The NCAA has officially hired its new president.
Charlie Baker, who has been the governor of Massachusetts since 2015, will become the new leader of the NCAA in March, replacing outgoing president Mark Emmert.
Members of the NCAA’s search committee cited Baker’s track record of finding bipartisan solutions as a governor as a reason why they identified Baker as the best candidate for the job.
“We know that to be successful, the NCAA president needs to possess the ability to balance competing priorities, inspire a shared vision, and create a broad sense of trust,” said Grant Hill, an independent member of the NCAA Board of Governors and member of the presidential search committee. “As Governor of Massachusetts and a successful private sector CEO, Charlie Baker has demonstrated the type of results-oriented, bipartisan approach that we will need to bolster the well-being of student-athletes, realize the opportunities and overcome the challenges facing the NCAA.”
Baker is a former NCAA athlete himself, having played basketball at Harvard, but has no professional experience working in sports. Before becoming the governor of Massachusetts, Baker held other several other political positions in state and local government and was the CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
He told reporters on Thursday that he chose to pursue the NCAA presidency because he believes there are important issues in college sports that need to be dealt with in a way that works for everybody.
“It can’t just work for a few,” Baker said of the NCAA. “There are a lot of different organizations with a wide variety of capabilities and capacities to participate ... as somebody who really believes in the power of collegiate sports on all levels to do all sorts of amazing things for communities, for schools, for alumni and for student-athletes, I think it’s worth doing. It’s big and complicated; so have been a lot of things in my life. But most of the time, they were absolutely doing.”
The NCAA’s decision to hire a president with a political background likely speaks to the desire of many leaders in college athletics – including Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith – for Congress to implement federal legislation that will help the NCAA regulate NIL on a national level.
Welcome to the NCAA Charlie Baker. Looking forward to your leadership! Thank you President Linda Livingstone for leading this search. https://t.co/05naNjFo04
— Gene Smith (@OSU_AD) December 15, 2022
