What We Learned from NCAA president Charlie Baker's latest trip to Washington D.C.

WASHINGTON – College football coaches and administrators want answers tomorrow. Charlie Baker appears comfortable waiting out Congress.

Thursday marked the NCAA president’s 100th day in office. After spending time this week meeting with lawmakers on The Hill, Baker was one of the featured speakers on the “What comes next in the Wild, Wild West of college athletics?” panel at the University of Arizona‘s Future of College Sports summit.

He came out swinging.

Baker opened the session with a commanding opening statement, sending a blunt message to his constituents. The former Massachusetts governor knows what he wants in federal legislation, and he believes the current NIL climate is terrible for athletes.

Among his list of wants in a Congressional bill: a registry of NIL deals, a certification process for agents and a uniform NIL standard.

“Well, the NCAA has an NIL working group, and I’ve been spending a lot of time with them,” Baker said. “I would prefer to get a solution that deals with state preemption, and you heard some of them in here. But in the absence of that, we do need to work our process and figure out what we propose to do as an alternative and get it done by the end of the year.”

His deadline for a congressional solution isn’t brisk, either. Baker said he would ideally like to see a bill passed by the end of the calendar year – before the 2024 election takes over the news cycle for the foreseeable future.

Commissioner Greg Sankey and Alabama football coach Nick Saban led the charge to D.C. this week for the SEC. For more than a year now, both of college athletics’ two largest figureheads have voiced the need for Congressional oversight.

Sankey may not wait for Baker to act. The commissioner has pitched the idea of coordinating state laws in the conference’s footprint to match – creating a level playing field. He would have to wait, however, until after football season with many state legislatures wrapping up for the summer.

“We’re gonna run the traps on our own process, just in case,” Baker said

NIL-focused state laws weighing on NCAA

Lawmakers in Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma and Texas have sponsored or passed bills in recent weeks to prevent the NCAA from launching investigations into NIL activities. Plus, NIL entities in Arkansas and Texas have opened the door for compensation models that have a closer connection to the school which is against the NCAA’s policy.

Charlie Baker appeared to have no patience for states taking action against the NCAA.

“They say screw the NCAA,” Baker said. “Screw the conference. Screw their rules.”

For years, the NCAA has been lobbying Congress for antitrust exemption. That push has come around again in the last two years. With the patchwork of state laws in place across the country, the governing body believes the only way to enforce its policies is with the power to supersede NIL laws.

More than the legal issues laws create, Baker seemed annoyed states were making the efforts to keep the NCAA from entering its borders. He had no problem calling out the previous NCAA regime for putting him in this position.

“When you have 30 states with different standards and different rules and different laws around NIL, and very few conferences that don’t cross multiple state lines, the whole questions about how you create a competitively-level playing field, which between and among teams in different conferences, skip the question about across the country, gets enormously complicated,” he said. “I think it was a big mistake for the NCAA not to do a framework around NIL when they had the opportunity. I think there were too many people in college sports that thought no rules would work well for them. And what everyone has discovered is no rules, no transparency, no accountability, no framework doesn’t work well for anybody. That’s one of the reasons why I think it’s possible Congress may be interested in doing something about this.”

The NCAA does not have Plan B

Look, the NIL arms race has emerged as the biggest theme in college football since the NCAA allowed athletes to begin monetizing their publicity rights back in 2021. Donor-led collectives have popped up across the country, competing to raise the most funds to attract high school recruits and retain athletes looking at the transfer portal.

Baker and the NCAA seem to have come around on the idea collectives need to be regulate to create “level playing field.” Yet the only solution put forth continues to be a Congressional mandate. The NCAA has been calling on lawmakers to take action for nearly four years. Not a single bill put forward in that time period focused on college athletics has even made it to a vote. Would that be a win at this point?

Asked point-blank if the NCAA would take action if Congress does not deliver a fix all, Charlie Baker danced around the question. There does not appear to be a Plan B at this time.

“We have to work our own process and put a program in place. I would rather get a Congressional solution,” he said. “But as I said, my view on a Congressional solution is it needs to be done by the end of the calendar year, right? Just because of the politics of ’24. But we’re gonna run the traps on our own process, just in case. But one way or another, I believe there needs to be a framework in place, whether it’s ours or a Congressionally mandated one by the end of the year.”

The NCAA’s ‘major opportunity’ in sports gambling

For almost a minute on Thursday, Charlie Baker appeared to be stating sports betting could be a financial windfall for the NCAA. Then moderator Pete Thamel asked a follow-up question and the president walked it all the way back. It’s a fascinating situation. The NCAA surveyed nearly 4,000 18- to 22-year-olds in April. The findings found 58% had engaged in sports gambling.

All of this comes at a time when betting is prevalent amongst the NCAA ranks. Alabama baseball head coach Brad Bohannon was fired in May for violating the standards, duties and responsibilities of university employees. The move came days after suspicious betting activity from the Tide’s game against LSU.

If the NCAA ever wanted to embrace sports betting, however, it would only draw more fans to its product.

“We have a major opportunity to get into the sports betting space, and recognize and understand between social media and 31 states legalizing it and anybody who has a phone being able to bet from anyplace they want and almost three quarters of all people between the ages of 18 and 22 betting on sports to do something about that,” Charlie Baker said.

The NCAA president then explained how he plans to help athletes navigate sports betting. NCAA rules prohibit participation in sports wagering activities, whether it be college or professional sports.

“One is, make sure we really understand where student-athletes are coming from on this stuff, so that we can help,” he said. “Number two, create a program that we’re hope we’re gonna get everybody to endorse around helping them develop the tools and technique they’re going to need to deal with this stuff. And number three, work with the independent entities and with the conferences to be really aggressive about measuring, mining and monitoring the betting that’s actually going on.”

Charlie Baker’s fear over California bill is real

California Assembly member Chris Holden introduced the College Athlete Protection Act back in January. The bill would require institutions that fund major college sports to pay as much as $25,000 annually to athletes. This would come along with the cost of covering six-year guaranteed athletic scholarships and post-college medical expenses.

Payment amounts would be based on how much revenue the athletic programs earn on an annual basis. A portion of the pay would be tied to graduation. However, the bill would not classify athletes as employees of their universities, a battle the NCAA continues to fight for.

The bill passed through the California Assembly earlier this month. There are a few more steps, though. It will make its to the state’s Senate before getting the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Even reaching the Senate has administrators and coaches on high alert about what it could mean for the college athletics model.

“There’s more to this than piece of it everybody pays attention to,” Baker said. “I worry just as much about that when I worry about the California bill, which would basically wipe out most of D-II, all of D-III and chunks of D-I, which does amazing things for young people. And should not get lost in the larger conversation about what we should do, and I’m all in on this to deal with issues people pay the most attention to.”