Yesterday, NCAA president Charlie Baker laid out a plan that would radically reshape the college athletics landscape. In a letter to all 362 Division I member institutions, Baker proposed a new subdivision within DI for the highest-resourced universities. This group would not only be able to directly compensate student-athletes, but actually be required to invest at least $30,000 per year into an enhanced educational trust fund for at least half of their student athletes, in compliance with Title IX. Additionally, institutions in this new subdivision would be required to work together to create rules that may differ from the rest of DI on a wide range of policies, including scholarships, roster size, recruitment, transfers, or Name Image Likeness.
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Baker argues that this change would give “the educational institutions with the most visibility, the most financial resources and the biggest brands an opportunity to choose to operate with a different set of rules that more accurately reflect their scale and their operating model.”
This is not an edict and President Bake does not have the authority to institute such changes himself. Instead, this is meant to provide a framework for future changes to the system directly to the athletic administrators and college presidents who make up the NCAA governing bodies, which have historically taken over a year to propose and pass legislation.
