It Will Stay Broken

Shank does a column on the current state of college sports:

NIL. Congress. Eligibility. Is the college sports system broken?

It’s a huge week for big-time college sports. We’ve got bowl games every hour, with a national championship at stake. Meanwhile, NCAA basketball repeat violator John Calipari (two Final Four appearances vacated) is delivering lectures about the evils of NIL and the transfer portal. Cal, who has coached for eight NCAA and NBA teams, is shocked, shocked, that college basketball players keep transferring.

The vaunted NCAA — overseer of the once-glorious Pac-10, Big Ten, and Big East — has yielded to a Wild West of “straight cash, homie” and regionally random, power conference monopolies. The system is irreparably broken, yet more popular than ever.

God bless to folks who still love it. I understand the lure of rooting for Old State U, “boola boola” and all that. If you live in a yahoo town with no real professional sports, it’s good to have a legacy college program in your midst. This explains football mania in Columbus, Ohio, State College, Pa., Athens, Ga., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. When March Madness takes hold, it’s the same deal in Lexington, Ky., and Spokane, Wash. All of America loves a nice little 16-seed beating a 1-seed and CBS’s shining moments can make grown men weep.

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All of which brings me to recent conversations I had with a couple of former Ivy League basketball players: Harvard’s Charlie Baker and Dartmouth’s Peter Roby. They played against one another a half-century ago. Both are tall enough to eat candy off my head. Both graduated in 1979.

Most of you know Baker. He went on to become governor of Massachusetts for eight years, and today he serves as president of the NCAA, a lucrative ($3.15 million per year) yet thankless five-year gig that will take him halfway into 2028.

If you think Charlie Baker's going to fix anything, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to see you. Charlie Baker is the ultimate corporate yes-man who will never, ever rock the boat or come up with any innovative ideas that are his own.

DHL Dan CL - Charlie At The NCAA

Shank's quick to point out the obvious flaw in this plan:

Good luck, Charlie Baker, you’ve got your work cut out at the NCAA, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces from a week on the dusty trail in Arizona . . .

▪ Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker Thursday was named the new president of the NCAA.

Sheesh. The man who looks like Roger Goodell is now going to try to fix something far more broken than any professional sports league.

As far as them being effective or even innovative managers, I don't see it in either guy. Guys like Goddell and Baker are simply yes-men, have zero history at turning companies / organizations around and nothing of note will happen with Baker heading the NCAA.

Good luck, Charlie. Big-time college sports is a cesspool. The NCAA makes the MBTA look like a well-oiled machine.

When Baker, who could have been governor for life (wrong! - ed.), announced he was stepping down after two terms, I assumed he was preparing to run for president of the United States.

Just what the 2024 field needs - Massachusetts' answer to Jeb Bush in 2016.

No. He’s now president of the NCAA, which could be more challenging than sitting in the Oval Office.

Baker’s now got to deal with the billion-dollar, blatantly professional, borderline criminal greed of big-time college sports while at the same time trying to serve worthy, Division 3 programs with true amateurs playing for the love of the game. It’s like overseeing Brookline Booksmith and Amazon Prime simultaneously.

How unlikely is Charlie Baker to succeed here?

Good luck, Charlie. Your first day on the job is March 1. By Easter you’ll be longing for those golden days of trying to fix the Orange Line.