The Sporting News Men's College Basketball Player of the Year is an annual college basketball award given to the best men's basketball player in NCAA Division I competition. The award was first given following the 1942–43 season and is presented by The Sporting News (known from 2002–2022 as Sporting News), an American–based sports magazine established in 1886.
No award winners were selected from 1947 to 1949 and from 1952 to 1957. Repeat winners of The Sporting News Player of the Year award are rare. As of 2025, it has occurred only eight times. Of those eight repeat winners, only Oscar Robertson of Cincinnati and Bill Walton of UCLA have been named the player of the year three times.
Duke have the most all-time awards with eight. UCLA has the second-most awards with seven.
Key
Winners
- a At the time of White's award, Long Island University consisted solely of what is now the institution's Brooklyn campus. In 2019, LIU merged the Brooklyn athletic program with the NCAA Division II program of its Post campus, creating a new D-I program that competes as the LIU Sharks. The Sharks inherited the men's basketball history of the Brooklyn campus.
- b Lew Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1971 after converting to Islam.