Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a resident of Swampscott, will become the next president of the NCAA, the organization announced Thursday morning.
Baker decided not to run for re-election as governor and will be succeeded by Attorney General Maura Healey. His term ends Jan. 5, 2023, and he will take the helm of the NCAA in March. Baker will succeed Dr. Mark Emmert, who led the organization for 12 years.
Baker, in a statement, said he was “honored” to take on the role.
“The NCAA is confronting complex and significant challenges, but I am excited to get to work as the awesome opportunity college athletics provides to so many students is more than worth the challenge and for the fans that faithfully fill stadiums, stands and gyms from coast to coast, I am eager to ensure the competitions we all love to follow are there for generations to come,” he said. “Over the coming months, I will begin working with student-athletes and NCAA members as we modernize college sports to suit today’s world while preserving its essential value.”
Battered by losses in the court and attacks by politicians, the NCAA is going through a sweeping reform, trying to decentralize the way college sports is governed.
College sports leaders, including Emmert, have repeatedly asked for help from Congress to regulate name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation since the NCAA lifted its ban on athletes being paid endorsers.
Now the association will be led by a politician for the first time.
Baker was born in upstate New York, went to high school in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard, where he played on the junior varsity basketball team. That’s the extent of his personal experience in college sports.
The last two NCAA presidents, Emmert and the late Myles Brand, moved into the job after being university presidents.
Before that the job had typically been held by former college sports administrators.
But with the NCAA moving into a new phase and college sports becoming more professionalized, it was clear the role of the president of the association was also changing.
“Governor Baker has shown a remarkable ability to bridge divides and build bipartisan consensus, taking on complex challenges in innovative and effective ways,” said Linda Livingstone, president of Baylor and chairwoman of the NCAA Board of Governors. “These skills and perspective will be invaluable as we work with policymakers to build a sustainable model for the future of college athletics.”
Emmert and other college sports leaders have been spending ample time in recent years in Washington, hoping for a federal law to manage NIL and a narrow antitrust exemption for the NCAA.
The NCAA has been leaning on broad bylaws that outlaw recruiting inducements and pay-for-play to deal with NIL compensation, but detailed, uniform rules have been lacking. More than 30 states have passed their own NIL laws, and the result is a patchwork of regulations and hard-to-enforce rules.
More than a half dozen NIL bills have been proposed over the last two years, but none have gone anywhere. And some lawmakers have expressed a desire to dig into college sports beyond NIL, with topics like long-term health care and revenue sharing for athletes potential topics.
NCAA revenues have surpassed $1 billion in recent years, most of that coming from media rights deal for the men’s Division I basketball tournament. The majority of the NCAA’s revenue is distributed back to the 1,100 member schools throughout its conferences.
There are also billions flowing into the major conferences that play big-time college football. The top tier of Division I football operates mostly outside the NCAA, including the College Football Playoff, which is on the verge of expanding from four teams to 12.
One of the challenges Baker will face as he step into the job of leading the NCAA is trying to figure out how major college football can still exist under the association’s umbrella.
During Emmert’s tenure, the NCAA increasingly found itself tangled in political debates. The NCAA pulled its championship events out of states that sanctioned the use of the Confederate flag, and made a similar decision when state lawmakers moved to pull back protections for members of the LGBTQ community.
The NCAA became a target for some conservative politicians over its policies that allow transgender athletes to compete for national championships.
Baker will step in to lead an organization that will determine how it wants to govern going forward.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
