NCAA President Charlie Baker sat down with College.town’s Daniel Gillman at the NCAA Convention to discuss a number of topics, ranging from the transfer portal to expanding March Madness. Here are the biggest takeaways…
➤ On the James Nnaji/Baylor eligibility situation: "He never sat on a bench. He never played in a game. He never signed a contract. I mean, I get the fact that on paper he was part of something, but in terms of his actual eligibility, he's completely consistent with the rules that have been there for a long time. ... I do think it was a change in incentives more than anything that had to do with the change in the way we work. And I think a lot of people, I think there was some real mythology out there about him."
➤ On the "draft and stash" rumors with the NBA: "I have no idea what draft and stash is and I can promise you that those three words never came up in my conversation with Adam Silver. So I was shocked by the reports that came out. I went to see him about sports betting and that's what we spent most of our time talking about was prop bets and prediction markets."
➤ On the decline in transfer portal entries: "I do think that one of the reasons we actually saw a very significant drop in the number of FBS and FCS players, football players who went into the portal in January relative to last year. It's down like 20%. was because schools finally had a chance to actually talk to kids directly. And I think a bunch of kids are probably staying where they were because their school was in a position to talk to them about why staying was a good thing for them and a good thing for the school."
➤ On the harassment stemming from prop betting: "We made a deal with Venmo to be able to get people who are, you know, just being incredibly abusive to our student athletes because somebody didn't deliver on a prop in whatever way they were supposed to. And the the person who lost the money is now demanding through Venmo that some student athlete who they don't know and have never heard of um they want him to pay him. It's crazy."
➤ On the timeline for expanding the NCAA Tournament: "I think we need to get it done sometime this spring but it'll take a year. It took a year to set it up. ... One of the big things we all have to figure out is the travel because if we expand the tournament, the travel gets even more interesting."
➤ Check out the full interview on Collegiate Sports Connect. (link)