Baker’s Claims of NCAA Athletes’ Labor Stance in Dispute

While testifying before a Senate Judiciary Committee last month, new NCAA president Charlie Baker sought to make the case that it isn’t just the association that opposes college athletes becoming employees of their institutions. The athletes, Baker submitted, are almost entirely in opposition, as well.

Relying on seven months’ worth of personal experience, Baker told lawmakers he had “talked to probably a thousand student-athletes since I got this job, and I haven’t talked to one yet [who] wants to be an employee. I think that’s important.”

The under-oath comment set off the BS detectors of NCAA skeptics inside and outside of college sports, including that of UCLA senior backup quarterback Chase Griffin.

“I think, in the literal sense, what Baker said is impossible,” said Griffin, who has become a leading advocate for college athletes profiting from their play. Griffin recently launched a newsletter called The Athlete’s Bureau, designed to “amplify the perspectives” of college athletes.

Baker’s anecdotal testimony was recently contravened by the findings of Bill Carter, a sports marketer who runs the NIL consulting firm, Student-Athlete Insights. Last week, Carter publicized the results of an email survey he says he conducted with a panel of 1,086 current college athletes, in which 73% were “in favor” of becoming employees of their institutions and more than half were “interested” in joining a college athlete union.

In a telephone interview, Carter acknowledged that his poll is not to be taken as a scientific survey, but said its revelations are likely to be much more representative of where college athletes stand on the employee question than what Baker conveyed to senators.

In last month’s hearing, Baker didn’t elaborate how he had determined, through interactions with athletes, the unanimity of their anti-employment sentiment. For example, was he simply extrapolating athletes’ disinterest by them not bringing the subject up? Had he regularly solicited their interest in the matter and, if so, in a dispassionate or open-ended manner? And what kinds of athletes had he been speaking to?

Recently, Sportico has repeatedly asked the NCAA for further clarification about Baker’s claim to Congress—as well as the association’s lack of more rigorous insights into the question of where athletes stand on the matter of employment, direct compensation and unionization. 

The NCAA’s response has been largely tangential. Initially, its communications department provided copies of letters sent to members of Congress by Cody Shimp, chair of the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), as well as four commissioners of HBCU conferences, which advocated against college athletes obtaining employee status.

When pressed further about what Baker said he gleaned from his personal athlete interactions, the NCAA suggested that he was basing his assessment on the formal positions of the SAAC groups.

“Since taking over as NCAA president eight months ago, president Baker has traveled across the country to listen to student-athletes from all three divisions, and it’s clear college athletes recognize he values and prioritizes their voices when it comes to leading the association,” an NCAA spokesperson told Sportico. “The student-athletes selected on their campuses across the country, in all three divisions, oppose an employment model and have called for action in Congress.”

In a joint telephone interview, Shimp and Morgan Wynne, the D-I SAAC vice chair, said their group was in lockstep with the NCAA’s leadership in their opposition to employment status. “I wouldn’t say there is daylight at all,” said Wynne, a former academic All-Big 12 softball player at Oklahoma State.

Wynne said Baker’s Congressional testimony about athlete sentiment is “fairly correct,” insofar as she discharges those in favor of employment status as being insufficiently informed on the issue.

“Student-athletes who have wanted this … don’t have the knowledge of what that really means,” she said. “They kind of think the benefits they have right now and protections all stay the same, and they get a salary on top of that. [The opinions change] once they are further educated on the potential catastrophic implications of this.”

Shimp, a former baseball player and current graduate assistant at St. Bonaventure, said he believes athlete employment will be cataclysmic for intercollegiate athletics.

“I am all for protecting the jewel of college sports, and I fear employment status for all student-athletes would take the jewel out of the crown and break the system,” he said.

However, Maddie Salamone—a former Duke Lacrosse player president and past Division I SAAC chair—warns about the peril of placing too much faith in the position statements of the NCAA-sanctioned student organizations, because they are reliant on the association and tend to skew representationally toward the non-revenue sports.

Out of its 32 members, the current D-I SAAC roster has three FBS football players, none of whom play for Power Five schools, and only one Power-Five men’s basketball player. Such revenue-sport participants are those most likely to benefit financially from a college sports system in which athletes are directly compensated by their schools.

“The fundamental problem with SAAC is not only can they not adequately speak for athletes,” Salamone said, “but they don’t have a mechanism to speak with every athlete within the NCAA.”

Salamone, who has testified before Congress on college sports reform issues, adds that SAAC leaders tend to be “fed information in a very skewed way by the NCAA,” which keeps the committees in line with the association’s ultimate desires.

On Thursday, the D-I SAAC plans to distribute an “educational document” to their campus representatives meant to spur conversation about what it will mean if college athletes become employees. Despite the opinions of SAAC leadership, Wynne insists the document is “not leading by any means for them to discern this is going to be a con rather than a pro.” 

Shimp and Wynne told Sportico that while their group does have the resources to survey college athletes about employment, they have so far decided not to pursue it. 

Arguably, the entity best positioned to poll the question—the NCAA’s research department—has so far not done so, at least not publicly. Mit Winter, a sports attorney and former college basketball player, says there’s a good reason why.

“They are not dumb,” Winter said. “They know if they put a poll out, there are going to be college athletes who want to be employees, especially if you ask every Power Five football player the question.”

When asked whether it would conduct such a survey in the future, the NCAA spokesperson was noncommittal.

“Under Charlie’s leadership, the association has and will continue to seek out and value student-athletes’ input and put forward policies that deliver them more benefits and greater support,” the spokesperson said.

In collaboration with a polling firm he declined to name, Griffin said The Athlete’s Bureau is currently in the field surveying its own cohort of at least 1,000 college athletes about their feelings toward employee status, revenue-sharing and unionization—all prospects that the NCAA has vehemently opposed, but have grown increasingly likely over the last few years.

He said he hopes to release the results within the next month.