College athletics have gone through some radical changes over the last several years, and one of the biggest changes has of course been the NIL era.

As an essentially legal pay-for-play type environment has arisen, programs have had to raise millions of dollars in order to keep their teams competitive.

A huge chunk of that money has come from the wealthiest donors to the school, and in the case of the Auburn Tigers, one of those just so happens to be basketball legend and media giant Charles Barkley.

Barkley spoke candidly about the fact that people expect too much from him in terms of contributions during his tee time at the Regions Tradition pro-am on Wednesday.

“I’ve given more money to Auburn, legal or illegal, than any athlete in the history of the school,” Barkley said on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning on WJOX-FM, interestingly declaring that he was giving money before the NIL system was in place. “And the notion that I’m going to come up with a couple million dollars every year so that we can be good at basketball and football — that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Barkley went on to not mince words as he has never been known to do, saying he isn’t going to make himself poor to allow Auburn to compete.

“One thing I’m pretty sure of, Black and broke don’t work, in any municipality in the world. I’ve been rich for a long time. I plan to stay that way. But the notion that I’m going to give Auburn millions of dollars every year so we can be good at sports, that’s just not going to happen. I’m really proud of what I’ve given Auburn and I’m going to continue to give them money, but I’m not going to give them millions of dollars every year so we can be good at sports. That’s just stupid. People will be talking about me behind my back. ‘How did that guy go broke? How did he lose all that money?’ Because y’all wanted to be good at sports, fool!”