New NCAA president Charlie Baker made it barely a week before the first public Congressional requests to reform college sports started to land in his inbox.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) sent a letter to the new leader of college sports this week asking for his help in improving the gender equity differences in men’s and women’s basketball. Baker, the former governor of Massachusetts, was hired in part for his political experience in a time when NCAA leaders are hoping Congress will help them regain some control of a rapidly changing business model and fend off a steady onslaught of legal challenges to amateurism. Baker told ESPN in an introductory interview last week that he knew he would have to come to Capitol Hill with an open mind in order to make progress on any federal legislation related to college sports.
Sherill wrote in her letter that she was concerned that the NCAA has yet to implement many of the recommendations made in a third-party review of gender inequities in how the NCAA manages its marquee basketball tournaments and men’s and women’s sports in general. The report, completed by the Kaplan Hecker & Fink law firm, was commissioned after women’s basketball players highlighted major differences between the two tournaments on social media. The NCAA has since made…
