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College sports is on the brink of a massive overhaul following June’s House v. NCAA settlement, and NCAA president Charlie Baker isn’t mincing words about what’s coming next. In a recent sit-down with CBS Sports, Baker outlined how the NCAA plans to navigate this new landscape where athlete compensation is no longer taboo.
The settlement has already triggered significant changes. A new College Sports Commission has been established, and the NCAA is streamlining its bloated committee structure — cutting from 44 committees down to 30 — while giving athletes more seats at the table.
“This is all making it possible for us to make decisions,” Baker explained. “A huge part of the reason what we’ve been doing the last few years feels so rushed is because we went years without dealing with and solving a lot of these issues to try and bring the NCAA into the 21st century. I think where we’ve landed on this is going to give us a committee structure that’s going to be able to make decisions and represent the membership.”
Think of the new setup as a division of labor. The College Sports Commission will handle what Baker calls the “money stuff” — cap management, third-party NIL deals, and arbitration. This means the NCAA is completely stepping away from policing player compensation.
A Clearer Path Forward
The NCAA isn’t disappearing, though. It’ll still manage the competitions we all love to watch, including rules enforcement, eligibility questions, and cracking down on sports betting violations.
By splitting these responsibilities, each organization can focus on what it does best.
Baker believes this will lead to greater transparency.
“People are going to know more about what’s going on than they have before,” he said. “Since [the settlement] sits inside an injunction, there’s actually a federal commitment to it that hasn’t existed before. And finally that arbitration process to resolve disputes, hopefully will reduce some of the litigation that has dominated the past few years.”
The settlement didn’t come cheap.
The NCAA coughed up a $2.8 billion payment to former athletes to settle the lawsuit. But more importantly, it opened the door for current and future players to get a slice of the revenue pie they help generate.
Starting in the 2025-26 academic year, schools can distribute up to $20.5 million directly to athletes across all sports. Most Power Four programs have already committed to fully funding this amount — a seismic shift from the “amateurism” model that defined college sports for decades.
This isn’t just about football and basketball stars getting paid. The new system will impact athletes across all NCAA sports.
Baker’s comments suggest the NCAA has finally accepted that fighting against athlete compensation was a losing battle. Instead, they’re trying to shape how the inevitable changes unfold — preserving what they can of their authority while adapting to the new reality.
The big question remains: Will these changes satisfy athletes and courts, or is this just the first step in a complete reimagining of college athletics?
