ROSEMONT, Ill.-Name, Image and Likeness is a hot-button issue in college sports. So naturally it was a big topic of conversation at Big Ten Basketball Media Days on Thursday.

Northwestern head coach Chris Collins said that the school is “all in” on making the NIL investment necessary to compete in the new and ever-changing world of college sports. Even though they were the last Big Ten school to form a collective, he feels his program is competitive now and will do whatever is necessary to continue to be in the future.

He feels even more certain about that under new athletic director, Mark Jackson, who, he points out, was previously with USC football and Villanova basketball.

“He gets it,” said Collins.

The school’s commitment is one of the reasons that the coach, now in his 12th year, is planning to stay at Northwestern.

“What I do know is that Mark Jackson and the administration and our donors and everybody is all in,” he said. “That’s a big reason I want to continue doing it at NU.

“If I didn’t feel that I wouldn’t want to be here. I’m competitive. We’ve worked hard to be at a place where we’re competitive and we can’t stand pat and keep pushing the envelope in more areas.”

Take last year, for example. Collins said that his program’s No. 1 priority was to retain the top six players who could come back to Northwestern – Brooks Barnhizer, Ty Berry, Matt Nicholson, Nick Martinelli, Luke Hunger and Blake Smith.

“As soon as we lost last year, our No. 1 goal is to get our team back,” he said. “Our top six priorities were to get the six guys back that everybody was trying to steal.”

The Wildcats put good enough NIL packages together to get all six.

The irony here is that the top two targets on the board – Barnhizer and Berry – said that they would have come back to Northwestern regardless of the NIL money.

“For me, transferring was not an option,” said Berry, a grad student now in his fifth year. “Northwestern is home for me. I feel like I’ve been through thick and thin ever since my freshman year with Coach Collins. I feel like Northwestern is family and I bleed purple.

“For me, it didn’t matter. The money is not a thing for me. Regardless, I wasn’t going anywhere else. It’s a blessing to just be playing high-level basketball like this anyways. It was never a thought for me.”

Barnhizer, a senior, said that last March, during the NCAA Tournament, Collins reassured both him and Berry that the school would reward them the next season. They looked at each other incredulously.

“Coach came up to is and said, ‘After this year, we’re going to take care of you.’ We were like, ‘What? We don’t need this. We’re ready to play.’

“It’s a blessing that they’re trying to do that for us. One thing about guys in our program, we love ball. That kind of stuff is just icing on the cake. We just love this program.”

Of course, things aren’t always that easy. Collins says that the program’s priorities change year-to-year, so retention might not always be where they spend most of their money. Recruits and transfers don’t feel that way about a program they haven’t already been around for years, and not all current players will feel as strongly about Northwestern as Barnhizer and Berry.

But whatever the program needs, Collins feels that the school and the athletic department will support him.

“Are we always gonna have the money maybe some other programs do? No. But are we going to be competitive? Yes,” he said.

Collins points out that Northwestern was the only Big Ten school to win both a bowl game and an NCAA Tournament game last year.

“In order to do that, we’ve got to keep investing,” he said.

The new $800 million Ryan Field that is being constructed on Central Avenue is further proof.

“If you’re gonna build that and you don’t invest in players, it’s not gonna work,” he said.

He’s not wrong.

NIL is going to continue to change as the House settlement is eventually implemented in college sports. Schools will most likely be paying players themselves, and revenue sharing is probably coming. No one knows what the number will be, but it will be high.

Collins knows that the school will have his back, whatever it takes.

“I’m very confident that all of us at NU – our administration, university leadership – are going to be behind the investment of us being [competitive],” he said.

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Cats on the mend: Northwestern was bitten hard by the injury bug at the end of the 2023-24 season, when they lost two starters for the stretch run: Berry suffered a torn meniscus in his knee and Nicholson hurt his foot. Both missed the NCAA Tournament.

Then, over the summer, Barnhizer was wearing a boot due to an undisclosed injury that prevented him from playing on the team’s European tour.

Even though his full team hasn’t played together since February, when Berry went down, Collins is confident that they will be ready to go by the start of the season.

“They are all trending well, everyone is progressing,” he said. “None are fully cleared, but the expectations is that all three will be ready to roll on Nov. 4 [for the season opener against Lehigh].”

Collins has said that Barnhizer’s injury was a minor one. On Thursday, he said that Berry and Nicholson had “major surgery” so doctors “didn’t want to speed up recovery too much.”

He said that Berry, the team’s best shooter, is closest to being 100% and “doing a lot in practice.”

“I feel like I’m back to where I was pre-injury,” said Berry. “Right now, I feel like I’m shooting it better than I ever have.”

As for Barnhizer, he said, “I feel great. Can’t wait for the season to start.”

Home sweet home: The Big Ten added four more teams this offseason, meaning four long trips to the West Coast and four more hostile arenas.

According to Collins, it also means that winning on your home court is more important than ever, as is screaming students and fans. Welsh-Ryan Arena needs to continue to be one of the toughest places to play in the conference for opposing teams.

“We need that support,” said Collins. “We need the students coming out. It’s so important at this level.”

Last year, the Wildcats went 9-1 in Big Ten games at “The Welsh” as players and students called it on Thursday, with the one loss to Iowa coming when three starters – Berry, Nicholson and Ryan Langborg – were out with injuries.

Collins estimates that the team won “three, four, five games we could’ve easily lost if our fans didn’t pull us through.”

Berry remembers his first couple years in Evanston, when The Welsh was often half-full or, if it was full, was at least 50% opposing fans. Now?

“Our fan base has been nothing but tremendous,” he said. “I really credit our students and [locals] for coming out and supporting us. It really means everything to us. Late games, where it’s close and we need that extra burst of energy, they definitely give it to us.”

Splitting hairs: Barnhizer has a new ‘do this year. Gone are the buzzcut and pageboy. In is sort of a modified mullet.

Barnhizer let his hair grow out over the summer, so now it is long on top and in the back, but short on the sides.

“I just wanted to try something new,” he said. “I think I had every variation of haircut last year.”

He explained that the buzzcut was not a fashion choice but a way to cover up a mistake.

“I got a bad haircut, I just reset it,” he said.

The new cut looks a lot like Berry’s, as a matter of fact. Minus Berry’s curls, of course.

“I want to just be like him,” Barnhizer said jokingly.

It’s not surprising that the two stars look alike.

“We just got the same haircut from the same dude two days ago,” he said.