National Player of the Year between $4.8 million NIL-valued Cooper Flagg, Johni Broome will be “most controversial”, claims analyst; offers 1 solution

The Duke Blue Devils' Cooper Flagg and the Auburn Tigers' Johni Broome have been going at it against each other for this season's best player honors. This has been going on for a while, with the freshman and the fifth-year senior generating both individual and team success that has tightened the race toward the National Player of the Year award.

For college basketball analyst Jeff Goodman, it may go down as one of the most highly touted finishes for an award ever, as he detailed on "The Goodman and Hummel Basketball Podcast" on Tuesday.

"The biggest award, I think the most controversial award we're going to see this year, although I think National Player of the Year and Coach of the Year are going to be controversial because for Player of the Year, it's a two-horse race," Goodman said. "It's been a two-horse race here for, honestly, a couple of months.

"Kam Jones was a part of it for a while, Braden Smith was a part of it for a minute, I thought. But, it's really been Cooper Flagg and Johni Broome, the whole season for the most part. ... Johni Broome, almost 18-and-a-half points, almost 11 rebounds a game, three-and-a-half assists a game, two-and-a-half blocks a game for the No. 1 team in the country.

"Then, you got Cooper Flagg, the young kid. Johni's a fifth-year senior, Cooper Flagg is a kid who came in 17 years old as a freshman, averaging 19-and-a-half points, seven-and-a-half rebounds, four assists, a steal-and-a-half and a block-and-a-half. They've both been ridiculous. Not good, ridiculous. So, it's splitting hairs."

The true victor for the National Player of the Year award should be determined soon with teams across all conferences wrapping their regular seasons to move on to postseason play, with both Broome's squad and Flagg's, whose NIL value is $4.8 million (per On3), team ranked on top.

Jeff Goodman believes that there should be a co-National Player of the Year this season

Jeff Goodman said that he feels that the easy way out to determine the National Player of the Year will just to have both Cooper Flagg and Johni Broome share it as co-awardees.

"I said, 'You (Broome) were the leader early. Then, you got hurt.' I thought that kind of Cooper took over a little bit and took a little bit of a lead. Now, I think it's neck and neck, I really do. It's almost like, honestly, I hate doing this, it's the ultimate copout and I'm not gonna do it. But, the copout is co-Player of the Year," Goodman said (Timestamp: 2:00).

"Can you do it?"

For Flagg, his final regular season game will be against the unranked UNC Tar Heels on the road on Saturday. Meanwhile, for Broome, his regular season will be capped off with a home matchup on the same day against the seventh-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide.