LAS VEGAS — The NCAA’s new president wants to make game-changing changes to the organization, allowing the wealthiest schools to pay players directly and write new rules to govern themselves within a new competitive subdivision in Division I — and he hopes to have the plan in place, along with support from Congress, within the next year. NCAA president Charlie Baker introduced the proposal in a memo forwarded to the 350 Division I schools Tuesday.
And on Wednesday during a speaking appearance at the Sports Business Journal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, Baker said that he believes about 100 schools are financially prepared to pay student-athletes at least $30,000 per year.
The proposal would allow the wealthiest athletic departments to create rules that would differ from those for the rest of Division I athletics programs. Much like today’s Autonomy Five — ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC — the group would be provided more freedom to create new scholarship limits and implement new rules on recruiting, transfers and NIL.
“One-third of the schools have the ability to do more for student-athletes. They just do. Just look at their budgets, they do,” Baker said. “In the pursuit of what we call competitive equity, there’s a restraint there. Once upon a time, the pursuit of competitive equity was considered to be OK. And it’s not really anymore.”
Baker’s three-page memo was short on details — but ambitious — and unusually fresh for the maligned NCAA, often criticized for its reluctance to change and lack of innovation within its governance structure. Collegiate leaders voiced support for Baker on Wednesday but remained cautious and measured in their reactions. Several said they require further study and feedback from athletic directors. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey seemed perturbed that commissioners were not included in preliminary discussions before the memo was released.
“Why wasn’t our board brought into this conversation sooner?” Sankey said Wednesday. “And why weren’t our athletics directors part of the conversation? So, that’s a tactical decision that has been made.”
Three of the country’s most powerful commissioners spoke Wednesday at the forum but exited the event without accepting questions from the media.
Baker’s proposal calls for schools in the new subdivision to pay individual athletes $30,000 annually, with funds pulled from a trust fund. Schools can opt in or out but must meet minimum standards, which include payments to at least 50% of student-athletes. Baker’s plan operates “within the framework” of Title IX, he wrote Tuesday. Fifty percent of the trust fund’s payouts must be directed to women athletes.
Which schools can afford such payments is up for debate. Fifty-nine schools spend more than $100 million annually on athletic budgets. With an average of 500 student-athletes at Division I schools, direct payments to 50% of players would total an average of $7.5 million per school.
Baker’s plan also allows schools to strike name, image and likeness deals with players, which is not allowed under current NCAA rules. Perhaps most important is the ability of the schools in the new subdivision to create rules, which could include increasing scholarship allotments, the size of coaching staffs and more.
Again, these are just ideas and possibilities — and just the start of what promises to be a long conversation among leaders.
“You can start it somewhere but you better get together with the membership at the presidential level and the (athletic) directors level and even the coaches,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “You can have the best ideas but you have to get to the practitioners and the people on campus who understand the complexities that they’re faced with — and you have to build a consensus. It’s not going to please everybody.”
Baker’s plan has hurdles beyond the NCAA’s membership. Collegiate leaders are seeking help from Congress to institute a national standard for NIL, which will be required as the NCAA seeks legal protection after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Alston case in 2021 paved the way for complicated NIL state laws — and has since led to several more lawsuits.
Baker joked Wednesday he needs “a little antitrust exemption” from Congress. The four remaining Power Five commissioners participated in a series of meetings with lawmakers last week in Washington, D.C.. They exited hopeful Congress will introduce and pass legislation to regulate NIL across the country.
“I hope we will have dealt with this elephant in the room (in a year),” Baker said. “And create some form of framework nationally that works for DI and for student-athletes that doesn’t crush DII and DII, and gives us a framework that works for schools and student-athletes.”
Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez had concerns about the proposal, particularly how a new sub-division could negatively affect mid-to-low-tier schools that rely on large-scale tournaments such as the NCAA’s March Madness to fund their athletic departments. What happens if the new subdivision opts to create its own tournament, leaving out the mid-tier schools unable to meet the NCAA’s new requirements to join the new subdivision? Again, it’s a hypothetical situation but it’s not improbable.
“We have schools that struggle and take a longer runway to get there, if at all, and what does that do to competition?” Nevarez said.
The NCAA would remain as the manager of the championship events, excluding the College Football Playoff, within the new subdivision, according to the memo.
“The growing financial gap between the highest-resourced colleges and universities and other schools in Division I has created a new series of challenges,” Baker wrote. “The challenges are competitive as well as financial and are complicated further by the intersection of name, image and likeness opportunities for student-athletes and the arrival of the transfer portal.”
Baker has repeatedly voiced frustration with the size and complexity of the ecosystems within the NCAA. After taking over as president in March, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts vowed to visit leaders with all 97 conferences in the NCAA.
“We need to be able to anticipate where conversations are going and try to get this big, huge, diverse, 180 committees with 2,000 members — oh, my God — to a place where they’re talking about stuff that is coming instead of responding and reacting to other people’s agendas,” Baker said.
