Incoming NCAA president Charlie Baker assumed his new post Wednesday, taking over a governing body fighting to define its future amid a series of challenges from advocates, lawyers and legislators.
Baker’s hiring prompted immediate questions about how a longtime politician might push the NCAA from its prior entrenched positions. And in an interview on the eve of his presidency, the former Massachusetts governor hinted at an openness to consider salaries for at least a small subset of college athletes, a topic long considered a third rail in the debate over the NCAA’s future.
Asked if SEC football players should be paid—a question that his predecessors would have answered with a resounding “No”—Baker took a different tack. He paused, then said it was something he planned to address with his member schools and conferences. Pressed on what those conversations might entail, he remained vague.
“I guess what I would say is that I’m planning to have a conversation with the membership about change,” he said, adding that he preferred to have those talks before saying more. “We’ll see what that kind of change can look like. But I certainly believe there will be change.”
Baker spoke with Sportico earlier this week, part of a series of interviews with media outlets given prior to his taking over for Mark Emmert, who has held the role since 2010. A former Harvard basketball player, Baker began the conversation by making a distinction between the majority of college athletes that he believes are unquestioned amateurs, and the small subset of those in specific sports at specific schools whose experience is something more. Of the roughly 520,000 active college athletes in the NCAA, Baker said he believes about 10,000 of them fall into that second category.
Later in the conversation, he assigned specific terms to those groups. The bigger cohort, he said, is what he calls “traditional college sports,” and the other subset is “big-time college sports.” Even this somewhat obvious distinction is a departure of sorts for the NCAA, which for much of its history has attempted to govern the D-III Concordia Tornados (2021 athletics budget: $1.9 million) exactly as it does the nearby Texas Longhorns (2021 athletics budget: $160.5 million).
“You don’t have to treat everybody the same,” Baker said, “and you probably shouldn’t.”
It’s a small admission—more notable for what wasn’t said than what was—but one that could signal a meaningful shift at the top for college sports’ main governing body. The NCAA has for years held onto its belief that college athletes are amateurs and therefore unable to be paid for the work they do on the field, ice or court. Many members have profited greatly from that model, and the NCAA has been steadfast in its adherence to it, even as judges and state legislators chip away at the edges. A 2019 district court ruling said the NCAA and its members couldn’t cap scholarships below the true cost of attendance; two years later a handful state legislators made it illegal for local schools to deny athletes basic marketing rights, thus launching the NIL era.
The bigger debate—and the more existential one for the NCAA—appears to be forming around athlete compensation more broadly. Government agencies are evaluating whether college athletes might already be employees, and last month a panel of appellate judges appeared unpersuaded by the organization’s rationale for why they aren’t. Emmert, who has said that paying athletes would repel fans, told D1.ticker/Collegiate Sports Connect this week that it was “absolutely the biggest issue facing college sports.”
“I know there are those that advocate for [an employee-employer relationship], and those that say, ‘That’s exactly what it is and exactly what it should be,’” Emmert said in the interview, published on the same day Baker spoke to Sportico. “And that’s fine, they get to argue that. But should that ever occur, that will completely change college sports.”
Baker's new approach is not just notable from a rhetorical standpoint. It may also have legal and political significance.
First, the NCAA has long avoided making such a distinction in court filings, Congressional testimony and public commentary. For decades, the NCAA has maintained that college athletes are students who, as amateurs, play a sport that furthers their collegiate and educational experience. This portrayal has allowed the NCAA and colleges to prevail in lawsuits where college athletes argue they are eligible for workers’ comp or are owed other rights by virtue of playing a sport that in some ways resembles employment. Even though coaches at some colleges are paid millions of dollars and some colleges feature stadiums and training facilities that rival those of pro leagues, the NCAA has stuck with a firm, absolute proposition that college athletes are students and amateurs.
Second, Baker’s remarks come at a transformative—and vulnerable—time for the NCAA and its defense of amateurism in the face of numerous challenges. Expect attorneys, college advocates, judges and politicians to draw attention to Baker suggesting there are two kinds of college athletes, which they could use to bolster their claims that athletes deserve direct pay and other forms of compensation, such as post-college health care benefits or a cut of licensing money. Judges are clearly paying attention, as recently seen in Third Circuit Judge Theodore McKee’s opinion about weight room discrepancies for men’s and women’s basketball players. Expect a judge to question why the NCAA is so certain college athletes are amateurs if its new president sees two kinds of college athletes.
Some traditionalists may worry that Baker’s suggestion would create compliance problems under Title IX, which seeks equality for men’s and women’s athletes. That worry might be grounded in sound financial reasoning, but it’s unlikely to have much traction with courts. A school needs to figure out how to comply with all laws, be they employment or Title IX, or it needs to rethink its offerings.
But Baker, long regarded as a pragmatist, might be eyeing a prospective solution that would assuage financial concerns by non-elite college programs. The Power Five conferences already have some autonomy, and Baker’s 10,000 athletes breakdown likely describes a fraction of athletes at a fraction of schools. He knows that if a court concludes that D-I college athletes are employees, the ruling could impact all D-I college athletes or some large percentage of them. Baker might be hoping to navigate the NCAA towards a more targeted and less disruptive outcome, where schools in powerhouse conferences need to make changes but others can continue to operate, more or less, as is.
Beyond his response to questions about paying athletes in “big-time college athletics,” Baker’s interview tracked with much of the NCAA’s prior positions. He said one of his early priorities will be to try to clean up the “incredibly opaque” NIL market, and demurred when asked whether the NCAA was partially responsible for creating that uncertainty. (He also declined to say how much he was being paid, offering just that it was “reasonably consistent” with Emmert's compensation, which was $2.99 million as of the organization's most recent tax filing.)
Baker made it clear that he still supported the idea of amateurism more broadly, though he said it wasn’t the most important aspect of his new job.
“The lessons you learn from being an athlete, especially if you're good enough to play at the collegiate level, are pretty profound,” he said. “And that's not just about amateurism. It's about a whole bunch more: mutual accountability, perseverance, focus, structure, discipline."
Those comments are similar thematically to what NCAA leaders have said previously. But if Baker sees a different reality for the most professionalized college sports, that would be a significant break from the past.
