Dr. Mark Emmert wants to level the playing field.
The outgoing National Collegiate Athletic Association President Dr. Mark Emmert was grilled by National Public Radio host Art Shapiro in one of his final radio appearances in his job and the retiring NCAA head did not come off well. Dr. Emmert was pleading for Congress to get involved and solve the NCAA’s problems with “student-athletes” being able to earn money off of their faces and how that has changed the world of recruiting for college and university coaches because players can go to places that are the best fits for them monetarily.
Dr. Emmert wants federal legislation to fix the problem. “Well, the notion of whether or not student athletes should be compensated as employees or whether they should be student athletes participating in sports as students and providing some level of compensation where it makes sense I think is critically important. And I’m really quite supportive of that. The route forward is in fact going to necessitate working through Congress because we have a situation today where there’s over 30 different state laws that provide different scenarios around how you can run name, image and likeness programs, for example. And you can’t have that kind of variation across states and have national policy. So the need to bring Congress in isn’t driven just by failures of any one group. It’s because of the actions that are going on around the country.” Dr. Emmert is leaving his job after signing a new contract with the schools that make up the NCAA. He is being replaced by Charlie Baker who did not seek re-election as Massachusetts governor. The NCAA is a political organization and needed to hire someone who knows the ins and outs of politics particularly in Washington where the NCAA needs a high-powered lobbyist. Baker fits that role.
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