January 9, 2023 By: Mark Knudson

Three things that could save the NCAA…if it’s even worth saving

Can Charlie Baker save the NCAA?

Is it even worth saving?

The now former Governor of Massachusetts has just this week taken over as the President of the NCAA, the (alleged) governing body of college athletics. Let’s put it this way: Baker has been doing about a hundred times more “governing” the past four years as the NCAA has.

Ever since the NCAA lost the Ed O’Bannon (and others) court case almost a decade ago, and was subsequently slapped down by the Supreme Court in 2019, the organization has turtled. They’ve rolled up into the fetal position and watched helplessly as college sports has gone haywire with exceptionally badly implementation of twin terrors of Name, Image and Likeness and the Transfer Portal.

They don’t want to get sued anymore.

It hurts their feelings.

So instead they do nothing. And they’ve gotten pretty good at it.

At this point, there really aren’t any rules anymore for things like student-athletes taking millions of dollars over the table from boosters. There are no rules anymore about how often a student athlete can transfer schools.

The only rule that seem to still be in place is that a coach can’t buy a hamburger for a recruit. However, boosters can literally “buy” that same recruit buy giving him millions of dollars to come to their school – anytime they want.

The whole thing sucks and along with a whole lot of act-first, think-later politicians, the gutless NCAA is to blame.

Enter Baker, a man very familiar with litigation and legislation.

The NCAA hopes to avoid the former by getting better at the latter. The question is can Baker, known for being able to work in a bipartisan manner, lobby enough members of the new United States Congress to produce any meaningful legislation that could help restore some order to college athletics?

Given what we see every day out of our nation’s capital, that seems like a very tough ask. Any effort to roll back the “gains” some (and the “some” needs to be emphasized) college athletes have received will not be met favorably by those politicians who three years ago championed the rights of the “poor and exploited” college athletes (you know, the one’s getting a free college education, room and board, and massive exposure for their resumes).

Take backs – especially from kids – don’t look good to the voters back home. It doesn’t matter if it’s the common sense thing to do. Since when has Washington D.C. and common sense gone together?

So it’s highly unlikely this congress or any other will actually get anything of substance done to help fix college sports. But if they did, it would need to look something like this:

Three potential things for Mr. Baker to try to legislate:

Find a legally acceptable way to make a Letter of Intent and acceptance of an athletic scholarship (aka free college education) into a binding contract. Make a “commitment” into an actual commitment, just like the pros do. Allow a player to transfer (for due cause) one time, with an additional transfer allowed for players who had been recruited by a coach that leaves the job on his own. This will undo the damage being done by the unregulated, ungoverned and unhinged transfer portal.

Somehow, someway stuff some of the toothpaste back in the tube and put a cap on Name, Image and Likeness. “Collectives” are a step in the right direction, but just one step. Collectives pool booster money – which is what NIL benefits are made up of – and distribute those dollars in specific ways for specific athletic programs. If the NCAA wanted to get boosters back out of the buying players business, a system could be set up to have schools collect that money and include it in a 50% share of marketing revenue to be pooled and distributed to student athletes in an equitable fashion across all sports. It’s a far more reasonable than having the quarterback making $4 million from NIL while the offensive lineman gets free underwear. The current model can’t be sustained. And despite warnings that NIL offers “can’t be used as recruiting or transfer enticements,” it’s downright laughable to try to enforce that, and doing so makes the NCAA look like a group of buffoons.

Make coaches contracts binding. Regardless of how many years or dollars coaches sign contracts are for, they all contain “buyouts” that make many of the terms of the contracts virtually meaningless. Currently, boosters will pay buyouts into the millions if they want a particular coach to leave his current job and take theirs. It’s one of the rubs politicians have with the current system. So take that away. No more allowing coaches to break contracts on a whim. If the players have to make a true “commitment” to a school and program when they sign there, then the coaches should as well.

Successfully legislate these things into place and the NCAA can resume governing effectively.

But anything like this is a longshot at best.

What’s more likely to happen is that Baker falls short in his quest to resuscitate the NCAA through legal channels and things actually get worse before they get better. Congress will very likely fail to act at all, the NCAA will become an even more meaningless entity. Eventually the power brokers in college football will break off, form their own 64 team Super Division with their own set of more effective governing rules. Academics will be left behind, and an even more “professional” model for the sport will emerge. The “student” athlete will become an employee, who will then have to pay taxes – including getting taxed on scholarships (assuming they’re still considered “students” in any fashion), union dues and any/all NIL money they’re receiving.

Just like the pros.

How great will that be for those 18-year-olds fresh out of high school?

At least they won’t be getting “exploited” anymore.