Charlie Baker NCAA President talks the state of college football, responds to Ryan Clark about LSU, NIL shaking up the system, growth of women's sports, political influence on of NCAA rules and solution to college NFL chaos.

Charlie Baker on the Future of College Sports What happens when college sports becomes one of the biggest business, political and cultural battlegrounds in America? On this episode of The Pivot Podcast, Charlie Baker, NCAA President and former Massachusetts governor, joins the conversation for a wide-ranging discussion about the rapidly changing world of college athletics. Baker breaks down the chaos surrounding the NCAA, the evolving NIL landscape, the future of college football, and what the next era of the student-athlete experience could look like. He also opens up about LSU and the controversy surrounding NFL players going back to college and how it affects the identity of college sports and how much financial implications are coming from NIL and transfer portal. The conversation goes beyond football, with Baker discussing the explosive growth of women’s sports, the opportunities and challenges facing women athletes, and how college athletics can continue building momentum across the country. And because college sports and politics are increasingly intertwined, Baker weighs in on the role of politics in college athletics, the pressures facing universities and the NCAA, and where the line should be drawn between government, institutions and sports. From NIL and conference realignment to football, women’s sports, LSU, politics and the future of the NCAA, this is a candid conversation about an industry undergoing one of the biggest transformations in its history. The rules are changing. The money is changing. The power is shifting. And Charlie Baker is at the center of it all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Before this,

• 0:05Speaker 00

  there's this.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people grow in the grass, paving the lots, welding the goalposts, inspecting every football. The hardworking people that make every Sunday possible. Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit carhartt.com/jointhetrades to learn more.

• 0:30Ryan Clark?

  Charlie Baker took over as the NCAA president in 2023. And let's just say he walked into a mess. He didn't take the traditional road to the job either. He was the CEO, a politician, two-term governor of Massachusetts, actually. I mean, this man is like all Boston. But I'm not sure that anything could have prepared him for what he stepped into at the NCAA. Still, he's proud of some of the progress that he's made. So we just jumped right into it. NIL, transfer portal, 5 for 5, 5 for 4, and all these other numbers that you've been hearing around college sports. We break down the changes, what's working, what isn't, and where the NCAA goes from here. But some of the things that Baker is most proud of is the growth of women's sports and the work they've done

• 1:13Ryan Clark?

  to protect athletes and the integrity of the game from the pressures of sports betting. We also get into the future of revenue sharing and what that means for student athletes. He knows that there's still a long road ahead. More issues will come, more changes will be needed. But he believes that the NCAA has created more opportunities for student athletes to succeed. And he wants that momentum to continue. Which, by the way, means, once you go pro, let somebody else play. This conversation couldn't have come at a better time, which is exactly why we're dropping this special Monday episode as the college football season truly gets rolling. So Pivot fam, thank you for the way that you continue to support us.

• 1:55Ryan Clark?

  Sit back, listen, and learn from our conversation with NCAA president Charlie Baker. And on behalf of me, Chan, and Freddie T., we are incredibly grateful.

• 2:28Ryan Clark?

  Well, fellas, I wanted to be on YouTube for a reason. I wanted to give all the young people who aspire to be part of the NCAA and be a student athlete and to partake in what I think is one of the best experiences in the world to be able to hear from Charlie Baker. He's the sixth president of the NCAA. This is Fred Taylor, this is Channing Crowder, I'm Ryan Clark. Pivot family, thank you for pivoting with us. What I've been extremely impressed with is, since 2023, the activity the NCAA has shown in trying to correct things that need to be corrected, but also be proactive in putting things in place that give our student athletes the best opportunities

• 3:11Ryan Clark?

  to enjoy their experiences while growing. What has the last, I guess, three years been like for you since taking over from Mark Emmert?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Well, certainly, there's been a significant amount of change over that period of time, some of which was planned and some of which was not. And I would say that the things I'm most proud of that have happened over the past couple of years is, I mean, I, shortly after I got the job, literally within six months, I was looking around and I was thinking to myself, the only people who can't talk to student athletes at this point about revenue sharing are the schools, which seems wrong. Just wrong. So I made the first proposal on creating a school-based rev share program, and that eventually morphed its way into the settlement of several long outstanding legal cases

• 4:05Speaker 02

  so that we had a long overdue opportunity to put in place an actual mechanism that would give schools the ability to share revenue with student athletes across all sports, but especially in the sports that generate significant revenue for the schools themselves. I'm also pretty pleased by the fact that we have a post-eligibility health insurance program in place now for kids across all three divisions. If they get hurt playing their sport and are still in treatment after they leave school, that lasts for two years. And if, God forbid, anybody's got $90,000 worth of expenses after they leave school, they convert automatically into the catastrophic plan, which will cover them until they get better, whenever that might be. We also put core guarantees in for the Division I kids. So if you get a scholarship, you keep it, whether you choose to play or not.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  You can't run anybody off anymore. And you keep that for 10 years, or as long as it takes you to graduate, which for some kids, given everything else that's going on, may be more than four or five years. I mean, those things in particular to me were sort of long overdue. We've also been very aggressive about some of the issues associated with sports betting. And that was driven completely by what I heard from the kids. Before I took the job, and by the way, I'm almost 70, so I'm gonna call them kids.

• 5:15Ryan Clark?

  They are.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  To my point of view, they're kids, okay? But before I took the job, after I was announced in December of '22, I didn't start until March of '23, I just went out and met with about 1,000 student athletes on campuses. And, "What's up, guys? Gals, tell me." And the sports betting thing, especially the harassment directed by bettors at players, was just part of almost every conversation I had. So we've been pretty outspoken about that. And we are the only league I'm aware of that actually tracks social media traffic that's being directed at players and coaches and officials during our championships. And if we see abusive behavior in there, we notify the platforms and tell them to shut those people off, at least for the rest of the platform.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  And we actually even have a relationship with Venmo because a lot of the bettors, if they lose, just start whacking away at the student athlete who is responsible for the fact they lost. And if they notify us, we'll tell Venmo to shut those people off so that they can't bother that person anymore.

• 6:19Ryan Clark?

  Speaking of the Venmo piece of it, weren't you guys able to figure out some of those people, but also even coaches who were giving away some inside information to, whether it be bettors or, you know, betting companies? How did, I guess, sort of, that investigation go that really gave you a tangible way to affect change?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  We have, um, we have a really big integrity program with all of the gaming companies. The, and that's driven, in many respects, by the state laws that most of those gaming companies operate under. We don't have this kind of relationship with Calci or, or Polymarkets because they're not regulated by the state gaming commissions, although there was a federal court case just the other day where the states won and a federal judge ordered those guys to start working with, with the state gaming commissions. But our relationship with the state gaming commissions is very deep and very broad. And we probably have the biggest integrity program working with them, maybe in the world, given the size and scale of it. And that's where we find coaches or, God forbid,

• 7:28Speaker 02

  student athletes who are engaging in activity that's basically designed to change the outcome of the game.

• 7:35Channing Crowder?

  And Charlie, with the, with students getting paid now, different ways. Well, we're not 70, but we're in our 40s, where I wish I could have got a check at University of Florida. But how many?

• 7:47Ryan Clark?

  He probably did get a check at the University of Florida.

• 7:51Channing Crowder?

  Hey, man, we gotta tear Charlie off. Gotta tear Charlie off my information. But how many, like, how many different avenues are there? Because you brought up the rev share. I've heard of collectives, NIL, they have endorsements. Like, how many avenues is there for athletes to make money? And how much does the NCAA regulate those or even know about those?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  The schools, for the most part, have a pretty decent idea about what they're doing with respect to rev share for their athletes. But one of the things that came out of this court case, there's three of them, but the big one was the House case, which is what everybody refers to. One of the things we created as part of the House case was an entity called the College Sports Commission. And this College Sports Commission's job is to basically track third-party revenue, school-based revenue, compliance with the roster limits, and third-party NIL. And that group is actually overseen and governed by the four power conferences, along with some other folks from D1. And they've been in business for about a year. And they are the ones who track all that stuff, make sure it's all consistent with the rules

• 8:54Speaker 02

  and the requirements under the, under the settlement. And, um, and we do a ton of work with them because their rules, the rules they need to use to actually execute on their assignments need to get voted on by us because they apply to everybody in D1. But that entity was literally created as a sort of way for the court settlement to get administered going forward. And they're separate from us. They're governed separately from us, but we have a pretty tight relationship with them.

• 9:27Fred Taylor?

  Charlie, I kind of want to know, what does student-athlete mean anymore? And has the NIL affected graduation rate? And lastly, where do you draw the line between amateur and professional?

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's early to know too much about the graduation rate stuff because it's only been in place for a couple of years. I will say this, we have preliminary data that shows that the number of times you transfer has a pretty big impact on whether or not you graduate in four years, for all the reasons you would expect. But if you think about college sports generally, there's 556,000 plus or minus kids playing college sports. My boys played D3 football. The way I think about it is, most sports are not that much different than they've ever been. Some are better than they used to be. And I think there's been tremendous progress made in women's sports, for example, over the course of the past four or five years.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  There are only a few sports in which there's really significant revenue sharing going on, because frankly, you know, there are basically two sports that make money, right? College football makes money, men's basketball makes money, some places, women's basketball makes money, some places softball and baseball make money, some places volleyball makes money, some places ice hockey makes money. But the vast majority of college sports lose money. And it's really historically been, and you know, I don't know if people talk about this much, it's really been the football programs, particularly at the big-time programs, that support most of the rest of the stuff that's going on. I mean, the overwhelming majority of schools that absolutely dominate women's sports

• 11:08Speaker 02

  and Olympic sports are located, they're typically located at schools that have really good football programs. Because it's been the football program that's made it possible for them to invest in those other programs.

• 11:19Ryan Clark?

  Speaking of football programs, Mr. Baker, I know you gotta love my LSU Tigers right now.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  True story. I have been, I have been to Death Valley several times and had a great time.

• 11:32Ryan Clark?

  Yeah, no, it's a, it's a great time, but all that's going on with the five-for-five, right? And obviously, that 2022 class, trying to get that fifth year to play. Can you sort of educate myself and other people on the strengths of the state courts, right? Because that has really been the indicator on what's going to be allowed at these certain universities, in certain conferences, and now, obviously, the SEC having to file a grievance against LSU.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. The, I mean, the funny thing about it, or the ironic thing, is I spent 16 years in state government. I was a cabinet secretary to two governors. I was a Health and Human Service Secretary, Administration Finance Secretary, ran three times for governor, won twice, lost once. I know a lot about state government. It's been very interesting to see my old stomping ground come back and stomp me in the face. But here's the way I think about this. The rules associated with eligibility, which is really what this has all been about, and it's mostly been about Division I. It was always you had five years to play for, with a lot of exceptions. And it's been that way for a million years.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  So, the idea was, you give every student-athlete four years, four seasons of competition. The theory is, you have five years straight up to get it done. Tons of football players, as you guys know better than anybody, red-shirted, so that they could sort of mature to the point where they could actually be productive on a team. Or they get hurt, or a family member dies, or whatever it might be. And so, you did end up with kids who, in some cases, if they suffered catastrophic injuries, would be 26, 27, and still playing. And people like, Jesus, this is insane. But, but the bottom line was, those kids, in most cases, were really only finishing their fourth year of actual competition. And over the past year or so, we started talking about this with the D1 Board and the

• 13:34Speaker 02

  D1 Cabinet, which is made up of folks from D1, and just said, this is very complicated in the revenue era, it's even more complicated. Maybe we should try and come up with a less complicated way to manage eligibility. And if you look at the way almost all other non-professional sports operate, they're on some sort of age basis, right? The U10s, the U15s, U20s, U22s. And so, we said, well, why don't we just go to an age-based standard? And so, now, the age-based standard that got implemented last summer was, you get five

• 14:15Speaker 02

  years from the time you start, but if you don't start by the time you're 19, your clock starts when you're 19. And one way or another, your clock finishes when you're 24. And that was to literally make it really easy and simple for everybody to basically say, you graduate from high school when you're 18, and you go spend a year at a prep school, or you do whatever you do to sort of prepare yourself for college, and you get there by the time you're 19, you get five years. But that's it. No exemptions, no adjustments, no red shirts, nothing. Start at 19, finish by 24. Those are the outlying points of view. And so, I've never called it five-for-five, because I don't think of it that way. I think of it as, start by 19, finish by 24.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  And the class, the entering class of '22, which is the class you're talking about, entered under five years to play for with all the waivers, right? So, there's still a bunch of guys, and gals, who are playing right now, who, red shirts, injuries, deaths in the family, whatever it might be, they're still playing, right? Because they came in under, you get five years to play for with adjustments based on your circumstances. The class that entered in '23, and in '24, and in '25, what we said to all of them, since they are still eligible and in the midst of their eligibility, was choose your own rodeo.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  If you want to come and play under the old rule, the five years to play for, you can finish your career doing that. If you want to play under the new rule, which is the 19 to 24, and then you're done, five years, period, you can do that. But to the class that entered in '22 and finished in '26, we said, your eligibility's up. And the Board talked about this, the Cabinet talked about this at great length, and eventually decided that the only way to give everybody what they were promised, right? Without the change in the middle of the circumstance for somebody, would be to say to the people that still had eligibility left, pick whichever one makes sense, tell

• 16:25Speaker 02

  the class that's coming in this fall, you are in the new world of 19 and 24, five years, period, no waivers, no exceptions, and to say to the class of '22, whose eligibility had expired, you got what you were promised.

• 16:41Ryan Clark?

  Well, Charlie, how do we, so how do we get to, how do we get from where you were with talking to the D1 Commission and having those conversations, to pros now trying to leave NFL camps to become members of college institutions again?

• 17:01Speaker 02

  I think it would have been naive for us to assume that if we figured out a way to create revenue sharing in the high-revenue D1 sports, that there wouldn't be schools and kids who would want to play forever. Why not, right? The problem with that is you steal opportunities from the kids who are behind you. And that has been sort of our fundamental view on this all the way through, which is, you get the opportunity that you're promised, and then you move on, so that the kids who are behind you get their opportunity.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And, and when you think about how many kids actually even come close to making an NFL team, even coming out of the power schools? I mean, it's literally, 5% to 7%, I think of the draft-eligible kids every year coming out of the power schools, actually make a team? I mean, these guys are, they're really good football players, okay? And the idea of them, if you're good enough to do that, the idea that you can then come back and play against the 93% who are never going to see a seat on a professional football

• 18:22Speaker 02

  team, and get an extra year as a result of that? I think from our point of view, first of all, that, that person will take space and playing time away from somebody else. And secondly, they've already played out, aged out, finished, whatever term you like. And on some level, as I said, I don't blame them for, for wanting to do it. I do blame the adults for encouraging this.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  There's this.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people grow in the grass, paving the lots, welding the goalposts, inspecting every football. The hard-working people that make every Sunday possible. Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit carhartt.com/jointhetrades to learn more.

• 19:16Fred Taylor?

  So even with that, if we're talking five-for-five or 19-to-24 eligibility rules, there will be some circumstance or some situations where players are good enough to try and test their ability to go to the draft. If they go undrafted, or even if they're cut and they have eligibility remaining, why wouldn't they be allowed to return?

• 19:45Speaker 02

  I think part of it is, you know, if you're...

• 19:49Speaker 02

  The funny thing is, you know, in basketball, this happens a lot more frequently because it's a different kind of game than football.

• 19:55Fred Taylor?

  Yep.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  But in football, I think the theory here has always been, it's going to take you, like I said, 5% to 7% of the very best kids who are draft-eligible, which means they've been playing for at least three years already in college football at the highest level. You don't get to the professional league the same way you do in some other sports. You have to, basically, have to build your body and your brain and everything else to be able to withstand what it's like to play at that level. And I think from our point of view, you know, if somebody wants to do that, more power to them. But the idea that you get to do that and then come back and play against a bunch of kids who in many respects may or may not ever get anywhere near that,

• 20:40Speaker 02

  first of all, you're a different kind of player, and secondly, you're taking time and opportunity away from somebody else.

• 20:48Channing Crowder?

  And like the opportunity conversation with the transferring, all the transferring, like, look at the national championship in football last year. Indiana's average team was 23-years-old. Miami has had four quarterbacks in four years, three transfer in, and they go to the championship. Now Mensa's there. Is there any, what's the plans on that? Because if I can go recruit, pay, and bring in a proven entity, I don't need to go see what this high school senior can do.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  So do you guys know the history of how we ended up with that transfer rule?

• 21:19Fred Taylor?

  No, sir.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  All right, so this was like, you know, your first question, Ryan, about, so what was like the transition for you? One of the first things that happened when I got this job was, which was in the spring of '23, we got a phone call from West Virginia. They said they were going to transfer in a basketball player who's transferring for the third time in three years. And at that point in time, the rule was, transfer once, play right away. Transfer more than once, you know, you gotta basically catch up on your progress to graduation, and then you can play after you do that.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Which seems to be what everybody wants the rule to be now. It's kind of ironic. So we say to them, this kid's transferring for the third time in three years. He's nowhere near where he needs to be on progress to graduation. You know, we'll see what happens with the committee, but it's probably going to be a pretty steep pole to climb. And they kind of implied that if we didn't give the kid the opportunity to play right away, they would sue us. So committee does the work, concludes that it's third transfer in three years. Kid's got a long way to go on progress to graduation. He really needs to sit for a year and catch up on his academics. The Attorney General in West Virginia sues the NCAA in federal court, along with nine other attorneys general and the Federal Justice Department.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  All over this one student athlete. And we said at the time that we had real concerns about what this was going to do to academic continuation, team culture, all the rest. And they were like, everybody gets to transfer every year, period. So that's where we landed. And the crazy thing to me about it is, I have a lot of people who say to me, why isn't the rule, you transfer once, play right away? Transfer again, and play right away, it's got to be because your coach left or somebody in your family died. You need some kind of exigent circumstance. Otherwise, you should probably work on catching up on your academics. Because we do have data that's starting to come in that shows the more times you transfer, the less likely you are to graduate in four or five years.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  But right now, that is the, that's the federal standing that we all have to operate under. And it's one of the things that gets fixed in the Protect College Sports Act, which is, it goes back to the, you transfer once, play right away. Transfer again, it's got to be, and play right away, it's got to be because of something that happened. But I talk to kids all the time, and I very rarely talk to kids who think the current environment is good for them.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Because the inability to create culture and continuity, or to know who you're going to be playing with next year, is a problem. But the other thing that's a problem is, you have so many kids who have pressure on them, literally, you know, two, three weeks into the season, they got people starting to gnaw on their ankle about, where are you going to play next year?

• 24:15Fred Taylor?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  And I've talked to plenty of coaches and plenty of kids who've said to me, you know, I didn't want to leave, but people were just all over me that I had a better opportunity if I left. Sometimes that turns out to be true, a lot of times it turns out not to be true. And one of the things we're going to try to do about that, and we're still working out some of the bugs technologically, is we're going to try and put a universally-available website up that will have what actually happens to everybody who enters the portal. Because I think there's a tremendous amount of misrepresentation going on, primarily with third parties and others who are saying to kids, you know, if you get in the portal, we can get you a much better opportunity somewhere else.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  I would love that student athlete to be able to, you know,

• 25:06Speaker 02

  go online and say, let's see what happened to the guys I played against last year who were kind of like me. Where did they land? How much are they playing? Because the, there's just a lot of misinformation floating around in that space. And I think many kids are making what I would describe as decisions based on what they're being told that turn out not to be. Somebody's just collecting bodies, right? So they get them and see if they can figure out where to land them. And if they can't, eh, they don't really care.

• 25:35Channing Crowder?

  For you, Charlie, having, you know, only been at the position for three years, do you see the NCAA in a better place now than right before you started this job?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, we have taken all kinds of legal liability off the books, and we're paying for it. We did figure out a way to do rev share, which was really important to me. We did figure out a way to create core guarantees and post-eligibility health insurance. We have been a pretty significant voice around some of the issues associated with sports betting. We did get some states to actually prohibit negative prop bets, and in some case, all prop bets. Which, you know, ask me, the biggest challenge for kids most of the time is the pinging they get from people to underperform around prop bets. So I would say, I think, and we have a whole bunch of new sports

• 26:37Speaker 02

  that we're making available to people, and championships, and women's wrestling, and acrobatics, and tumbling, and stunt, and pretty quick-growing collection of folks playing women's flag football. And when I got there, we had no fan database. We now have 24 million people in our fan database, and it's actually driven a ton of attendance to many of our championships, particularly in sports that are not normally thought of as the big brand sports because we have a lot of fan data in those areas. And we've done a bunch of matches with a bunch of schools, where schools have said, you know, you helped us find 16,000 women's basketball fans. You helped us find 10,000 gymnastics fans. You helped to find a whole bunch of fans.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  And some of the non-marquee sports, in my view, one of the things I should be trying to do is to pump the tires on the non-marquee sports. Because as more money gets spent on football or men's basketball, those sports have got to figure out a way to find and engage their audience so that they can help pay their bills. I feel pretty good about a lot of that. The thing I, you know, I don't think... I don't think I expected or anticipated the onslaught around eligibility and the courts, which, as you point out, is pretty intense, pretty expensive, and creates a lot of uncertainty for everybody.

• 28:01Ryan Clark?

  Well, I'm from the South, and I know, right? And we all are, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana. Football is a religion. And if I have the alum that's the judge on a certain case, and my quarterback is Trinidad Chambliss, and I want him to come back for another year, and I can control it, he's going to get another year. And you're seeing that, and that's creating this level of competition that's not only already inbred in the universities, but in the courts as well, right? They're pressured by people with extremely deep pockets that are saying, well, this guy got a sixth year. This guy got an opportunity to come back.

• 28:44Ryan Clark?

  They're allowing players to come from the NFL to college. What can we do? And I think that puts the NCAA at a huge disadvantage when they are allowed to make some of those decisions, what we're seeing now, even against conferences deciding that they don't want that to be allowed.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Can I say one thing about Trinidad? To the best of my knowledge, and I've been told this by people at the NCAA, I'm the only president who's ever gone to a lot of D2 and D3 championships and a lot of D2 and D3 games. I mean, my kids play D3 football. I really believe in all of the collegiate athletic experience. Get back to your point, Fred, about like, how many amateurs we still got out there? The vast majority, okay? It's the scholarships for most of them that actually, and the opportunity to be part of a team, that's the big win. So I went to the D2 championship a few years ago in Texas when Trinidad was playing for Ferris State. And I think they played Valdosta in the championship. And Valdosta had been, you know, giving up like nine points a game. They had a ferocious defense. And I'm watching this guy just,

• 29:48Speaker 02

  I mean, the final score is like 40 to 12 or something. And, I mean, it was just magical. And I remember saying to somebody, I don't know if that kid's got any eligibility left, but if he does, he's definitely going to be somewhere in D1 next year. And then he ended up at Ole Miss, and he was not the starter, he was the backup. Starter gets injured in the third game of the season. And I remember saying to some people, watch, this is going to be interesting.

• 30:13Ryan Clark?

  Right.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  And it was.

• 30:14Ryan Clark?

  And it was. He takes that team to the Final Four, to the semifinals, and now he's back this year. And then, you know, he's got an opportunity to be a top-five quarterback in the draft.

• 30:23Channing Crowder?

  And you kind of hit on it with the women's sports, because I have a daughter who plays basketball. She's in seventh grade, she already has a D1 offer.

• 30:30Ryan Clark?

  Seriously?

• 30:31Channing Crowder?

  The female sports, they're starting to dig a little deeper, Charlie. But when we were coming out, you know, and I got in the draft in '05, I remember Title IX, it was almost like we have to have women's sports. That's what I understood at Title IX. If you have this many, they have to have that many. Why did it take you in 2023 to make it a priority on women's sports? Where it's not, we have to, we want to, we want to encourage, we want to extend. Because that's a long time the NCAA's been around, and it was almost like forced to, oh, you got to let the girls play.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  I think, well, first of all, I appreciate, there was a lot of traffic moving in the right direction before I showed up. I think part of it is driven by, as many things are in our society, by culture. You know, as those sports, as people invested in the youth programs, as people invested in the programs generally, as the quality of the play got better. And, I mean, there is so much to, and as it became popular and supported, and like, the kind of thing you should do. I mean, the really interesting thing about women's sports when it comes to women's basketball is, women's basketball is now in a real competition with women's volleyball. I mean, both those sports are like this.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  And I think that's a great thing. Because the message is basically, there's huge opportunities here for you, wherever you choose to go. And we should do everything we can to make noise about that. And I do think that we were able to bring some ideas and techniques. I mean, every year, we host all these championships, and every year, all these people buy tickets, and we just weren't putting it together and turning it into a tool that we could use to connect fans to our sports and to our championships. And when we started doing some of the matches at schools, schools were pretty surprised about how many women's sports fans of theirs we had in our data.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  And I think the best part of this is it's just going to keep going in the same direction. I went to the Women's Ice Hockey Championship the last three years. It's always the same two teams. It's always Ohio State against Wisconsin. And so...

• 32:48Ryan Clark?

  He says, oh, it's the same two teams?

• 32:50Speaker 02

  It is, three years, four years in a row, and one-goal games, always. What's interesting is the U.S. Olympic team, the Canadian Olympic team, the Swiss Olympic team, I mean, like, all the best Olympic teams in ice hockey for women are dominated by American, excuse me, by women who played collegiate hockey in Division I in America. And we have volleyball players who are now playing all over the world in professional leagues all over the world. And yes, it took longer than it should have, but I would say at this point, it is really moving in a very positive way. Softball...

• 33:30Ryan Clark?

  Crazy.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Softball had viewership numbers that were as good in our tournament last year as the baseball tournament. And they were both really good. I mean, they're two out of three games. So it's a ton of games over the course of the tournament. And the women's games drew as many viewers on ESPN as the men's games did.

• 33:48Ryan Clark?

  The women's game's also so quick. Like, the bases are short. Like, it's just so, it's just so much fun to watch.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Before this, there's this. As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people grow in the grass, paving the lots, welding the goalposts, inspecting every football. The hard-working people that make every Sunday possible. Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit carhartt.com/jointhetrades to learn more.

• 34:24Ryan Clark?

  This is going to be a very self-serving question, which many of these have been, which is great about having your own platform, Charlie. You started in March of 2023, correct? And just, it triggered thinking about women's sports. In April of that year, LSU ended up winning the national championship.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  They did.

• 34:42Ryan Clark?

  But that was also...

• 34:43Speaker 02

  That was one hell of a game.

• 34:44Ryan Clark?

  Yeah, but that was also the run of Katelyn Clark. And South Carolina was amazing. It was truly when I felt like women's sports exploded. Was it, or how much was that tournament in that moment, another sort of, you know, ignition into, we can really push women's sports, and it could become popular?

• 35:08Speaker 02

  It was huge. And it was the most-watched championship on the women's side in basketball, which was followed up by the most-watched the next year, and the most-watched the next year. And there's no question that the quality of the play had a ton to do with it. But the other thing that's happened is you now have, I mean, for a very long time, right? Pat Summitt in Tennessee, year after year after year. Geno Auriemma, UConn, year after year after year. Muffett McGraw, year after year after year at Notre Dame, right?

• 35:40Ryan Clark?

  Stanford.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Yes, Stanford. Of course, there's only one time that a women's basketball team has beaten, a 16 seed has beaten a number-one seed in the women's basketball tournament. That would be when Harvard beat Stanford.

• 35:55Ryan Clark?

  Which I know is very important to you.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Very important, yes.

• 35:57Ryan Clark?

  Yes, sir.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  But the interesting thing about this is you now have, what's the thing you need most of all to really capture the nation's attention? You need a whole bunch of teams that you just don't know who's going to win. And the beauty of the women's game these days in basketball, and volleyball's the same way, is you do not know who's going to win. You'll end up with four teams in the Final Four, and the Elite Eight, and you will have fights to the death in every single game. And you're just not going to know who's going to win. And it's going to be great for spectators, whether you're fans of those teams or just fans of basketball.

• 36:35Ryan Clark?

  Yeah. As good as UCLA was entering the tournament, I don't think a lot of people thought to themselves they'd eventually beat Dawn Staley and South Carolina, especially in the manner that they were able to. So you're right, it is getting to the point now where many more schools have opportunities and chances to get the trophy.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  So I went to the, I was at that game, that night at that game. I didn't go to the final, because I had to get back to the men's, but I was at the semifinal games, and...

• 37:01Ryan Clark?

  UConn, South Carolina.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  And I had to get out of, I had to get out of the, I had to get out very early the next morning. So I was walking, I was at the first game, which was UConn and South Carolina, the second game. I'm walking from the arena in Phoenix, which is where the game was, back to my hotel. And I must have walked past, I don't know, 30, 40 bars, restaurants. And I'm just looking in the windows, and every single window, and every single bar and restaurant, the UCLA game was on. And I got back to the hotel, walked into the lobby. Huge crowd around the TV in the lobby, and I just thought,

• 37:38Ryan Clark?

  It's pretty cool.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  This is great. This is exactly what we want.

• 37:44Fred Taylor?

  I got one question. What happens when or if college sports unionizes?

• 37:52Speaker 02

  That's a complicated question. No, it's not, it doesn't sound complicated. The answer's probably complicated.

• 37:58Fred Taylor?

  Their job's been pretty complicated since you stepped.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Here's, there's like three or four things that are kind of important to that conversation. The first is, it's just a much bigger footprint than professional sports. I mean, I think, what are there, 1,800 players in the NFL, I'm guessing?

• 38:16Fred Taylor?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  I mean, there's, there's like 7,000 college football players just in the power conferences. There isn't a revenue sharing model. And now I'm talking revenue sharing between the entities, right? Part of the way professional sports makes this work is they revenue share across the industry. All of them. NHL, NBA, NFL. So you have a, the conferences, and you guys, given where you played college football, you know this better than anybody. I mean, they fight like wild animals against each other. So are they really gonna share revenue with each other to create the so-called level playing field?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  They also, you know, it turns over every four or five years, the kids, for a part of it. And in the pros, there's some folks who come in and out, but the grownups hang around for a long time. And they're really important to sort of the, the nature of the culture of the place and how it works. And I'm back to my earlier comment, which is football and men's basketball and women's basketball pays for a lot of the other sports on campus. So there's like a whole bunch of things you gotta figure out there. And then the other thing you gotta figure out is the potpourri of state and federal laws that you would have to change to actually do it. So I think it's, I guess what I would say is, if that's where people eventually wanna

• 39:42Speaker 02

  go, fine, free country, help yourself. Make sure the kids wanna go there too, because there's some debate. I mean, most of the kids I talk to don't want that. But the other thing that has to happen in the meantime is, you know, we got over the revenue sharing hump. We're there, okay? We're, we're doing what we probably should've done a long time ago and creating a vehicle through which kids who play high-revenue sports are being, they're part of the revenue sharing puzzle picture. And to me, you know, let's try to see if we can't get that right, and then people can have a conversation about what else they might wanna do to organize it going forward.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  But to me, the hard part, that's the other thing. The hard part here is, in professional sports, the commissioners are given a significant amount of authority to, you know, create a structure and enforce it. Made more visible than ever by what just happened in the NBA today, or yesterday. And, and the conference is really where, that's the thing most people identify with in collegiate sports. If you were to say like, the NCAA is the governing entity overall, but the, the real, this feeling that people have is typically more about, I'm part of the SEC, I'm part

• 41:10Speaker 02

  of the Big Ten, I'm part of the ACC, I'm part of the Big South, whatever it is. And, and that's because the things are damn big. And I think that's probably the hardest part you gotta climb over, is just the scale.

• 41:22Ryan Clark?

  You hear a lot in our, in our parts of the country that the SEC, especially when it pertains to football, is speaking of maybe becoming their own entity at some point. In all that you've done, in being a CEO, being a cabinet member, two terms as the governor, if people check your background, I think the one thing that I found amazing was the ability as a GOP governor to connect relationally with Democrats as well in Massachusetts. To be able to develop sort of a bromance, I guess, with the mayor and...

• 42:03Speaker 02

  We were buzzed.

• 42:03Ryan Clark?

  Yeah, you know what I mean? And be able to have, have those conversations and be able to find commonalities. How has your experiences helped you in the world of being the president of the NCAA? Because I would have to think that relationships are so important in you having the ability to do your job.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna give you kind of a long answer on this one. I worked for two Republican governors before I ran for governor, and I also ran a multi-specialty medical group, and I ran a nonprofit health plan. And then I made a decision to run for governor in 2010, and I lost. And I had a lot of people just, I did something most people don't do after they lose a race like that. I went and talked to the media that covered the race. I talked to a lot of the talking heads. I talked to my friends. And I basically said to people, what did I do wrong? And, you know, people would say, how long you got? You know? And, and it was really kind of humiliating. I mean, I had friends of mine saying, I've known you forever. I thought, or people who worked with me at Harvard Pilgrim say, you were a great guy,

• 43:10Speaker 02

  loved you, but God, I hated you as a candidate and I couldn't vote for you. And, but the one thing I really remember was one friend of mine, who was a sales guy, looked at me and he said, you spend way too much time with your customers and not enough time with your prospects. And that really stuck. And when I ran the second time, I campaigned in all kinds of places in Massachusetts that I knew I was gonna lose, right? And I, I did it partly because I thought he was right, that if you, if you really want the job, you have to, you have to ask everybody for their vote, even if, even if you know they're gonna say no, because you might learn something. And I talked to all these people, totally different life experiences in mind, totally

• 43:53Speaker 02

  different perspectives on what's right and what's wrong, and what's fair and what's unfair. And it made me a much better candidate, and it made me a much better governor. And I think a huge part of my success in office was, we didn't start with D versus R. We started with, do you live in Massachusetts? Do you work in Massachusetts? Is your business in Massachusetts? Well, then come on down, we'll see what we can do to help you. And we didn't play favorites on any of that stuff. And so when I got this job, I met with, my original goal was to meet with all 97 conferences in my first 100 days, which was completely idiotic. But I got it done in about the first 150.

• 44:36Ryan Clark?

  Oh, wow.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  And I still talk to all of them on a pretty regular basis. And, and the thing I need most of all, and I think anybody in a leadership position needs most of all, is to be able to talk to the people you're supposed to be serving and for them to feel comfortable to tell you exactly what they think. Not what they think you wanna hear, or not what they think they're supposed to say, but like what they really think. And, and I think for the most part, I mean, some of the best ideas I've gotten have come from people across all three divisions, and some of the most interesting insights we've gotten about things we should be doing, or things we shouldn't be doing, or things we should stop doing, have come from all over the place.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  But, you know, if people don't feel like they can tell you what they really think, then you're only as smart as you are. And for me, and I think for most people, that's just not enough.

• 45:33Ryan Clark?

  I think the big thing is people have to feel that you're also listening. And I think you, by saying, hey, if you're a part, if you're in Massachusetts in any way, come on down and we'll see, we'll see what we can do. That lets people know that their voices matter and they're at least being heard, because no one wants to talk to a wall or someone who isn't at least giving them the courtesy of being decent in a human way. So I love to hear that.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Well, the other thing that's interesting about it was, you know, you mentioned the mayor of Boston, who I had a really good relationship with. The fact that he and I had a good relationship meant that when people on my team and people on his team had to work together on stuff, it was hard, they couldn't come back to me and say, my people couldn't come back to me and say, yeah, the problem is them, they suck. And the people on his team couldn't come back to him and say the same thing to him.

• 46:26Ryan Clark?

  They knew.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Because they knew we were talking.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  There's tremendous power in that, you know, just.

• 46:32Ryan Clark?

  As we, as we wrap, I think my last question would be this. I, just talking about me personally, have been very

• 46:40Ryan Clark?

  critical of the NCAA because I felt like previous tenures were reactive, not proactive. They weren't looking ahead to see what the issues could be and what they could do better. Going forward, what is something you foresee being an issue that the NCAA needs to tackle that will make the experience better for its student athletes?

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Well, if we don't get the Protect College Sports Act passed, we're gonna have to figure out some way to deal with the transfer question. Because it does make it really hard for teams to build chemistry, and I hear from kids all the time about how challenging it is for them to just get all the way through the season with everybody concentrating on just the season. And that one in particular, I, I think that's in some respects, that, that thing creates so many challenges for so many people, from the kids to the adults to everybody. And you guys talked earlier about the fact that it's almost impossible to figure out who's gonna be playing from one year to the next, and if every kid's up for grabs every year. We are gonna try and make the transfer portal stuff a lot more transparent, because I do think

• 47:45Speaker 02

  a lot of people misrepresent what happens to kids who go in the portal. And I want kids and families to be able to go there, look at this thing, and figure out what people like them actually did happen. Did they actually land somewhere or not? I mean, the first year I got to the NCAA, like 40% of the kids didn't land at an NCAA institution. I will say this, the revenue sharing thing, in football in particular, the number of kids who transferred was down like 25% this year. They could have, right? But the rev share, the fact the school was now first person involved in that meant that a lot of them ended up staying. I think we gotta continue to peddle the metal on growing the women's side, and especially growing, doing everything we can to help our schools find and own and engage in fan relationships

• 48:31Speaker 02

  with fans of their non-football sports. Because, you know, if football's gonna continue to be super expensive, and I'm, you know, I support that. That means we gotta figure out ways to make the other sports more financially viable.

• 48:44Ryan Clark?

  Right.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  Because in the end, I want more kids playing sports, not less. Even if it's D2 or D3. I'll tell you, my kids, they were terrific football players. And, um, and one of the interesting things about college sports,

• 48:58Speaker 02

  if you play in a D3 sport, you're one of the 7, 7% best players in your sport in high school in America. Which we never talk about. The, the, the platform that goes from here to here is really far. And, um,

• 49:19Speaker 02

  and they both, you know,

• 49:22Speaker 02

  their best friends for the rest of their lives are gonna be the guys that they played football with in college.

• 49:28Ryan Clark?

  Absolutely.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  The bonds you build by spending that time playing a sport and going to school with a bunch of people when you're young, they stick. And I think for my kids in particular, they're gonna stick a lifetime. There's just no question about that.

• 49:43Ryan Clark?

  Yeah, I ride in the car with these humans a lot. Fred Taylor talks to more college teammates than I've ever seen anybody in the history of sports. And I think that does say a lot about the bonds that you can create during that time. I think you're for your time, especially knowing that the college football season has already started, kicks into high gear this weekend. And I know for me, it's cleared up a lot of the misconceptions and misunderstandings I had about some of the things that were going on in college football. So we appreciate you.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  By the way, congratulations to you all on the new opportunity you have. I think that's great.

• 50:19Ryan Clark?

  Man, thank you so much, man, we appreciate you. Best of luck.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Thank you, same to you.

• 50:24Ryan Clark?

  He's the hoop, Chan.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  I can tell.

• 50:26Ryan Clark?

  Yeah, he's the hoop.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  I so much enjoyed watching you play, honest to God. That's why, that's why you mentioned the Harvard thing. Oh, okay, yes, sir. And I can't imagine what it must be like to have to run into this over and over and over again. He was running away from me, he was a little scared.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Before this,

• 51:11Speaker 00

  there's this.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people growing the grass, paving the lots, welding the goalposts, inspecting every football. The hard-working people that make every Sunday possible. Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit carhartt.com/jointhetrades to learn more.