NCAA Girls
December 21, 2023
Charlie Baker wasn’t essentially a volleyball fan.
However now?
“I’ve grow to be one,” Baker replied.
Which is an effective factor for school volleyball, since Baker is the brand new NCAA president.
We visited with Baker in Tampa final Sunday morning earlier than the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship ultimate.
“There are three issues that I believe are particular about it,” Baker stated. “The very first thing is the standard of the athleticism is solely spectacular. The character of the sport, whether or not you’re in particular person or watching it on TV, level by level it’s extremely enjoyable to look at. And the third factor is there’s a complete collection of guidelines modifications that the volleyball group remodeled the course of 10 to 12 years that actually sped up and I’d argue dramatically enhanced the competitors of the sport.
“You place all that collectively and I believe it’s one of many hottest sports activities in collegiate athletics.”
Baker, the previous governor of Massachusetts, was employed by the NCAA final December 15 as his final time period completed. He took over on the NCAA on March 1. The problems that he has to cope with on so many fronts are properly documented, from paying athletes to NIL to persevering with convention alignment.
However we saved our dialog primarily about volleyball. It was a fortuitous time to speak with him, on the finish of what has been a most exceptional school season with each attendance and TV-ratings information falling each day.
“The game itself is simply going to proceed to develop,” Baker stated. “Volleyball has large upside as a result of it’s grown very quick. A part of the rationale why I believe it has a very excessive ceiling is as a result of it’s nowhere close to the place it might probably get to only by way of the viewers that’s obtainable to it.”
Subsequent season, with Texas and Oklahoma going to the SEC; Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA going to the Massive Ten; and Stanford and Cal going to ACC, we can be left with a Energy 4 with the demise of the Pac-12.
What occurs to distinguished volleyball packages not in these conferences, together with Creighton and Marquette of the Massive East, Western Kentucky of Convention USA and Dayton of the Atlantic 10?
Ought to there be a cut up of ranges, like FBS and FCS in soccer, for Olympic sports activities?
“It’s not one thing individuals are speaking about, at the very least not with me,” Baker stated.
We requested about the way forward for the NCAA Match, each by way of TV income and sponsorship.
“Understand that for the NCAA, males’s basketball is in a single contract and all the things else is in a special one,” stated Baker, who performed basketball at Harvard. “And that’s at the moment below negotiation. Folks have requested me what my most popular end result was and my reply’s all the time been the identical, which is the one which works finest for student-athletes and the NCAA. I don’t have a specific assemble in thoughts right here. I simply wish to get the most effective deal we presumably can for school sports activities.”
Neither Baker nor his assistant knew of the MPSF — the Mountain Pacific Sports activities Federation — the West Coast convention that exists for sports activities that don’t produce other convention choices, together with males’s volleyball, water polo, gymnastics, fencing, inventive swimming, swimming and diving, and indoor observe and subject.
Within the case of males’s volleyball, the MPSF is house to UCLA, USC, Stanford, Pepperdine, Grand Canyon, BYU and Concordia. UCLA and USC, for instance, gained’t have the choice of enjoying males’s volleyball within the Massive Ten, nor Stanford within the ACC, so they’ll proceed within the MPSF.
The thought right here is the the MPSF is a mannequin for future conferences across the nation.
“One of many issues the NCAA, going ahead, must determine is find out how to be just a little extra versatile round the way it organizes all of it with governing constructions,” Baker stated. “I say that for a few causes. One is after we did a research on the state of faculty sports activities final summer time one of many issues that turned fairly clear is demography goes to have an enormous ripple throughout all of faculty sports activities. In case you drop the variety of 18-year-olds by 25 % between 2010 and 2028, and it’s unlikely that quantity goes to ever come again up and will, in reality, proceed to go down based mostly on the birthrates since then, you’re principally speaking a few very totally different terrain all faculties are going to be engaged on.
“I believe that’s going to make it necessary for us to assume in another way about how we govern and the way we arrange. For years and years, that quantity simply went up and up and up as child booomers received older and the newborn boomers had youngsters. However that quantity is now headed in precisely the opposition route and it has actual penalties for faculties and due to this fact for school sports activities.
“And this (the MPSF) would slot in very well with the concept that we’re going to have assume in another way about stuff. You’re not going to have the ability to presume that all the things’s going to be populated the way in which it’s been populated as a result of it’s not.”
However again to males’s volleyball.
“There’s a ton of progress in youth volleyball throughout women and men,” Baker stated. “And I really assume it has the potential to have a very severe optimistic impression on collegiate sports activities. The one factor it’s good to have school sports activities is to have youth packages which might be really creating traction into school sports activities. And the truth that we’ve received an incredible quantity of progress in each youth males’s and girls’s volleyball bodes properly for each of them going ahead.”
The NCAA Division I Volleyball Championships head to Louisville, Kentucky, subsequent 12 months, and return to Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, in 2025.
Would future websites be excluded from consideration due to social points? The NCAA has made that assertion up to now, in South Carolina, for instance, when it flew the Accomplice flag on Statehouse grounds. Baker’s predecessor, Mark Emmert, stated throughout his tenure that the NCAA needed to be cognizant of legal guidelines which might be “actions in a route that aren’t supportive of what we stand for.”
“One factor you’ve received to recollect about NCAA championships is that they sometimes happen in municipalities and communities and lots of of these communities are extremely supportive of all the athletes who present up and all the athletes who take part,” Baker stated.
“Everyone goes to need to abide by our guidelines with respect to the enjoying guidelines, the participation guidelines and the security and safety guidelines. We’ve got 1,100 members and so they contact all 50 states and what we would like on the finish of the day is the most effective expertise we are able to presumably ship for the student-athlete.
“I can inform you having been right here final 12 months for the hockey championship in Tampa, folks love being right here. Having talked to a few of, however not all the of us who’re right here for this one, folks love being right here … I believe it’s necessary for us to acknowledge and perceive that the student-athletes themselves need us to ship on the inclusion points, the competitors points and the security, safety and luxury points, These are actually what we have now to concentrate on. And we should always.”