Tag: Charlie Baker

NCAA President Charlie Baker

NCAA advances age-based eligibility pitch; not retroactive for ’25-26

Posted on | by Field Level Media

The Division I Board of Directors directed the Division I Cabinet to move forward with a major change to NCAA eligibility rules Monday, but president Charlie Baker said he won’t recommend that current seniors and graduates be grandfathered in.

The model in question will allow NCAA athletes to play up to five years of their sport in a five-year window, with the timer starting the academic year after they graduate high school or turn 19, whichever comes first.

“The time is now to reform the period of eligibility rules to provide Division I student-athletes and our schools clear and consistent standards that align with current college athletes’ experiences,” Virginia Tech president and board chairman Tim Sands said in a statement. “The board fully supports student-athletes receiving the unprecedented financial benefits now available to them and emphasized these changes would protect opportunities for high school student-athletes to access the benefits only college sports can provide while delivering predictable outcomes for student-athletes and our schools.”

The Division I Cabinet will meet May 22 and potentially vote on the issue that day.

However, the NCAA’s release makes sure to carve out an exception for players whose eligibility runs out in the current academic year, 2025-26: “new rules are not expected to retroactively apply to student-athletes whose eligibility is or will be completed by the spring of 2026.”

The board of directors was said to have “expressed support” for this key caveat, and in an interview with ESPN, Baker also stood behind it.

“If you’ve used up your eligibility, you’ve used it up,” Baker told ESPN, describing himself as “pretty optimistic” the new rules would pass.

Vanderbilt basketball player Tyler Nickel responded to Baker’s stance with some discontent on social media.

“(S)o we had to play with and against fifth years our entire time in college, but we don’t get one? (A)nd everyone after us gets one too?” Nickel wrote.

Several classes before Nickel’s were awarded a fifth year of eligibility due to the 2020-21 season being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nickel entered college in 2022-23.

To Nickel’s point, it is unclear if an exclusion for the current graduating class would hold up under a legal challenge.

–Field Level Media

President Donald Trump honors the Super Bowl LIX champion Philadelphia Eagles at The White House in Washington D.C., on April 28, 2025.

Trump signs executive order to address issues in college sports

Posted on | by Field Level Media

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that aims to bring stability to college sports while preventing college athletes from becoming professionals.

The president’s order includes guidelines that would preserve athletic scholarships based on an athletic department’s annual revenue. More noteworthy, however, is the declaration that no athlete should be permitted to accept “third-party, pay-for-play payments.”

The executive order directs members of his Cabinet to develop a plan of attack within the next 30 days. It also tabbed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to use future federal funding decisions, among other points of leverage, to force schools to oblige the new policy.

“A national solution is urgently needed,” Trump said in the executive order, “to prevent this situation from deteriorating beyond repair and to protect non-revenue sports, including many women’s sports, that comprise the backbone of intercollegiate athletics.”

According to the order, third-party endorsement deals could continue if they carry “fair market value.”

Trump’s order comes as college athletes have taken advantage of the NCAA easing its constraints on pay-to-play. That came on the heels of an antitrust settlement this summer that allowed schools to pay up to $20.5 million to their athletes in the forthcoming academic year.

Last week, Steve Berman, one of the co-lead plaintiff attorneys in the antitrust case, said that college athletes “don’t need Trump’s help,” adding that “he shouldn’t be aiding the NCAA at the expense of athletes.

“As a result of our case, college athletes are now free to make their own deals,” Berman said. “For Trump to want to put his foot on their deal-making abilities is unwarranted and flouts his own philosophy on the supposed ‘art of the deal.’”

The Autonomy 5 Conferences — which includes the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC — issued a statement after Trump signed the executive order, saying that it is a step toward “preserving these monumental gains by passing a federal law with national standards” for name, image and likeness rights.

“We hope Congress sends federal legislation to President Trump’s desk as soon as possible.”

NCAA president Charlie Baker also praised Trump’s order.

“The Association appreciates the Trump Administration’s focus on the life-changing opportunities college sports provides millions of young people,” Baker said in a statement, “and we look forward to working with student-athletes, a bipartisan coalition in Congress and the Trump Administration to enhance college sports for years to come.”

Earlier this month, the Power 4 conferences formed the College Sports Commission, a group that aims to vet all third-party deals to ensure they reflect reasonable payments for endorsements as opposed to veiled pay-to-play attempts.

The executive order also requires schools to increase the number of available scholarships in non-revenue sports if their athletic departments earned more than $125 million during the last academic year. In addition, any athletic department that brought in at least $50 million cannot reduce the number of scholarships offered in those sports.

–Field Level Media

President of the NCAA, Charlie Baker speaks during a press conference celebrating the 25 year anniversary of the NCAA moving its national office to Indianapolis on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024, at the NCAA Headquarters in Indianapolis.

NCAA president on Trump’s commission plan: ‘Up for anything’

Posted on | by Field Level Media

NCAA president Charlie Baker told reporters Monday that the Trump administration’s interest in issues affecting college sports could help make progress.

President Donald Trump is planning a presidential commission on college athletics, according to reports that surfaced last week, with former Alabama coach Nick Saban in a lead role.

Yahoo Sports reported that the commission’s goal would be to seek solutions for the present landscape — in which unlimited transfers, unregulated compensation from boosters under the guise of NIL deals and continued conference realignment have had a profound impact on college football, basketball and other sports.

Baker has been president of the NCAA since 2023, when he succeeded Mark Emmert. He was the Republican governor of Massachusetts from 2015-23.

Baker was attending Atlantic Coast Conference meetings in Florida when he had an informal meeting with reporters there.

“I think the fact that there’s an interest on the executive side on this, I think it speaks to the fact that everybody is paying a lot of attention right now to what’s going on in college sports,” Baker said.

“I’m up for anything that can help us get somewhere.”

Baker added that representatives of his office have “talked to folks who are working on this,” though he did not believe there was a framework ready yet.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, meanwhile, said in an ACC Network interview that he believes Congress can help the college sports ecosystem.

“We have been very bold in the desire for a national standard when it comes to name, image and likeness. We need to make sure that we have something that comes out of Washington that connects all 50 of the states because we’ve had a piecemeal project and it’s really undermined college sports. It’s been a race to the bottom,” Phillips said.

But it remains to be seen whether Trump will work with members of Congress or bypass them. Sen. Tommy Tuberville — the former Auburn football coach — hinted that Trump was considering using an executive order, which he did for a similar presidential commission on religious liberty.

–Field Level Media

Inside NCAA Headquarters located in Indianapolis on Friday, March 10, 2023. Ncaa President Charlie Baker

NCAA ‘drawing line’ on gambling, wants player prop bets banned

Posted on | by Field Level Media

The NCAA wants states to ban player prop bets in college sports to protect both athletes and the “integrity of the game,” president Charlie Baker said Wednesday.

“Sports betting issues are on the rise across the country with prop bets continuing to threaten the integrity of competition and leading to student-athletes and professional athletes getting harassed,” Baker said. “The NCAA has been working with states to deal with these threats and many are responding by banning college prop bets.”

Last week, Cleveland Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff told reporters he had been threatened by gamblers last season.

“They got my telephone number and were sending me crazy messages about where I live and my kids and all that stuff,” Bickerstaff said. “So it is a dangerous game and a fine line that we’re walking for sure.”

Indiana Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton said recently that gamblers reach out to him directly on social media about prop bets, which involve the performance of individual players and not the team.

“To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings or whatever,” he said. “I’m a prop.”

And Baker said that isn’t right.

“This week we will be contacting officials across the country in states that still allow these bets and ask them to join Ohio, Vermont, Maryland and many others and remove college prop bets from all betting markets,” Baker said. “The NCAA is drawing the line on sports betting to protect student-athletes and to protect the integrity of the game.”

Wagering on college sports is a multi-billion industry. The American Gaming Association issued its projection last week that said Americans will legally bet $2.72 billion on the 2024 men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments, equivalent to just 2.2 percent of the total amount of money legally wagered on sports in the U.S. in 2023.

–Field Level Media

Nov 7, 2023; Washington, DC, USA; Senator Chris Murphy speaks outside the Supreme Court Tuesday during arguments in the case, U.S. v. Rahimi. Mandatory Credit: Megan Smith-USA TODAY

Sen. Murphy reintroduces college athlete unionization bill

Posted on | by Field Level Media

A day after the NCAA unveiled a proposal to allow some schools to directly compensate their athletes, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy reintroduced a bill that would allow college athletes to unionize.

The College Athlete Right to Organize Act (CARO) legislation introduced Wednesday by Murphy and co-sponsor Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would amend the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to classify college athletes as employees. This designation would give college athletes the same rights as any employee in the United States to join together to improve their working conditions and wages, including the freedom to organize at their individual colleges or across colleges, and by sport or across sports.

In Murphy’s proposal, the NLRA would update the definition of public colleges and private educational institutions as employers “within the context of intercollegiate sports, allowing athletes to collectively bargain at any college, regardless of state laws that restrict their basic labor rights or potential state laws that define athletes as nonemployees.”

“All the breathless attention on this weekend’s College Football Playoff selection is a reminder that college sports are anything but amateur. There is no college sports industry and its $16 billion in annual revenues without the athletes’ labor,” Murphy said Wednesday in a press release.

“It’s past time they get a seat at the negotiating table. Instead of fighting athletes’ rights in courts and spending millions on lobbying Congress, the NCAA and its members should start negotiating directly with players on revenue-sharing, health and safety protections, and more. This legislation would make it easier for the athletes to realize their power, form unions, and start to collectively bargain.”

NCAA President Charlie Baker wrote in a letter to member schools Tuesday that top NCAA schools should be allowed to operate under different rules. His proposed framework would create a new subdivision in which athletes would avoid being categorized as employees and would be allowed to license their NIL rights directly to their schools.

“It kick-starts a long-overdue conversation among the membership that focuses on the differences that exist between schools, conferences and divisions and how to create more permissive and flexible rules across the NCAA that put student-athletes first,” Baker wrote. “Colleges and universities need to be more flexible, and the NCAA needs to be more flexible, too.”

This is not the first time Murphy, a vocal UConn fan, has attempted to address this issue. He and Massachusetts Rep. Lori Trahan have twice proposed legislation focused on name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities for student-athletes — the College Athlete Economic Freedom Act — in February of 2021 and again in July of this year.

Sanders — the Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee — and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored Murphy’s bill.

Companion legislation is being introduced in Congress by U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York.

–Field Level Media