SAN ANTONIO — On the NCAA conference Thursday, outgoing president Mark Emmert mentioned goodbye, incoming president Charlie Baker launched himself and the state of school sports activities was declared perilous.

“As a collective enterprise, we’re each thriving and threatened,” mentioned Baylor president Linda Livingstone, who’s the chairwoman of the NCAA’s board of governors.

Livingstone dealt with a lot of the annual state of school sports activities handle with the NCAA in a interval of each transition and transformation.

Earlier within the day, the Division I board of administrators accepted a bunch of suggestions supposed to reform the highest tier of school sports activities, from membership requirements to the scale of championship brackets.

However Livingstone reiterated what has grow to be a well-recognized chorus from school sports activities leaders throughout her time on stage, saying federal intervention is required.

“We’d like a secure harbor to a sure diploma from antitrust complaints,” Livingstone mentioned. “We’re not on the lookout for, nor do we’d like, a broad antitrust exemption. However we do want the power to make commonsense guidelines with out limitless threats of litigation.”

Amid a patchwork of state legal guidelines, the NCAA is struggling to manage the way in which athletes can now be compensated for the usage of their names, photos and likenesses. The affiliation lifted its ban on athletes being paid by sponsors and endorsers in July 2021 and lots of inside school sports activities fear it has rapidly grow to be a solution to induce recruits or pay for play.

There are additionally a number of actions to grant school athletes worker standing.

Livingstone mentioned whereas it’s important school athletes not grow to be staff of the faculties by which they attend, that does not imply they could not ultimately be compensated.

“That is one of many questions that we’re engaged on, making an attempt to reply that query,” she mentioned throughout a information convention after her handle to membership. “It is why safety of the standing of our student-athletes is so necessary, that they be seen as type of a novel standing on our campus, that they’d not be staff.”

Baker, the previous Republican governor of Massachusetts, was introduced in to guide the NCAA due to his fame as a consensus-builder in a largely Democratic state.

He conceded getting federal laws handed is difficult, however not having it may not be an choice.

“I do consider that there are critical points with simply letting this practice run with out doing one thing to cope with the results which can be at present dealing with school sports activities,” he mentioned within the information convention after he briefly addressed membership.

Baker would not begin till March 1. He attended the conference on a mini-listening tour. He mentioned his notes over the previous few days of assembly with NCAA workers, college directors, convention commissioners and athletes stuffed a whole pocket book.

Emmert thanked the membership for permitting him to serve on the prime of the NCAA for 12 years and congratulated them on making huge modifications in school sports activities which have benefited athletes.

And he mentioned he was “completely delighted” with the selection of his successor.

“It is bought to be a difficult position. You understand that Charlie, you realize that this isn’t a cakewalk. Something however,” Emmert mentioned.

Livingstone has been an energetic participant within the NCAA’s latest efforts to reform from inside as a part of the division transformation committee. The committee made its final report public last week and D-I board of administrators approval got here Thursday on the conference.

“Be mindful these are ideas at this level,” mentioned Georgia president Jere Morehead, the chairman of the board. “So there’s nonetheless loads of work to be carried out on the small print, however large progress was made right now. The board was very adamant its assist of student-athletes and a lot of the transformation committee suggestions targeted on learn how to improve the expertise for student-athletes.”

The report called for more sport-by-sport governance in Division I, extra involvement by athletes in governance and enhanced expectations for D-I faculties with a objective of making a extra uniform expertise for athletes.

Transformation committee co-chairs Greg Sankey, commissioner of the Southeastern Convention, and Julie Cromer, Ohio College athletic director, reiterated in a joint assertion the work of reworking Division I’ll proceed past the committee’s work.

“We’re assured these necessary modifications will meet the wants of student-athletes as a result of they have been rooted within the perspective of student-athletes,” they mentioned. “In truth, we’re assured that student-athletes’ voices have by no means featured extra prominently in shaping how school sports activities is run.”

The committee beneficial permitting 25% of groups in sports activities sponsored by at the least 200 faculties to compete in annual championship occasions. That opens the door to doable enlargement of the favored March Insanity basketball tournaments from 68 to as many as 90 groups every.

The board additionally accepted the creation of a second, 32-team postseason event in Division I girls’s basketball. The event can be much like males’s NIT, which is owned and operated by the NCAA.

The event was a part of the suggestions from an unbiased gender fairness overview and is meant to supply an equal variety of NCAA-funded postseason alternatives in males’s and girls’s basketball.