Charlie Baker brings fiery presence NCAA has long needed as president aims to keep organization relevant

LAS VEGAS — If the NCAA is evaporating and becoming irrelevant, it won’t disappear quietly. Not with Charlie Baker, the association’s 67-year-old president, who for a brief moment on Monday took the bully pulpit’s “pulpit.”

“I was certainly trying to stay calm and discuss [with Baker],” DraftKings Network college sports editor Collin Sherwin told CBS Sports. “He clearly wanted to get something off his chest.”

Sherwin had just asked a question while participating in a gambling panel during the National Association of Collegiate Athletic Directors’ annual convention at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Baker sat in the back row as a spectator before speaking to attendees. of the convention later in the day.

When Sherwin questioned a speaker’s suggestion that prop bets be banned in the new legal sports gambling landscape, Baker told Sherwin, “I couldn’t disagree more.”

Baker did not relent, later being seen in a heated argument with Sherwin that appeared one-sided.

“No swearing [from Baker],” Sherwin said, “but I got hit with a ‘Leave the kids alone.’”

If NCAA members wanted an engaged, aggressive leader after Mark Emmert’s rudderless tenure, they got their man. Charles Duane Baker Jr. is no wallflower. Say what you will about what has certainly become a diminished NCAA, but its leader displayed a quality rarely seen in the association’s history: a balanced, intelligent and involved leadership capacity.

If the members wanted a combative northeasterner, with a broad political background and an agenda, they got that too.

Baker took the stage on Monday to speak at that NACDA convention to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” The symbolism could have been interpreted in many ways as Mick Jagger sang, “You make a grown man cry.”

Mark Emmert, he’s not.

“I guess you could say I was an unusual choice,” Baker told the 3,000 attendees. “I left politics because it had become too divisive and dysfunctional; I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Tired of politics as usual, a Republican governor of Massachusetts, in a decidedly blue state, thought about testing his personal skills with what could be one of the most poorly perceived brands in the country. One of Baker’s few connections to the slow-moving athletic monolith was that he played Ivy League basketball at Harvard.

When he became a serious NCAA contender in late 2022, the mandate was basically to turn an aircraft carrier into a bathtub.

“The message was pretty clear,” Baker said. “Just do it something.”

History has yet to fully weigh in just 15 months into Baker’s residency as NCAA president. The association is certainly a leaner, meaner and more fiscally responsible monolith. But perhaps the biggest victory is that it still exists. Baker was part of the force behind the House v. Settlement NCAA which brought together a series of crippling antitrust lawsuits.

Then again, what else could he have done? Doing nothing likely would have resulted in a losing trial that could have bankrupted the NCAA. The entire process was being labeled “a race to the bottom” not just for the association but for college sports as well.

Baker got to this point projecting not exactly power, but competence mixed with energy and a certain talent. Sporting a green tie, Baker said, “Celtics in five,” at the end of his remarks. During a question and answer session, he quickly named his all-time Celtics team.

Back to the real world, your The DI Project proposal in December set the stage for the Chamber’s agreement which allows revenue sharing with athletes for the first time.

But if you really want to trigger Baker, bring up the game issue. He’s against these prop bets which are essentially micro-bets. They can be placed on everything from how long it takes to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” to over/under the points scored in the first quarter.

Baker believes prop bets add more pressure on athletes and officials if they don’t perform as prescribed in the bet itself. Of the 38 states with legal sports betting, 18 do not allow prop bets. Maryland, Ohio and Vermont have banned college betting this year.

Baker released a statement in late March calling for a ban on prop bets.

“I think prop bets, in some respects, are one of the parts that concerns me the most,” Baker told CBS News in November.

He was so concerned about the repercussions of the betting public on athletes and managers that he hired a company to track and report negative comments on social media to the platforms.

“Some of the things that are being said are horrible,” Baker said Monday. “I don’t think people realize how important this is going to be.”

The irony, of course, drips from the ceiling. Baker reiterated his stance here in Sin City, the gaming capital of the world that the NCAA has deemed worthy of hosting the 2028 Final Four.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, and I can’t believe I’m saying this here,” Baker said at the convention. “I kind of wish sports betting would stay in Las Vegas.”

Baker was asked about prop bets again on Monday in a brief meeting with reporters following his formal comments.

“When was the first time you started hearing student-athletes and professional athletes talk a lot about harassment, threats and intimidation?” he asked.

That would be in 2019, when state-sponsored gambling would be a landmark Supreme Court ruling. This harassment has matured, so to speak. Major League Baseball players complained to USA Today on Monday about death threats and criticism from misguided players.

In the end, there were no hard feelings. Sherwin may have been caught out by Baker’s fiery game stance. The journalist stated that banning prop bets would push them into unregulated offshore markets, where they could not be monitored by US regulatory agencies. Baker argued the opposite, passionately, in public.

“He certainly has a different opinion,” Sherwin said. “As he reminded me, he talked to several attorneys general and gaming commissions and they all said that the [illegal offshore] the college props market for players is not a problem. That’s what he says.

“I would say that if it’s not a problem, it will become a problem if we don’t legalize these markets. There is no incentive for anyone in Costa Rica or the Isle of Man [oversee prop bets].”

“Beautiful message,” one attendee said to Baker as the NCAA president came down to the stage.

Mark Emmert, he definitely isn’t.