With help from Congress still uncertain, the NCAA is tackling its own problems. That was president Charlie Baker’s message in a memo he sent to member schools on Thursday.
“NCAA membership is not waiting for others to act,” Baker said in the letter obtained by The Athletic.
College sports is in the midst of a dramatic evolution as amateurism is replaced by athletes receiving direct compensation from their schools and from third parties for their names, images and likenesses.
College sports leaders have pushed Congress for help regulating the new landscape for several years, but that has yet to arrive, leaving the NCAA and conferences vulnerable to antitrust lawsuits and at the mercy of state lawmakers. While Baker acknowledges a federal law is still needed, the NCAA has been notably proactive recently.
In the past few months, the Division I Cabinet has briskly advanced two major rule changes and this week initiated discussions on another — age-based eligibility standards — that could redefine who is allowed to play college sports at the highest levels.
In an interview with The Athletic, Baker credited the streamlining of Division I governance — fewer and smaller committees — with allowing for a more nimble and efficient legislative process.
“We believe that the proposals we’ve made are consistent with current law,” Baker said.
The cabinet this week approved a set of pre-enrollment eligibility rules, including one that would make prospective college athletes ineligible if they allow themselves to be available for a professional draft. The cabinet also finalized a penalty structure that was a proactive attempt to discourage schools from accepting transfers who circumvent the portal process. Allowing such a so-called ghost transfer to compete would trigger a big suspension for a head coach and a fine equivalent to 20 percent of the program’s budget.
With numerous lawsuits targeting NCAA eligibility and updates badly needed now that college athletes can be paid, the next change in the pipeline could be the most significant. A plan to shift to age-based eligibility requirements was discussed by the cabinet this week and will now be circulated among the more than 350 Division I member schools for feedback.
The idea is for an athlete’s college eligibility clock to start at the conclusion of high school or their 19th birthday, whichever comes first, and to last five years. The plan would eliminate almost all exceptions, shutting down a waiver system that member schools believe can lead to inconsistent rulings.
“One of the things people have been saying to us for the past year, as we’ve been going through a lot of the eligibility stuff is, ‘It’s too complicated. There’s too many waivers. There’s too many, sort of, chinks in the armor,’” Baker told The Athletic. “But we believe that process is, in fact, legally defensible. We win way more of those lawsuits than we lose. (But) they create enormous uncertainty for schools.”
According to data tracked by the NCAA, 77 eligibility lawsuits have been filed, and 35 times a judge has denied an athlete’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have cleared the way to compete while the lawsuit progressed through the courts. More recently, athletes have found success in state courts as opposed to federal courts. Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss got a favorable ruling from a Mississippi judge after the NCAA denied his request for an extra season of eligibility because of a previous medical issue. On Thursday, a judge in Oklahoma granted Sooners linebacker Owen Heinecke an injunction that will allow him a fifth-year. But former Virginia quarterback Chandler Morris and former Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar are among the athletes who have been denied in state court in 11 other cases.
Baker said the NCAA received about 1,500 waiver requests this year and about two-thirds were approved. The vast majority of those denied accepted the ruling.
“Some of those folks call me up and they say, ‘I’m following the way this is working out in court and, you know, I believe in the rule, I believe in following the rule, but it kind of bums me out that somebody goes to court … (and) is able to get another year of eligibility,” he said.
The age-based eligibility plan is nowhere near approval, and details such as how it would be implemented and affect current athletes still need to be worked out.
“There’s an awful lot of leagues that are based on age,” Baker said. “You know, U10, U15, U20, U22. All those. And if you were to talk to most of the members and a lot of the student athletes, too, the thing you hear from all of them is a collegiate-athletic experience should be like a collegiate-academic experience. Is there some way for us to put it into that box? A really simple and easy way to define it.”
If the proposal does pass, it is likely to be challenged in court. It wouldn’t be surprising if the other notable recent changes face lawsuits, too. But Baker said that shouldn’t stop the NCAA from moving forward.
“I don’t see any reason not to chase what we consider to be pro-competition and legally defensible answers to some of these questions that people have been raising,” he said.
In Washington, the bipartisan SCORE Act has been in limbo in the House of Representatives for months after being introduced last summer. President Trump has signed two executive orders on college sports in the last 10 months. The most recent one earlier this month was more targeted, laying out specifics on eligibility and transfer rules, but ultimately a solution still needs to come from lawmakers.
SCORE is unlikely to be that solution even if it ever does pass the House, but there is renewed optimism about getting a bill that originates from the Senate since Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Eric Schmidt (R-Mo.) introduced their own college sports bill the day of Trump’s college sports roundtable at the White House.
“I spent time in Washington, certainly many members of the membership have, and we have heard from a variety of folks down there that they appreciate the fact that we’ve tackled some of the stuff that was important to them,” Baker said. “And that the eligibility stuff and the transfer stuff in particular got their attention, because they understand it’s hard for us to fix that.”