Why would Maryland’s Kevin Willard leave the Big Ten for Villanova? Follow the money.

One by one, names you may have had on your bingo card to replace Kyle Neptune at Villanova have been crossed off. Ryan Odom to Virginia. Ben McCollum to Iowa. Richard Pitino to Xavier. Niko Medved to Minnesota. Chris Collins has a new deal at Northwestern.

The first four names have something in common: Their previous teams are no longer playing basketball. (Northwestern didn’t make the NCAA Tournament.) Villanova’s next coach, meanwhile, could still be coaching.

Process of elimination and common sense say Maryland’s Kevin Willard is firmly in the mix. Willard, a Long Island native who played in the Big East at Pittsburgh and coached in it for 12 years at Seton Hall, has spent parts of the last week during his team’s run to the Sweet 16 publicly pleading with his administration to make “fundamental changes” to the basketball program. On a radio show Tuesday, he couched an answer to a question about staying at Maryland with “as of right now.”

Willard, if he hasn’t already reached a deal with Villanova, is asking for more money to flow his program’s way. He wants Maryland to commit more of its revenue share to basketball than it plans to.

Why would a Big Ten basketball coach posture to or even leave for a Big East program? The answer is right there, and Willard has supplied enough from his own mouth to surmise why he would.

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Sure, Willard is in a so-called power conference at a time when power conferences rule the world. All 16 teams remaining in the NCAA Tournament came from one of those four major conferences, but what’s next for those conferences and their basketball programs is uncertain once the House vs. NCAA settlement is approved as expected in a few weeks.

Schools will begin to share revenue directly with their athletes, and there will be an escalating cap that is estimated to be around $20.5 million per school in the first year post-settlement. This is where math and football come into play.

Just about every school in the power conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC) is in the business of beefing up its football program, and estimates — and in cases like Georgia, public announcements — have those athletic departments spending around 75% of their pot on football. That’s about $15 million on a football roster for those programs wanting to spend on the higher end, which leaves around $5 million or so for other sports. Men’s and women’s basketball will take a large chunk of that, and then other sports will get the loose change.

The Big East is not burdened by that behemoth. It will not be playing the football arms race. Villanova will spend more than $5 million on its men’s basketball roster alone next year. Maryland will not, hence Willard’s willingness over the last two weeks to openly ask for more to make sure the Terrapins’ run to the second weekend is sustainable.

Willard hasn’t been alone with his concerns.

Coaches of power conference programs have been sounding the alarm on this topic for about a year. Florida’s Todd Golden, whose top-seeded Gators take on Willard’s Maryland team Thursday night in San Francisco said to The Athletic last year: “You have all these great basketball schools that have no football they have to take care of, so yeah, definitely, we are worried about that.”

“That’s a problem,” Alabama’s Nate Oats said.

In a story published Wednesday by Yahoo, Duke athletic director Nina King said the revenue-share portion in the Big East “will be a lot more than what those of us can do who have Division I power football programs.”

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Willard reportedly has an offer on the table from an outgoing AD to give him a hefty raise. Why would anyone in his shoes leave the Big Ten for the lowly Big East, when none of its teams will be represented in the second weekend of the dance? As the saying goes: It’s the economy, stupid. Never mind that the Villanova job historically has been better than Maryland, especially in recent years. Villanova has been to more Final Fours since 2016 than Maryland has in its history.

The forward-looking models are somewhat hypothetical and unclear right now, but enough power brokers are convinced that there’s a world where Big East basketball thrives, maybe at a level Maryland can’t and won’t.

Willard sat at a podium Wednesday in San Francisco and, a few questions into his session with reporters, was asked why he felt compelled to publicly advocate for his program and his position in recent days.

“I’ll be honest, I think our biggest thing is we have to stop [Walter] Clayton,” Willard said at the start of his answer, talking about Florida’s top player.

He was asked a few questions later if he had any updates to his comments from Tuesday’s radio appearance.

“We’re playing Florida,” he said. “It’s a big matchup for us. This is all about the Sweet 16 and these guys enjoying this as much as possible. I’ve enjoyed it tremendously. I do love this town. It’s a great town, great food. I got to have dinner with P.J. Carlesimo last night, which is, I think, always a lot of fun, the stories we get to tell about Seton Hall. Chris Mullin joined us. Coach [Stan] Van Gundy joined us. We had a great time last night.”

It was Deflection 101 from Willard, but it won’t stop the speculation.