LAS VEGAS — No one would begrudge NCAA president Charlie Baker for being in a dour mood while navigating the hallways of a number of Sin City’s sprawling hotels and casinos for a slew of meetings this month which have become a staple of the business in recent years.
Certainly not after the U.S. House of Representatives failed to bring a vote to the floor last week on one of the landmark pieces of legislation that he has been championing for at least a year in the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act—better known as the SCORE Act.
Instead, however, he is on the opposite end of the spectrum about his willingness to defend the organization—and the rest of college athletics—with everything he’s got at his disposal no matter what may happen in Washington, D.C., over the coming months.
“We don’t have a choice. That’s why we’re up to our eyeballs in court cases” a passionate Baker says Tuesday. “We’re going to fight them all.”
That fight is in reference to the slew of eligibility lawsuits which have popped up on the NCAA’s radar seemingly every week the past few months, something the SCORE Act is designed to address in part. Some have been high profile, such as Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia’s case regarding junior college years he played which has captured the public’s attention, to other more mundane suits involving athletes across a number of different sports and jurisdictions.
Throughout his tenure, Baker has come to understand the degree to which billable hours are one of college athletics’ few constants. That’s not a system that is ideal for anybody involved. It’s also something that doesn’t appear to be shifting anytime soon, with the SCORE Act becoming the latest bill to hit a speed bump after looking like a sure thing in the days before it was set to be voted on.
One of the bill’s chief arguments that the NCAA and the power conferences have put forward is that its passage allows for a limited antitrust exemption which, in turn, would provide protection to establish rules around eligibility, transfers and other items that would not be subject to a constant stream of lawsuits challenging each and every aspect of them.
“I think there were 1,500, plus or minus, Division I waivers last year. Two thirds of them got approved, which leaves you with about 450 or somewhere in that general vicinity that didn’t get approved,” Baker says. “I think 40 have ended up in court—so 90% of the people who didn’t get what they wanted out of a waiver did not go to court. But 10% did and that’s where all the emotion and challenge comes from. And remember, of that 10% we win 60 to 70% of those cases. Now you’re down to a really small number that’s creating most of the angst and most of the confusion.
“It’s critical for us to play those out as long as we have to. What’s at stake here is a ton of opportunities for the next generation of young people—and they’re not sitting in the courtroom, they don’t have a name, but they are the ones who are going to lose if we’re not successful in this stuff.”
While the lack of movement on the SCORE Act or any of the other half-dozen similar bills winding their way through Congress has been a disappointment for those tasked with shepherding the enterprise, it has not come as a complete surprise, even if the power-conference commissioners gathered in the Capitol last week in anticipation of the bill coming to a vote.
Things are not exactly back to square one with the efforts, but they are about to hit an understandable reset as an unwieldy enterprise tries to find any sort of life raft in the current troubled waters they’re trying to navigate.
“It’s harder to pass something than it is to stop something,” says Baker, noting the government shutdown slowed momentum over a potential legislative solution. “Everybody’s got an opinion about college sports and, you know, the good news there is people care. The bad news is, everybody’s got an opinion. I don’t view that as anything other than part of the drill.
“On eligibility, there’s been a lot of moving around on that one. Some of the movement around the state preemption stuff is a signal to me that people understand that there are things that probably deserve a look.”
Sometimes more than one, even.
There is a Democrat-led effort in the Senate to move forward with the Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement (SAFE) Act that has a few nuances to address the issues the SCORE Act does not. On Monday there was the announcement of a bipartisan move from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) that focuses on NIL earnings for athletes dubbed the HUSTLE Act.
It’s a lot to keep track of and a lot to navigate for many of the leaders who have such issues come across their desk with regularity.
“The one thing I hear a lot from the membership is that clarity would be nice, especially on things like eligibility,” Baker says. “We win way more of those [eligibility] cases than we lose thankfully. But the fact that we don’t win them all means you have coaches and ADs who call me and say what judge you end up in front of has a lot to do with whether or not your player gets approved for another year. There’s a lot of unhappiness about that and I get it.
“That particular issue more than almost any other really got the attention of a lot of people in Washington to say, ‘O.K., now I understand why you act, why you believe you have a problem here that could use our help.’ ”
Whether that help is ultimately on the way remains to be seen, especially in a deeply divided Congress which is on the verge of turning its attention to midterm elections in 2026.
But Baker does not appear to be resting on any potential congressional action to know that the fight goes on with issues like eligibility regardless of what will happen in the coming weeks from one of the few entities that could provide the kind of stability everybody is craving.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Charlie Baker Says NCAA Is ‘Ready to Fight’ As SCORE Act Stalls in Congress.
