FILE – NCAA President Charlie Baker speaks during the Division I Business Session at the annual NCAA convention, Jan. 15, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)
NEW YORK — The president of the NCAA is urging schools and conferences tempted by riches offered through potential deals with new equity sources to think about the long-term repercussions before jumping into the deals.
“My message to everybody on this would be really simple: Be really careful,’” Charlie Baker said Monday at a Big East roundtable on the future of college basketball.
With schools and conferences under increasing pressure to raise funds to pay their players, reports of them negotiating with new equity sources for college sports are becoming more frequent.
Recent headlines out of the Big Ten are about its negotiation to bring in an investor that would pay $2.4 billion to help market the conference’s media rights and other properties.
A meeting of the conference’s presidents and chancellors last week didn’t produce a vote on the deal, with Michigan and Southern California holding out.
One of the most outspoken opponents has been Michigan regent Jordan Acker, who at a monthly regents meeting last week called the equity proposal, which would last through 2046 and pay more than $100 million to each school, an attempt at solving “the same old problem with a new, and this time, rushed solution.”
In a statement, the Big Ten said its potential partner — the investment arm of the University of California pension system — was not a private equity firm, but rather a nonprofit organization (that still would seek a profit on its investment.)
“Ultimately, it is the decision of the Big Ten member institutions’ presidents and chancellors to decide if it’s the right opportunity and those conversations are ongoing,” the conference said in a statement.
Baker wasn’t speaking directly about the Big Ten issue when discussing equity. He also wasn’t completely dismissive of the idea.
“People should try to play the long game,” he said. “If I’ve learned anything about college sports, it’s very hard to get anybody to think past tomorrow. … People should be thinking very hard about the long term, and we’d all be well-served, especially in terms of the kids” who the schools are in business to help.
Expanding the tournament
Baker once again offered his support for expanding the NCAA Tournament. He said ultimately it was up to the basketball committees to decide, but he was in favor.
“I don’t want to get ahead of the basketball committees on this one, but I would hope we could find a way to get there.”
Baker admitted that expansion to potentially 76 teams would cause some logistical headaches such as moving teams playing in that opening round around the country on short notice. That doesn’t outweigh the positives — if they can get more money from their television partners to pay for the expanded tournament.
“One of the things comes with the benefit of having (units) on both sides is that you give schools and conferences reasons to invest in the sport,” he said. “I think this will make it more likely that schools will put additional resources into the game which is good.”
Baker was adamant to protect the automatic qualifiers and said that he didn’t want to get ahead of the committee.
“First of all you get a unit for getting in and if you win you get another one,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of interest in making sure there’s a pretty wide dispersion of teams participating in the opening round.”
Being at the site of the new Big East headquarters at the Empire State Building, Baker gave the example of St. John’s a few years ago as a team that would have made the tournament with expansion.
“I was bummed that St. John’s didn’t make the tournament a couple years ago. They were the only ones who gave Connecticut a run for their money,” he said.
Sports gambling
Baker said the NCAA is still in the process of voting on whether athletes and athletic department staff members can bet on professional sports. The Division I Administrative Committee approved the change a few weeks ago and now must still be approved by Division II and III to go into effect.
“Between now and the end of the year,” Baker said the other two divisions would vote.
The change comes as NCAA enforcement caseloads involving sports betting violations have increased in recent years. Last month, the NCAA banned three men’s college basketball players for sports betting, saying they had bet on their own games at Fresno State and San Jose State and were able to share thousands of dollars in payouts.
“We run the largest integrity program in the world on sports betting across all the various games,” Baker said. “Sadly, we discovered some student athletes involved with some problematic activity.”
