After year one, why Charlie Baker's job as NCAA President could be mission impossible

From the historic summer of realignment to the tsunami of ongoing legal threats, Charlie Baker‘s first year as NCAA President has been marked by unprecedented tumult.

Through that Category-5 storm of disruption, Baker – the former two-time Massachusetts governor – has spearheaded notable progress on several fronts and made moves sometimes at odds with the association’s hallmark of being resistant to change.

But as Baker enters year two today, he can’t escape this reality: It is not nearly enough.

Whether it will be spurred by the NCAA or external forces, more seismic change is coming, and the pace of evolution accelerating. How Baker, 67, will be assessed moving forward will largely hinge on these two questions:

Will the association settle with plaintiffs before next January’s trial in the high-stakes House antitrust case? A defeat would cost the NCAA and fellow Power Five defendants some $4.2 billion in retroactive NIL pay and shares of broadcast revenue, posing an existential financial threat to the enterprise.

Secondly, is Baker willing and able to play a role – along with other industry leaders – in creating a bridge to what many view as an inevitable revenue-sharing model that incorporates athletes collectively bargaining with schools or leagues?

Charlie Baker has massive challenges ahead

Baker’s sizable challenge is compounded by these variables: How does one build consensus among more than 1,100 disparate institutions, while also placating two super conferences – the SEC and Big Ten – that are throwing their weight around as whispers grow louder about a potential breakaway from the association?

Baker acknowledged to On3 this winter that “no doubt college sports has been slow to change,” while stressing that the association is transforming to emphasize student-athlete interests first. He added that he wants to see the NCAA become “nimbler” moving forward, adding that with so many institutions, “all of them with drastically different mission statements and budgets, things can and often do take more time than stakeholders both in the NCAA and in the general public would prefer.”

Based on his conversations with other school presidents in recent months, Washington State President Kirk Schulz said, “You’ve got to applaud the leadership there saying, ‘Hey, we recognize that people want to see something different out of the NCAA and we’re going to respond to that.’ I think it’s too early not to give Charlie the opportunity to continue to help lead and modify what the NCAA does and how it works with schools. 

“He took over at a really difficult time, with not a great perception by the membership. And I’ve really been impressed with his willingness to tackle hard issues [and] come out with solutions that are going to cause some controversy. But I applaud his willingness to work across those lines.”

Mit Winter, a college sports attorney at Kennyhertz Perry, told On3: “My ultimate assessment is that he’s doing a better job than his predecessors, but that he’s facing a situation that is nearly impossible to solve through the entity he runs – the NCAA. I think if the NCAA was just Charlie Baker, and he could unilaterally make decisions, the NCAA would have a better chance of settling the House case, and it would have already put some sort of revenue-sharing model in place.

“But that’s not how the NCAA works.”

Why Baker has ‘limited authority’ in college sports

To that point, ESPN analyst Jay Bilas told On3 the NCAA does what its leadership tells it to do, adding, “The NCAA President is out front, but there are some limitations to the power that the NCAA President has. There’s no limitation to what some of the dumb things NCAA presidents have done seemingly [over the years].

“But Charlie Baker seems like he’s great. I’ve heard great things about him. But that’s a limited authority. On the part of the membership, there’s been a reluctance to admit what they have been doing all these years.”

What they have been doing all these years – according to the courts – is operating its so-called amateur model on the wrong side of antitrust law. 

Absent Congressional intervention, which is widely considered unlikely, the only surefire way for the NCAA to stave off additional legal challenges is to usher in an era in which college athletes collectively bargain with schools or leagues. Baker remains steadfast in his opposition to college athletes being deemed employees of their universities, a scenario necessary to introduce unionization into college athletics.

Athletes want to be employees

Among Baker’s missteps in year one, several sources said, was repeatedly stating that athletes don’t want to be employees of their school. Some legal experts viewed that sentiment as paternalistic. More importantly, they said, it obscures the crux of the employee question: The issue isn’t whether athletes want to be employees, but rather whether the control schools exert over athletes classifies them as employees under the law.

A National Labor Relations Board regional director has concluded that Dartmouth men’s basketball players are employees of their college; a union election will occur Tuesday. And a hearing in the NLRB trial of USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA – all accused of misclassifying USC football and men’s and women’s basketball players as student-athletes instead of employees – concluded Thursday. 

Baker told On3 that “making all student-athletes a traditional employee would have tremendous negative consequences: student-athletes let go for a bad performance, or paying taxes on scholarships or room and board, and changing the relationship with teammates or coaches from the positive one enjoyed now to one where employees report to a supervisor.”   

Reform proposal widely hailed as bold move

During an unprecedented time of disruption, Baker’s achievements warrant acknowledgment. 

He placed sports wagering concerns near the top of his priority list, as the NCAA has updated what he has termed “out-of-date” penalties and enhanced educational resources. In fact, Baker spent several minutes of his January NCAA Convention speech on the variety of concerns stemming from the proliferation of sports betting. 

During Baker’s first year, the NCAA also secured a $920 million, eight-year agreement with ESPN that will give the network exclusive rights to 40 championships. That includes the women’s NCAA basketball tournament, whose popularity is surging. He wants to begin earnest discussions about what many view as a long-overdue financial units program for teams that compete in the women’s NCAA basketball tournament. 

Over the last year, Baker also helped in the adoption of a handful of NIL consumer protection and transparency measures, including a database and third-party registry.

Most memorable, his Project D-I reform proposal earned a slew of superlatives from stakeholders – bold, forward-thinking, innovative – when unveiled in December. Baker is trying to fast-track NIL activities moving in-house under the umbrella of schools. Plenty of heavy lifting remains on its central element: the creation of a new subdivision consisting of highly resourced schools, which would craft their own policies and pay athletes directly through a trust fund.

“Really refreshing,” Christy Hedgpeth, a former Stanford basketball player and President of Playfly Sports Properties, a sports marketing company with a portfolio of 25 universities and conferences, told On3. “It was him saying, ‘Look, we don’t have all the answers. But we are eyes wide open about the reality. And we want to find solutions that make sense.’ 

“What I love, love, love, love – especially with my experience as a student-athlete – he acknowledged that they need to move faster. And then they need to be less bureaucratic. The NCAA was just so bureaucratic. It was a realistic, progressive, sort of modern take and recognition that they need to change. And they need to be ahead of what’s happening.”

Why reform proposal isn’t progressive enough

For an association long defined as rigid and averse to innovation, the proposal was entirely off-brand.

But, as a growing number of stakeholders have acknowledged in recent weeks, it also did not go nearly far enough to stave off further legal challenges.

“Some are not at all happy with the way that proposal came to be, in large part because it doesn’t cost the NCAA,” one industry source said. “It would cost all these schools all this money. But not the NCAA.”

Teresa Gould, the new Pac-12 commissioner, said Thursday that all Power Five commissioners are engaged with Baker to talk through concerns related to the NCAA and future governance.

“I feel comfortable right now that the collaboration between Charlie and the [Power Five] commissioners is strong and that we’re attacking concerns head-on,” Gould said. “I’m optimistic the outcome will be a positive one.”

When Baker assumed the role a year ago, many industry leaders heralded him as a refreshing presence, someone who approached the job with a different tact than his predecessors and who immediately articulated that the status quo was no longer acceptable in college sports.

At a minimum, he has been widely cast as a significant upgrade over Mark Emmert. His ill-fated 12 years were marked by misguided decisions and chronic tone-deafness. Toward the end of Emmert’s tenure, when On3 asked stakeholders to assess his job performance, the most positive sentiment expressed was “no comment.”

Charlie Baker ‘inherited an irreparable mess’

Baker, on the other hand, has struck many as earnest and down to earth. Plus, he has formidable political skills that many view as an asset in navigating Capitol Hill. 

But, as one industry leader said, being reactive and rigid is “sort of baked in” to the NCAA’s DNA, and no one president can rid an entire association of those traits.

“This is no disrespect to Charlie Baker, he’s been on the job a year,” Walker Jones, executive director of the Ole Miss-focused Grove Collective and a leader in The Collective Association who has testified in front of Congress along with Baker. “It’s admirable what he’s trying to do. But he inherited an organization that, through its ineptitude and inaction, has lost all sorts of trust and equity with the stakeholders in the collegiate space.”

One prominent college sports source told On3 that Baker is a “great person and leader but inherited an irreparable mess.”

Hoping for Congressional Hail Mary

To navigate their way out of the industry’s quagmire, the NCAA is still hoping for a long-sought Congressional lifeline, a federal reform bill that will afford the association limited antitrust protection and codify that athletes are not employees of their universities. 

The efforts to try to secure that bill have been a monumental task. Industry leaders increasingly view that pursuit as futile or unneeded – or both. A flurry of discussion drafts of reform bills have been introduced. None has gone to a vote. The NCAA’s efforts nonetheless continue, even as federal lawmakers contend with geopolitical conflicts abroad and a polarizing upcoming presidential election. 

“Charlie Baker’s done a phenomenal job,” Tom McMillen, CEO of LEAD1 Association and former U.S. Congressman, told On3 this winter. “I watched an interview with [Sens. Richard] Blumenthal and Cory Booker. I never thought in a million years I’d say this: Cory could not have been more complimentary of Charlie. And I was like, ‘Wow, this is terrific.’

“Cory really acknowledged the fact that Charlie has tried to push the limits, whether it’s the 10-year graduation degree completion funds, two-year injury insurance and so forth. All this stuff is pretty remarkable that he’s held in a positive view by a lot of these Democrats who were extremely hostile to the NCAA. I think he’s done a great job.”

Can Baker do enough to save NCAA?

Baker is attempting to garner consensus on a financial model – or more likely, multiple models – to fit the needs of a disparate group of more than 1,100 institutions that reside under the college sports umbrella. Having visited with 97 conferences, Baker has a keen sense of the differences in resources, philosophies and missions that exist under the enterprise’s big tent.

At the same time, more power and influence are steadily shifting to individual conferences or informal unions of prominent leagues. The so-called “joint advisory group” that consists of leaders from the two super conferences is, if nothing else, a move indicating they want to flex their considerable muscle in trying to craft a new financial structure. But it also could be something else: the first step toward an eventual breakaway from the NCAA.

If Baker were to thread a needle and propose a financial model to address both antitrust and employment issues – a model that NCAA membership supports and that doesn’t rely on Congress – then Winter believes the chances of settling the House case grow considerably.

Easier said than done.

“The hard part is getting NCAA membership, even just Division I membership, to support a plan like that,” Winter concluded. “Ultimately, that could make Baker’s job impossible. It’s why there is a serious conversation among certain schools and conferences about leaving the NCAA.”