Baker: NCAA settlement adds pressure, certainty
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Dan Murphy, ESPN Staff Writer
LAS VEGAS — NCAA president Charlie Baker said the association’s pending antitrust case settlement will put financial pressure on everyone in the college sports industry, but he believes it also creates more certainty for schools to plan for a new system that will allow them to share more money with their athletes.
The NCAA announced last month that it had agreed to terms to settle three federal antitrust cases that loomed as the most immediate and arguably largest threats to the future of the association. As part of the settlement, the NCAA will pay former athletes nearly $2.8 billion in back damages. In addition, schools will be allowed to share a significant portion of revenue — roughly $20 million per year starting in 2025 — directly with their athletes. In exchange, the plaintiffs have agreed to drop three cases that some in college sports believe could have resulted in close to $20 billion in total damages.
“There is a lot of pressure here on everybody,” Baker said. “I think it’s much better than the pressure of what could have been catastrophic losses. That would have taken another few years. So, we’d be spinning our wheels for another few years without really knowing what was going to happen.”
Baker, in his first extensive interview since agreeing to a settlement, told reporters that he hopes the terms of the settlement establish a way for schools to provide fair compensation to their athletes without turning them into employees.
The NCAA remains a defendant in multiple lawsuits which argue that college athletes should be considered employees of their schools or conferences. While the settlement does not resolve those issues, Baker and many others in college sports are hoping the plans to share revenue with athletes in the future will spur Congress to write a new law that will prevent athletes from becoming employees.
“If the court blesses [the pending settlement], then it puts us in a position where we can go to Congress and say: ‘One of the three branches of the federal government blessed this as a model to create compensation without triggering employment,'” Baker said Monday. “I think that’s a good place to start a conversation with Congress.”
The NCAA and conference leaders have made little progress during the past several years of lobbying politicians on Capitol Hill for a new law that would create a special status for college sports as an industry. Baker said he has heard positive feedback from several federal lawmakers since the terms of the settlement were made public.
At a conference for athletic directors in Las Vegas this week, Baker said he has been peppered with questions about how some details of the settlement might impact the future shape of college sports. He said more answers are likely to come within the next 30 days, when lawyers for both sides of the antitrust cases are expected to submit the fine-print details of their settlement in court.
The detailed terms of the settlement will still need to be approved by the federal judge overseeing the cases — a process that is likely to take several months and include a window for athletes to object or comment on the terms.
“I’m a little uncomfortable about getting too far ahead of that,” Baker said. “People are starting to think about how to plan for it. We certainly are. But we absolutely recognize and understand there is a bunch of stuff that needs to happen before the thing becomes official.”
Some legal experts have questioned if the judge in this case will take issue with a class action settlement that will make it difficult for athletes to sue the NCAA for antitrust violations in the future. When asked if he had concerns about the settlement being approved, Baker said the central figures on all sides of the argument for compensating college athletes that has played out over the past 10 years are involved in the case.
“If you think the players on the field matter, we’ve got most of them,” he said.
The two biggest pending questions for school officials gearing up for a new business model concern the roles that Title IX laws and booster collectives will play in how revenue is shared with athletes in the future.
Title IX regulations require schools to provide equal benefits and opportunities to men and women for their varsity sports on campus. The Department of Education, which oversees Title IX on college campuses, has not made any comment on whether schools will have to split payments to athletes equally among men and women to remain compliant with the law.
“I’m going to wait and see where the dust lands [on the settlement] before we start engaging in those conversations,” Baker said. “The one thing we should do here is not race. We should be deliberate and trust the process here.”
Multiple sources have told ESPN that part of the settlement aims to rein in collectives — groups of boosters associated with a particular school that have served as a de facto payroll in some places as the NIL market has evolved in the past three years. Baker said he does not believe collectives are going to disappear as a result of the settlement, but he does hope that the new revenue-sharing arrangements will make it easier for schools to “own the primary relationship” with their athletes.
The NCAA plans to pay the $2.8 billion of back damages throughout the course of the next 10 years. Baker said at least $120 million (or roughly 42%) of the yearly payment for the settlement will come from the NCAA’s national office budget. The other 58% will come from reducing the amount of the money the NCAA typically distributes to its members — 33% from FBS schools, 13% from FCS schools and 12% from Division I schools that don’t have a football program.
Some athletic directors and conference officials from smaller leagues have raised objections to the amount of money they will be missing over the next 10 years from the NCAA’s distributions to help solve a problem that pertains mostly to the power conferences that generate large sums of money from football. Baker said the back damages are related to a set of rules that the entire NCAA membership — including the schools from those smaller conferences — approved and maintained.
Baker also said that he thinks the 10-year span of the settlement will serve as “glue” to help bind together the larger group of Division I schools, avoiding the potential for power conferences to form a separate entity with their own rules. Keeping all of Division I together will allow the NCAA to maintain the March Madness basketball tournament that generates the overwhelming majority of money that the association distributes to its schools.
“We now have the ability to move forward with the assumption that we’re all going to be one big, maybe happy, family moving forward,” Baker said.
Baker said the NCAA’s national office has committed to potentially increasing its contribution to the damages payments beyond $120 million if revenue for the national tournaments it organizes continues to grow.
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Max Olson, ESPN Staff Writer
BOULDER, Colo. — Deion Sanders watched his Colorado offense put up 49 points on the top scoring defense in the Big 12 on Saturday, but he isn’t satisfied. The coach expects dominance in all three phases of the game.
The Buffaloes outplayed Utah in two out of three phases and eventually got rolling on offense in a 49-24 victory, extending their win streak to four games and ensuring they’ll remain in the Big 12 championship race the rest of the way. Afterward, Sanders delivered a critique that sounded a little more like a warning to others.
“We haven’t even put it all together yet,” Sanders said. “Like, we haven’t even played our best game. That should be, in itself, scary. Like, man, when I said we comin’, we still comin’. We never stopped comin’. We are comin’. And we ain’t nearly there yet.”
Colorado (8-2, 6-1) got a strong start from its defense, which held the Utes (4-6, 1-6) to 83 yards on 33 plays in the first half, and a 76-yard punt return touchdown from receiver LaJohntay Wester to help make up for a bumpy start on offense. Quarterback Shedeur Sanders was intercepted on his first pass and later fumbled a snap for another turnover.
It may not have been the Buffaloes’ finest performance of the season, but it was a 25-point win over the preseason Big 12 front-runner, snapping a seven-game losing streak against a program whose last win at Folsom Field came by a score of 63-21.
“I think that speaks a lot about the program and where we are,” Deion Sanders said. “We’ve got to tighten some things up and get some things together, but you see we’re trending in the right direction.
“We started off rough. That wasn’t indicative to who Shedeur is, and I thought he was kind of OK all game long. Then I look at the stats and he’s 30-for-41 for 340 [yards] and three [touchdowns]. Like, c’mon man. I guess I’m just a hard dad to please at times, as well as a hard head coach.”
Sanders praised Utah’s defense and the problems it presented throughout the contest and said he was thankful for the challenge. It took complementary football to overcome the two first-half turnovers, with Colorado’s defense holding Utah to field goals after both takeaways. The Buffaloes didn’t surrender a touchdown until midway through the third quarter.
“Those type of things can’t happen,” Shedeur Sanders said, “and I’m going to have a talk with the whole offense and apologize for my performance out there at the very beginning, because I can’t put the team in that type of situation. I’m thankful for the defense. I may have to take them out to dinner this week for saving me and saving the team.”
Sanders responded after the fumble by guiding an 85-yard touchdown drive that featured another highlight-reel moment for Travis Hunter. Sanders threw deep to Colorado’s two-way star on a fourth-and-8, and Hunter made a leaping grab over two Utah defenders for a 25-yard gain. Sanders hit Will Sheppard for an 8-yard score on his next throw to extend Colorado’s lead to 21-6.
Hunter added to his Heisman Trophy résumé Saturday with 55 receiving yards on five catches, a 5-yard rushing touchdown on a reverse and his third interception of the season while playing 132 snaps.
When asked if he had a message for undecided Heisman voters, Deion Sanders did not hold back.
Travis Hunter after his third interception on the season 🔥 pic.twitter.com/NhvAnbGLow
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) November 16, 2024
“If they can’t see, they can’t see,” Sanders said. “It is what it is. I mean, Travis is who he is. It’s supposed to go to the best college football player. I think that’s been a wrap since, what, Week 2? So we ain’t petitioning for nobody. We ain’t doing that. We’ve got a wonderful display of cameras here and I think we’re on national television every week. If they can’t see it, there’s a problem.
“Don’t allow their hatred for me to interfere with our kids’ success. They gotta stop that. Y’all gotta stop. Some of y’all are like that. Y’all gotta stop that, man. Give the kids what they deserve, man. I had my turn. I played 14 years. You had 14 years to hate me. Now let it go.”
Hunter was the Heisman front-runner in ESPN BET odds entering Week 12 at +125, ahead of Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel, Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty and Miami quarterback Cam Ward.
Colorado’s defense was able to constantly pressure freshman quarterback Isaac Wilson, forcing four sacks and three interceptions, and Utah finished with a mere 31 rushing yards, their fewest in a game since 2011. The preseason No. 12 Utes were considered the Big 12 favorites entering their first season in the conference but are now in danger of their first losing campaign since 2013.
“I’m in the twilight zone,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. “… It’s the most difficult year of my coaching career, hands down, not even close.”
Colorado continues to control its destiny in chasing a Big 12 championship game bid, as the lone team in the 16-member conference that has lost just one conference game entering Saturday. The Buffaloes’ four-game win streak since a 31-28 home loss to Kansas State on Oct. 12 is the longest of Sanders’ two-year tenure.
After a 4-8 debut season, he has this once struggling program right where he planned to be for Year 2. In a league known for dramatic games decided by one-score margins, Sanders isn’t just trying to survive and advance to Arlington, Texas. He says he’s aiming for “flawless.”
“We expect to be here,” Sanders said. “A lot of y’all didn’t expect us to be here, and don’t think we don’t know that. But we expected to be where we are. Matter of fact, we expected to be a little better.”
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Pete Thamel, ESPN
Ball State fired coach Mike Neu, the school announced Saturday. The Cardinals are 3-7.
Neu was 40-63 in nine seasons at Ball State. Neu led the Cardinals to the MAC title in 2020, which was his only winning season at Ball State.
Sources told ESPN that the staff was informed of Neu’s dismissal early Saturday.
Offensive line coach Colin Johnson will serve as the interim head coach for the last two games, athletic director Jeff Mitchell said in a statement. Ball State hosts Bowling Green on Nov. 23 then plays at Ohio on Nov. 29.
Neu, 53, is a beloved alum with a strong campus reputation, but the lack of results ultimately led to his dismissal. Ball State lost 51-48 in overtime at Buffalo this week and fell to 2-4 in MAC play.
That clinched a fourth consecutive losing season for Ball State.
“Coach Neu has poured his heart into the Ball State football program,” Mitchell said in the statement. “I commend him for his professionalism and the positive team culture he has constructed. His efforts have greatly impacted the lives of hundreds of young men. He has represented the Ball State brand with integrity and class, and I wish him well in future pursuits.”
Neu led Ball State to two bowl games. That included a win over San Jose State in the Arizona Bowl to conclude the 2020 season, when Ball State finished 7-1 and won its first MAC title since 1996.
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