One of the flaws of the transfer portal and the NIL Era is that it can be close to impossible to retain rosters from year to year. The end result is that fans, especially the casual ones, have to spend half the season just to figure out who is on the team. Florida was fortunate this past season to have three of its five starters be returners, but after getting upset by Iowa, there was a chance next year’s squad was going to be completely flipped.
But now, with Alex Condon slated to come back to Gainesville for his senior year, it turns out there is a positive side of the NIL Era that wouldn’t have been possible even five years ago.
Alex Condon slated to return for senior year
There was once a time when stars in college stayed all four years of eligibility, but then the money and allure from the NBA became too great. College basketball then morphed into an era where if a guy showed up to college at all, he was looking to jump ship to the NBA as quickly as possible. There was a stretch where guys were jumping to the NBA Draft just to go undrafted.
Part of what made the 2007 national title squad for Florida unique was that guys like Al Horford, Joakim Noah, and Corey Brewer all opted to come back after winning the 2006 title, but even those guys had one more year of eligibility they gave up in order to head off to the NBA.
This brings us back to Condon, who has now opted to come back for the second straight season, even though he could have left for the NBA and no one would have blinked. Both last year and this year, he is viewed as a fringe 1st-round pick who is more than likely an early-to-mid 2nd-round pick. NIL has its flaws, but the reality is that Condon probably stands to make more money by coming back to Florida than he does jumping to the NBA now.
For Florida fans, it gives the Gators a genuine homegrown star they didn’t need to acquire in the transfer portal and who spent their entire career with the Gators.
That’s rare these days.Â
And who knows, if he can get Rueben Chinyelu and Thomas Haugh to stay with him, Florida is going to enter the 2026-27 season more than likely as the preseason No. 1 in college basketball.
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