New NCAA president Charlie Baker on conference parity, NIL and more: Q&A

BOSTON, MA. - MARCH 27: Governor Charlie Baker is all smiles as he leaves after speaking during his daily news briefing at the State House as the Coronavirus continues to spread on March 27, 2020 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Staff Photo By Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)
By Nicole Auerbach
Mar 1, 2023

The Mark Emmert era is officially over, as new NCAA president Charlie Baker’s tenure begins Wednesday.

It’s a changing-of-the-guard moment for an organization that hasn’t seen its top leadership position turn over for more than a decade, and it comes at a critically important time.

Since he accepted the job back in December, Baker’s phone has been ringing quite a bit. He’s gotten calls from coaches, athletic directors and university presidents. What they want to talk about, mostly, is what everyone in college sports wants to talk about: name, image and likeness. Baker said that the “complete lack of transparency around all things NIL” is a major problem.

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“One of the things I really would like to spend some time with the membership on and probably with some of the folks in Washington on is whether or not we can create some kind of consumer framework around this stuff to protect student-athletes and their families,” said Baker, former governor of Massachusetts. “I don’t even know if all the horrible stories people have told me are true, but I’ve heard enough stories at this point that sound pretty lousy to believe that at a minimum there should be transparency around these deals. There should be some way for a family and a student-athlete to figure out what the market looks like. Because right now there isn’t, and you add that with the fact that no one’s telling me that kids and families are being told about what the tax consequences of (gifting) are.

“It’s important to come up with some kind of framework, whether it’s ours or federal framework, there needs to be some measure of respect for the position we’re putting a lot of student-athletes and families in. We have to come up with some kind of transparency approach to how we deal with this stuff.”

Baker said he has two main goals for his first 100 days. First, he will set up an in-person or virtual meeting with every conference in every division to hear what’s important to members at all levels. He’s also planning to do a state of the business review in the form of a SWOT analysis — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — likely prepared by an outside party. That will inform his strategy and objectives as he oversees more than a thousand schools with varied budgets and priorities.

“I have gotten very comfortable with this whole notion that 90 percent of college athletic programs are investments made by schools to support their infrastructure and their student body and all the rest, and it isn’t really a money-making activity,” Baker said. “It’s something they do because they believe it enhances the student experience and the alumni experience, and there’s some branding in there, too.

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“You also have a number of schools where clearly there’s tremendous financial impact associated with their collegiate sports programs, and that’s just a different world. One of the things I would like to figure out how to do in this job is to recognize and understand what’s going on with the revenue-positive folks, but at the same time not do something that’s going to put the rest of D-I, D-II and D-III in a position where they can’t continue to provide what I think most people believe is a tremendously valuable element of that collegiate experience. I have so many friends who say they would not have gone to college and wouldn’t have graduated without college sports.”

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Baker emphasized his background in healthcare policy and added that he’s particularly cognizant of the issues associated with mental health among college athletes operating in a high-profile, high-pressure environment, and he plans to do “serious work” in that space as NCAA president.

Baker spoke with The Athletic earlier this week about those issues as well as a number of other topics related to answering the uncertain future the NCAA faces. The following Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

You obviously came into this enterprise from the outside. Did you have a sense of how unwieldy this job was going to be when you took it? 

Any organization that has 1,100 members is going to be unwieldy. I played sports at an Ivy League institution and had two kids who played D-III sports. I had a daughter who went to a mid-major for college, and my wife went to Northwestern and was a gymnast there. I get the fact that while there are 1,100 members and all are institutions of higher education and all are engaged in collegiate athletics, it looks really different across most of those areas. That’s part of why the membership model is important, and it’s part of why the NCAA is important because at least it creates a set of rules and a framework that everybody’s supposed to play by.

But there’s no question that the Power 5 (conferences) are in a very different place than basically everybody else. I’ve talked to some of the Power 5 people about this, and I’ve talked to other people who aren’t in the Power 5 about this. This is an important part of what we need to be looking at going forward: What is the best way to deal with that particular issue in this day and age?

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How concerned are you about the haves and the have-nots and the separation you’re describing, plus how conference realignment and consolidation play into it? People always like to talk about a potential power conference breakaway. How do you keep everyone under one umbrella? 

This is why talking to all the conferences early on in my term is really important. And when I say talking, I mostly mean listening. The reason people join organizations is because they believe the organizations offer them something they can’t have on their own and that they are heard. I want to make a big piece of my first 100 days hearing everybody.

The other thing that will happen — I promise you, because it’s happened everywhere I’ve ever been — is I will learn that there is more commonality there than people might realize. I’ll talk to a giant audience, I’ll listen carefully, take a ton of notes, and then go back to look at everything everybody had to say. I’ll start drawing circles around some of the issues and the situations and the circumstances that people have in common.

You mentioned the concerns people have around NIL. What’s your take on the new NIL presumption and the ability for NCAA enforcement staff to go after some of that bad behavior?

First, it was a membership decision, where people basically said they wanted to create a different standard for this stuff. And I come back to it being a world where there is no transparency. There are, really, no hard and fast rules because it’s so new. I think the standard which came from the membership was probably an appropriate one, but I also can’t tell you how many people brought up the lack of transparency as well as the issues and concerns they had about what this all means for student-athletes and families. There needs to be some sort of protective skin put around this stuff either congressionally, which obviously comes with all 50 states — “here are the rules and the standards associated with that” — or something that’s done by us. One way or another, we’ve got to address it.

What is your level of concern about middlemen and third parties involved in NIL deals?

That’s part of why you want a transparent world where everybody’s cards are on the table. Most families have no idea what an agent is actually worth and what that (relationship) should look like. The vast majority have no idea what the actual market is for them or for their child. Let’s just start with transparency and get real about that.

The big question over the last 18 months around that might be eventually answered by the NIL presumption and/or NIL guidance, but we don’t know yet. Do you believe that the NCAA can add restrictions or rules or elements of transparency around NIL without being sued?

The answer to that one is usually fact and law specific. In the absence of clarity on either of those, I think I’m going to punt. But what I would say is, I haven’t talked to anybody who doesn’t think there needs to be a far more transparent framework around this stuff, and that the lack of one is only going to make it more complicated and more difficult for families and student-athletes. In particular, they are the ones I care about the most in this. That makes this a fundamental issue, and I’ll take my chances with respect to how we put it together. I am sure we can put together consumer protections in a way that meets all the appropriate legal standards.

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You spoke a lot at the NCAA convention in San Antonio about the need for Congressional help. Do you still believe that Congress is the answer or one of the answers to the existential threats facing the NCAA? 

They are certainly an answer. But I think there’s a lot of work that the NCAA and the member institutions can do, too. I’m usually a “both and” person as opposed to an “either or,” and I do think there will be a lot that Congress and our member schools can learn from each other on some of these issues. Let’s face it: If all these athletic directors and coaches and college presidents are telling the stories that they’re telling me, I promise you they’re telling those stories to their elected representatives as well. So, I’m looking forward to the conversation and dialogue.

I am sure you are caught up on all the court cases and the NLRB unfair labor practice charge, all of the external challenges to the collegiate model. What was your reaction to what we heard in the oral argument a few weeks ago in the Johnson case

Having read a lot of the coverage and also having read the transcript, the judges did exactly what judges do. They poked and they prodded, and they asked hard questions. They were aggressive in their questioning. If you’re a plaintiff or a defendant in front of a panel like that, you should expect that. My view is, I think they did a lot of what I would describe as the right things on the panel, and I’ll be curious to see where they go from here with it.

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You are not moving to Indianapolis for this job. Why? 

There’s a lot of travel in this job. That’s going to be a big part of it, and I don’t think it will just be Washington. It will be a lot of places, and I certainly plan to spend a significant amount of time in Indy as well.

What do you think about potential NCAA tournament expansion? Do you have a stance or a preferred size of the bracket?

I talked to Dan Gavitt about this a little bit, and there’s a process for this that involves the basketball committees. My guess is it will be months before a decision gets made with respect to that. What I can tell you is that the basketball tournament is one of my favorite times of the year. Dan has done a beautiful job with it. The committees have done a great job. That decision is in good hands.

(Photo: Matt Stone / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald)

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Nicole Auerbach

Nicole Auerbach covers college football and college basketball for The Athletic. A leading voice in college sports, she also serves as a studio analyst for the Big Ten Network and a radio host for SiriusXM. Nicole was named the 2020 National Sports Writer of the Year by the National Sports Media Association, becoming the youngest national winner of the prestigious award. Before joining The Athletic, she covered college football and college basketball for USA Today. Follow Nicole on Twitter @NicoleAuerbach