Hurricanes’ Dan Radakovich calls NCAA president Charlie Baker’s proposal to pay players ‘refreshing’
NCAA President Charlie Baker proposed a new set of rules for high-level college football programs on Tuesday that could radically change college football.
Under the proposal, those colleges could form a new NCAA subdivision where schools could directly pay players through NIL deals and through trust funds, with payments starting in the five figures.
Hurricanes athletic director Dan Radakovich called the new proposal “refreshing,” on Tuesday and said it was a good starting point to discuss the changing types of athlete compensation in college sports.
“In looking at it, there were some things and some themes that President Baker had talked about previously about giving more autonomy to the schools, especially the higher-resourced schools, to be able to control their own destiny,” Radakovich said at a press conference for the Pinstripe Bowl, “whether it’s being able to do that educational trust fund, but all the while making sure we’re abiding with Title IX at the same time, which is a very important circumstance.
“But I think that being able to invest and have the schools have the opportunity to do this is really refreshing, coming from the NCAA because for so many years, it had been more of a least-common-denominator approach to how they put rules in. And I think this opportunity and the discourse that will happen now that this is out front, and we’ll have the opportunity to talk through it and move ahead, I think it’s going to be really good for college athletics. And we’re excited to be a part of it, and we will continue to be, at a high level, involved in these conversations.”
Under current NCAA rules, teams cannot be involved with players’ NIL dealings beyond making sure they comply with NCAA regulations. In Baker’s proposal, teams could opt in or out of this new subdivision. The teams that opt in would pay at least half of their athletes a minimum of $30,000 per year, according to ESPN. Half of the players who were being paid would need to be female athletes in order to abide by Title IX.
Teams in the subdivision would also be able to make rules regarding roster size and the size of coaching staffs, according to Yahoo Sports and ESPN.
“(It) is time for us — the NCAA — to offer our own forward-looking framework,” Baker wrote, according to ESPN. “This framework must sustain the best elements of the student-athlete experience for all student-athletes, build on the financial and organizational investments that have positively changed the trajectory of women’s sports, and enhance the athletic and academic experience for student-athletes who attend the highest resourced colleges and universities.”
