Emmert: Next NCAA prez needs ‘lot of patience’
LAS VEGAS — Outgoing NCAA president Mark Emmert had some advice for his replacement in his first public appearance since announcing in April that he was stepping down from position he has held for the past 12 years.
“The job requires a lot of patience. And it requires a lot of tolerance for ambiguity, and it’s got a lot of moving parts because of the scale of the enterprise,” Emmert said Wednesday during an appearance at the Sports Business Journal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum. “But that just means you got to stay as focused as you can on what really counts. And that’s doing the right thing by the athletes.”
Emmert, 69, has kept a low profile during this lame-duck period as the NCAA’s leader. His tenure is set to end June 30, but the search for his successor is expected to be completed by the NCAA convention the second week of January.
He will leave the NCAA, which has more than 1,100 member schools that serve half a million college athletes, as it is in the process of a sweeping reorganization and attempt to decentralize the regulation of college athletics.
Major college sports is transitioning into a new era where athletes can be paid endorsers, while enforcement of rules regarding name, image and likeness has been flimsy. The games have never been more valuable media content, but the NCAA is still fighting to keep from paying the athletes like employees.
Emmert has led the NCAA through a tumultuous time when it has been battered by antitrust lawsuits and threatened by politicians. Last year’s unanimous ruling on NIL by the Supreme Court left the NCAA exposed to further legal attacks and pivoting to deregulation.
“Mark walked … in at one of — if not the most challenging time for intercollegiate athletics and has continued to lead well,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said. “I think you have to take a step back and look at how the NCAA is continuing to function as a priority and how it’s continuing to adapt, and you can make plenty of observations: ‘Well, it hasn’t done this. It hasn’t done that.’ That true in any endeavor.”
Despite all the uncertainty, Emmert said leading the NCAA is still a desirable opportunity.
“I guess I’ll confess to a little bit of envy to whoever winds up stepping in next because they get to continue to shape that amazing American institution,” he said.
Emmert called college sports a “public trust” and conceded the job was even bigger than he thought it would be when took over in 2010. Emmert had previously served as the president at the University of Washington and LSU.
Even with that experience in higher education, Emmert admitted the governance of college sports — a representative democracy with limited power for the person sitting at the top — was complicated.
Chris Howard, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Arizona State, called Emmert “a good leader” who had a challenging role.
“It’s a different type of leadership that’s much different than that stern hand that we think we associate with leadership,” said Howard, a former college football player at Air Force who previously was president at Robert Morris.
Emmert has faced plenty of criticism as he became the face of an increasing unpopular entity.
“I think it’s in a lot of ways inappropriate to have an administrator be the face of the NCAA,” Emmert said. “The athletes are the face of the NCAA.”
Emmert, who made $2.9 million in 2021, said the only time the criticism bothered him was when he was accused of not caring about the athletes and prioritizing generating revenue.
“That’s painful. It’s offensive,” he said. “It means somebody’s not spent two minutes trying to figure out you know who this guy is and what he’s done all his life.”
Emmert said it was fair to say the NCAA should have acted sooner on name, image and likeness, but the association’s ability to create guidelines was overrun by state laws and other challenges.
“And the legal environment right now really constrains any national entity from saying, ‘Yeah, here’s how we’re going to manage this and control it,'” he said.
He called, again, for Congress to create federal NIL legislation.
“The job requires a lot of patience. And it requires a lot of tolerance for ambiguity, and it’s got a lot of moving parts because of the scale of the enterprise. But that just means you got to stay as focused as you can on what really counts. And that’s doing the right thing by the athletes.”
Mark Emmert
Emmert said he did not regret going outside the NCAA’s normal enforcement process to punish Penn State‘s football program in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse case in 2014. The NCAA was sued for the penalties and sanctions against Penn State, and eventually many of them were rolled back.
“In retrospect, it would have been useful to do that a little more slowly, probably,” Emmert said. “And maybe some of the anxiety would have died down, but I don’t second guess that one as much as people think.”
Emmert said he has played no role in choosing the next NCAA president beyond helping the board of governors create a job description.
“I’ve just loved 12 years of working in this space. I think college sports is one of the most consequential things that goes on in the country,” Emmert said. “And I hope people always recognize that we’re talking about changing a half a million people’s lives on an annual basis. There’s very few enterprises that do that.”
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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — Tyler Glasnow was put on the injured list Monday with what the Los Angeles Dodgers described as shoulder inflammation, joining fellow frontline starter Blake Snell, who has been sidelined by a similar injury.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Glasnow’s right shoulder is structurally sound but is also dealing with what Roberts called “overall body soreness.”
Glasnow gave up back-to-back homers in Sunday’s first inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates, then was removed from the game after experiencing discomfort while warming up for the second. Afterward, Glasnow expressed frustration at his constant string of injuries and speculated that his latest ailment might stem from the mechanical adjustments he made to improve the health of his elbow.
Glasnow sat out the 2½ months of last season — including the playoffs — with what was initially diagnosed as an elbow sprain, a big reason why the Dodgers were relegated to only three starting pitchers in their march toward a World Series title. Now, he is one of eight starting pitchers on the Dodgers’ injured list.
One of those arms, Tony Gonsolin, will be activated Wednesday to make his first major league start in 20 months. But the Dodgers are short enough on pitching that they’ll have to stage a bullpen game the day before.
“Pitching is certainly volatile,” said Roberts, who added journeyman right-hander Noah Davis to the roster in Glasnow’s place. “We experienced it last year and essentially every year. I think the thing that’s probably most disconcerting is the bullpen leading Major League Baseball in innings. When you’re talking about the long season, the starters are built up to go take those innings down. That’s sort of where my head is at as far as trying to make sure we don’t redline these guys in the pen.”
Dodgers relievers entered Monday’s series opener against the Miami Marlins having accumulated 121⅓ innings, 7⅔ more than the Chicago White Sox, who are already on a 122-loss pace.
Glasnow and Snell aren’t expected to be out for a prolonged period, but their timetables are uncertain. Clayton Kershaw could return before the end of May, but Shohei Ohtani might not serve as a two-way player until after the All-Star break. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki could temporarily assume a traditional five-day schedule, as opposed to the once-a-week routine they’ve been following, but the Dodgers have only four starting pitchers on their active roster.
Glasnow, 31, is in his 10th year in the big leagues but has never compiled more than 134 innings in a season, a mark he set last year. The Dodgers acquired him from the Tampa Bay Rays and subsequently signed him to a five-year, $136.56 million extension in December 2023 with the thought that his injury issues might be behind him.
“Tyler said it — very frustrating,” Roberts said. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of it.”
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