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NCAA President Charlie Baker on NIL ‘without any rules,’ Final Four in Dallas and more

Baker was in Dallas on Friday for the women’s Final Four semifinals.

For what it’s worth: new NCAA President Charlie Baker is 6-6. He’s tall, which is fitting, because the task ahead of him is tall, as well.

In his first month on the job, Baker has acknowledged as much. The former two-term Massachusetts governor has pointed to a college sports world in the midst of change, including perhaps the tallest of tasks: how to handle the Name, Image and Likeness era.

“One of the things we have going for us now is we know what it looks like without any rules,” Baker said of NIL. “No one knew when this all started. People said we need rules, and everybody is like, ‘Why don’t we see what happens?’ Well now we know what happens: Everybody lies.”

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Baker was in Dallas on Friday for the women’s Final Four semifinals, but first he took a visit to the Nash-Davis Recreation Center to take a tour and visit the “Final Four dream court” that was gifted by the NCAA to the West Dallas community. He took some time to talk to The Dallas Morning News about that, as well as NIL, which is back at the forefront after a congressional hearing this week.

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It seems like women’s college basketball has had a rise in popularity, especially in terms of ticket prices at this weekend’s Final Four. How much is this year’s Final Four in Dallas a showcase for it?

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Baker: “I think being in a place like Dallas, where the NCAA has been before for a lot of events, is a great place to showcase because Dallas has experience with these kind of events. You have the resources, you have the facilities, you have the hotel infrastructure, and you have a lot of people who really like sports, and that makes a big difference. I also think you have four very strong teams in the women’s Final Four, and they’re different, and they bring different styles to this that obviously bring different type of personnel. But these are four really fun teams to watch, and I think these are going to be great games.”

How was the tour [of the Nash-Davis center and the new dream court]?

Baker: “It was great. Having been in the public sector at the state level, and having worked with a lot of colleagues in local government, I’ve been to a lot of these kinds of places and circumstances where there’s been public money invested and foundational money and all kinds of things, and I’m a big believer that these kinds of parks, these kinds of facilities, they make neighborhoods and they make families and their communities. And I’m thrilled we have a chance to participate. And I’ll tell you something: I’ve never seen a court with that material before, and I’m going to walk away from this place wanting to learn more about that and how we might think about incorporating that technology into a lot of stuff we’re doing.”

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Switching gears: The first NIL bills started to be introduced in 2019-2020 and everyone was pretty unanimous that we want to get this done and we want uniformity. And yet, here we are in 2023 still talking about it. How hard is it to get lawmakers to agree on what NIL should look like?

Baker: “I think one of the things we have going for us now is we know what it looks like without any rules. No one knew when this all started. People said we need rules, and everybody is like, ‘Why don’t we see what happens?’ Well now we know what happens: Everybody lies. That’s the big line coming from a number of athletic directors, and they’re right … and that puts families in a terrible spot. It puts student-athletes in a bad spot. It puts schools and everybody else in a bad spot. And it creates opportunities for people to game families and game student athletes.

“I think there’s almost universal agreement that there ought to be a registry of contacts and there ought to be some type of financial literacy program made available for families. There should be a registration process for agents like there is other agents, and there should be a uniform standard contract. Some of the stories I hear about kids who signed things that were told something and X turned out to be Y. And some of the misrepresentation that goes on with student athletes … I happen to think if you create a transparent registry around that stuff, people can actually being to see what the ‘market’ really looks like. I think it would be a huge improvement for everyone.”

So while you wait for the government to figure that out ...

Baker: “We’re still going to work on it.”

How do you know when it’s time to say, “You know what, we’re not going to wait and we’re going to do it ourselves?”

Baker: “I’ve told people we need to work on coming up with what we can do on those issues, which everybody seems to agree on. The problem we ultimately have is there have been a lot of state laws passed that basically said schools in their state don’t comply with laws that were passed by the NCAA and conferences, and that’s a huge problem. And I would argue for conferences that they want everybody playing the same.”

So it’s safe to say there is serious motivation to get this done, regardless of the federal government?

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Baker: “Yes. We need to do something here. And if the feds do it, I think it would be better because of the pre-emption issues in the national standard, but we’re going to need to make something happen here.”

On Twitter: @JoeJHoyt

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