Former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker formally replaces Mark Emmert as the NCAA’s president Wednesday, and during a roughly 30-minute interview with USA TODAY Sports earlier this week, what Baker didn’t say was just as notable as what he did say.
Amid what he described as a listening tour of college sports stakeholders that already has been underway and will continue during his first 100 days, Baker did not dismiss out of hand the concept of college athletes becoming employees of their school. He also did not adhere to the idea that the association’s only path to clarifying its most urgent underlying issues is the passage of new federal laws.