Newly appointed NCAA president Charlie Baker envisions a different future for college sports as his tenure begins.
Right now, the NCAA is at a crossroads. It can choose to preserve on an outdated belief college sports can fall in line with amateurism or recognize student-athletes want to make money off their individual brands. Baker iterated he wants to find a healthy medium between the two.
“I think what's important for us is to make sure we control, to the extent that we can, our own destiny on this stuff,” Baker told ESPN as he prepared for his first days in office. “To recognize and understand that means that we need to make some decisions and move a little more quickly than maybe we have in the past.”
The predicament the NCAA is dealing with is trying to establish rules that represent each of its divisions and not just what would benefit the top programs in the country. For example, Division-III sports are at the hands of their thin budgets compared to Alabama's football program, which virtually has unlimited resources given its strong history.
“It's [5,000] to 10,000 athletes at the Power 5 schools, and then it's all the rest of college sports. I don't think we can treat them both the same,” Baker said. “My hope is we can figure out some way to bridge those two universes in a way that makes them both better instead of ending up in a situation where the whole thing comes tumbling down.”
Baker officially took over as the NCAA's president today and will be tasked to figure out the nuances of a developing, complex situation since NIL came into effect within the last two years.
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