NCAA president Charlie Baker on Tuesday proposed the creation of a new subdivision within Division I that would allow the highest-resource schools the ability to compensate athletes directly through a trust fund and direct name, image and likeness (NIL) payments.
The groundbreaking proposal was sent out to Division I members and obtained by The Athletic on Tuesday morning, and it included the following recommendations:
- The formation of a new subdivision made up of institutions with the highest resources that can directly compensate athletes through an “enhanced educational trust fund,” which requires the schools that opt into it an investment of at least $30,000 per year per athlete for at least half of the school’s eligible athletes. Schools would have to adhere to Title IX, providing equal monetary opportunities to both female and male athletes.
- Schools in the new subdivision could create their own rules separate from the rest of D-I, and those rules would allow them the ability to address policies such as scholarship limits and roster size as well as transfers and NIL.
- Any Division I school would be able to enter into an NIL deal with its athletes directly, which is not currently permissible.
- Any Division I school would be able to distribute to any athlete funding…
