You really think that Collins jumps ship knowing full well that he'd have a large rebuild at Notre Dame to take on? Chicagoland is Collins' home. As long as Northwestern pays him, I don't see him leaving. He's building a legacy at Northwestern. I think that means more to him(he could've easily left after the 1st tourney appearance).
At some point, the grass isn't always greener. I think Porter Moser is learning that exact thing right now. I think the jump into the Big 12 was a bit much for him(recruiting wise)
While previous posts seem to have a lot of smoke coming from the Moser to ND camp, I would strongly consider Notre Dame if I were Collins. The ACC is going to be a weaker conference going forward, especially with USC and UCLA coming into the Big Ten.
Plus the recruiting area is similar in South Bend and he is used to the high academic standards. Northwestern has been so strong this year because he was able to keep longtime program mainstays like Beran, Audige and Boo from leaving, but they signed up to play for him before NIL. We've already seen Nance lured away, thankfully for them it hasn't seemed to hurt much.
But it's just going to get harder than ever to keep up talentwise with the transfer portal and lack of NIL dollars at Northwestern.
Notre Dame likely does not allocate much NIL money towards basketball, but it's still a bigger and more rabid fanbase in terms of athletics, which is helpful.
