Purdue Men's Basketball's Bloom Talks NIL and Rev Share landscape

There are many questions and misconceptions about Purdue’s stance on NIL and Revenue Share in the brave new world of college athletics. With the House Settlement finally becoming “the law of the land” in college sports on July 1, 2025 Purdue men’s basketball director of basketball operations and administration Elliot Bloom shared his thoughts on how it affects coach Matt Painter‘s program and all of Purdue athletics. It has been edited from an Oct. 30, 2025 interview on Gold and Black LIVE for clarity.

GoldandBlack.com: There still some education of the fan base that needs to occur with how Purdue is handling the Rev Share and NIL (Name-Image-Likeness) environment.

Bloom: Fans are so passionate and college sports are tied to emotions, right? Sometimes a deep breath is required and letting those emotions subside. And then it is important to really dig into the facts of the matter.

It’s important to remember that we’re still tn this 2025-26 season, which is still the Wild Wild West, because collective money was used to build these rosters. When the collective world existed, it really was the Wild Wild West.  And, from a basketball standpoint, we were able to keep our guys because of that. You are facing some rosters with outlandish numbers if some of the reporting is to be believed, but that is going out the window moving forward. Rev Share (the $20.5 million, which escalates a little each year), and the rules around it have not yet fully kicked in yet.

(Purdue athletic director) Mike Bobinski has done an incredible job working with campus leadership so that we are fully funded. We haven’t had to lay off half the department or make overwhelming changes to how we operate. Some of my counterparts at other schools are not in the same situation, they have had to lay off people.

GoldandBlack.com: How is NIL environment been since July 1?

Bloom: The NIL portal “NIL GO” (which approves NIL deals for college athlhas been up and running since July and I don’t know every sport around here, and the deals that they’ve done, but our guys have had a tremendous amount of success, and it’s been, it’s been very smooth. We’ve had a lot of deals submitted and approved, and they’re cultivated in a number of ways. You may have a player’s agent that brings a deal forward and says, “Hey, here’s the deal. Let’s upload it and let’s get it done.”There may be a deal may be a guy getting a cup of coffee (someplace) in town, and the owner of the coffee shop says, “Hey, would you want to do some stuff with me?” I’ll throw you $2000 (for example) and I need some tweets and, maybe show up here on Saturday and do some autographs, whatever that might be.” The attitude is Great. Let’s do it.! Then that deal gets submitted, and all those kinds of deals have been great and gone through, and that’s really what the NIL rule was intended to do

GoldandBlack.com: How do you think compliance will be among schools?

Bloom: The big elephant in the room is some of the schools that are now trying to circumvent these rules and pay kids on the front end that are high schoolers before they get to college, or some schools who are maybe coloring outside the lines and just old school bag of money. Here you go. It’s being naive to think that’s going to happen.

We’re not going to do that from a men’s basketball standpoint. We’re not going to do that here at Purdue. But that could rear its head again as we go down the road.

GoldandBlack.com: But you are confident the playing field will be evened up?

Bloom:  I do feel like the playing field is going to be evened up. Now, there may be situations where certain schools have built-in advantages if they live in a bigger market and have more companies in that market, which may allow for more high-end deals. It may present a slight advantage, but the playing field, I believe, will become as even as possible through this new system.

Is it perfect? No, and nobody is saying it is. Some things need to be worked on and tweaked.
Some of the things you are hearing about, some players getting money in high school before they get here, that’s got to get worked on.

GoldandBlack.com: As a fan of Purdue football, what do you see out of Coach Barry Odom and his approach to roster development?

Bloom: Again, Mike, President (Mung) Chiang and the Board (of Trustees) have done an excellent job of road mapping this thing to put us in a position to be successful. And I can’t be a bigger fan of Coach Odom and his staff.

They’re setting themselves up to be in a really good position. People have to understand turning over a roster with 80-plus guys and dealing with the schedule they faced; it’s not going to happen right away. I’m a Purdue guy. At the end of the day, I’m a fan, I’m a grad. We wanted those wins (for football) too, but they are building it the right way. Purdue isn’t going to be a school that jumps into the market and grabs players year after year. We’re not going to be that on either the basketball or football side. It’s just not what we’re set up to do. We’re going to be a developmental place, and that’s going to take a little time. Fans don’t want to hear that, but that’s reality. It took us a while for men’s basketball to get that in place and to develop guys. And I argue that we develop players about as well as any program in the country from a men’s basketball standpoint, but that’s what we need to do to be successful.