There’s a new player in the game of early season college basketball events, and it has disrupted the typical Thanksgiving week highlights like the Maui Invitational and Battle 4 Atlantis. While those tournaments are still happening, the best field is now at the 2025 Players Era Festival, an event that puts cold hard cash in the NIL purses of its participants and offers resume-boosting opportunities months before Selection Sunday.
The Players Era Festival debuted last season as an eight-team tournament that featured an epic final when Oregon defeated Alabama. The million-dollar guarantees to every participant sounded too good to be true to some, but every program ended up being paid
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