Charlie Baker stood on the field at Lynn Family Stadium in Louisville, Ky., on Monday night, 30 minutes before Clemson defeated Notre Dame 2–1 for the NCAA Division I men’s soccer championship. The president of the NCAA spent last week putting the college sports establishment on notice that change is coming—structurally, monetarily, even philosophically.
But Baker’s presence here, in and of itself, could be construed as a tacit statement that his bold proposal for a new college athletics model is not meant to sacrifice Olympic sports on the gilded altar of football and basketball.
“I’m very anxious to make sure that when we come out of this, we don’t lose all the sports that are the so-called non-revenue-producing sports,” Baker said in an interview with Sports Illustrated. “I want those to continue to be a big part of the show. But at the same time, we’ve got to recognize—especially at the highest-resourced institutions—more has got to be done here.”
