opportunity arose as networks started looking for the “right opportunities” to slate other live sports alongside the NFL.
This week, UNC and Duke’s games will follow an NFL Thanksgiving Day schedule that includes Green Bay at Detroit at 1 p.m. on FOX and Kansas City at Dallas at 4:30 p.m. on CBS.
“I think that for college basketball, Feast Week is that tentpole moment,” Starsiak said. “But I think we have proven, and we’re going to continue to prove and explore opportunities to find the top of that tentpole. To be honest, there’s always games going. But how do we take the best ones to network television — which is probably the new piece, I would say, of the last couple of years for college basketball.”
The stakes for UNC and Duke extend beyond exposure.
Under the ACC’s new revenue model, 60% of media payouts (revenue from the conference’s base media rights deal) are attributed to a five-year, weighted TV viewership formula. As a result, marquee network games, like these Thanksgiving Day clashes, directly boost each school’s share of conference revenue.
“In today’s world of revenue generation and revenue share and everything, making money on home games is important… and sometimes that requires us to go on the road,” said Clint Gwaltney, a UNC senior associate athletic director who handles scheduling for the Tar Heel men’s basketball team. “But when we go on the road, we have to look at what that’s going to bring to the table as well.”
This story was originally published November 25, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
