LAS VEGAS – NCAA president Charlie Baker has taken a step to begin the conversation about athlete compensation.
Now, he’s looking to have the conversation that shapes the future of college sports.
“This is a conversation we need to have. It’s a conversation the folks in Division I and the NCAA want to have,” Baker said Wednesday. “Now, we need to actually have it and get somewhere with it.”
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Tuesday morning, Baker set a letter to NCAA membership outlining a number of recommendations based on a listening tour he underwent through his first three months as president of the organization.
Within it, Baker recommended a system of direct compensation from schools to athletes. Within a new subdivision, members would be required to invest at least $30,000 per year per athlete for each of the school’s eligible athletes in an “educational trust fund.”
“Some people will say I’m going too far. Some people will say I didn’t go far enough,” Baker said.
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NCAA's Charlie Baker calls for new subdivision with direct NIL payments to athletes
Members of the new subdivision that met those requirements could agree to their own rules regarding name, image and likeness, scholarship limits, roster sizes and any other number of issues that arose, giving them greater autonomy to govern themselves with schools more aligned in resources and mission.
“We’re trying to be supportive as to a big tent approach but, as you saw yesterday with Charlie’s memo, there’s a new reality here,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said.
College sports is facing necessary reforms and Sankey pointed to the five arenas where change will have to be addressed: courts, Congress, state legislatures, conferences and the NCAA.
Under Baker’s proposal, schools could enter into NIL deals directly with athletes, which is currently not permissible. That would bring much of the NIL space under university control, rather than the current system where many efforts are outsourced to third-party organizations known as collectives.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark lauded Baker’s leadership.
“This was a preemptive and very proactive moment,” he said. “Charlie is leading us through a very transformative moment and I think we have to embrace his vision and energy and do it in a thoughtful way.”
Multiple athletic directors raised eyebrows at Baker’s letter coming with little warning or input on details before it was sent to membership.
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Sankey said commissioners weren’t sent the letter and he received it as a forward from his legal counsel. He expressed frustration at facing questions about a letter he had yet to see.
“Why wasn’t our Board brought into this conversation sooner?” he said. “We were all a little bit late relative to the rest of the world.”
The most frequent phrase from administrators in Las Vegas this week for the National Football Foundation’s College Football Hall of Fame inductions and the Sports Business Journal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum has been “conversation starter.”
Multiple athletic directors were appreciative of Baker for taking a coherent step — albeit a small one — toward a possible solution to the existential issues that have frequently landed the NCAA and its members in court more than ever.
“What we’re doing right now is not sustainable. I think everybody realizes it. So how do we get to a better place and open that dialogue to have some real conversations?” Sun Belt commissioner Keith Gill said. “This conversation has to be had. We’ve gotta create a structure that’s sustainable and doesn’t have us in court every six months with a new case that has potential for crushing judgments. So having that conversation is really important.”
(Photo: John David Mercer / USA Today)
