{"id":696864,"date":"2026-04-04T00:20:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/696864\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T00:20:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:20:30","slug":"charlie-baker-says-trump-executive-order-will-streamline-eligibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/696864\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Baker Says Trump executive order will streamline eligibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX \u2014 The NCAA has seen enormous growth and gains in the last three years, but concerns about eligibility rules remain \u201cthe biggest and most challenging issue we\u2019ve had,\u201d NCAA president Charlie Baker told reporters Friday ahead of the UConn versus South Carolina NCAA Tournament Final Four game.<\/p>\n

Baker\u2019s comments come just hours after Donald Trump signed an executive order that will impose new limitations on how long students can play college sports and how frequently they can transfer to new schools. The order stipulates that athletes can play for \u201cno more than a five-year period\u201d and can only transfer schools once before they graduate without missing a season.<\/p>\n

Sections three through six of the order are expected to take effect before Aug. 1 and also institute new policies that will prevent schools from eliminating scholarships and other financial opportunities for women\u2019s and Olympic sports. Those sections also focus on \u201cimproper financial activities\u201d (including but not limited to fraudulent NIL deals and using NIL money for coaches or staff) and deals that \u201cdiscriminate against out-of-state commerce\u00a0or unduly burden or impede interstate commerce.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCollege sports cannot function without clear, agreed-upon rules concerning pay-for-play and player eligibility that can\u2019t be endlessly challenged in court, as is the case now,\u201d the White House said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThe resulting chaos is creating financial pressures that threaten to drain resources from all sports except football and basketball, and from many universities altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shifts may be positive for college athletes, Baker said, but it\u2019s too early to know for sure. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the changes that have taken place in the last few years, a lot of people would say they\u2019re the most consequential in college sports, outside maybe the creation of the NCAA and the signing of Title IX,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo, I mean, there\u2019s a lot of messiness in that, and I think in particular, a lot of the eligibility stuff is probably the biggest and most challenging issue we\u2019ve had, and that one, again, we win more often than we lose in court.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the disruption and the time it takes to get through the court, anytime you try and solve anything through a court process, it\u2019s going to take a really long time, and it\u2019s going to create an enormous amount of uncertainty, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of that uncertainty centers on Title IX and how scholarships and other support for girls and women in collegiate sports is dispersed and sustained. Baker said there\u2019s plenty of reason to assume the best.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

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Howard Megdal\u2019s newest book is here! \u201cBecoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar\u201d captures both the historic nature of Clark\u2019s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, before the House injunction got passed, we had limits all over the place on scholarships, and those limits often translated in women\u2019s sports into a quarter for you, a quarter for you, a quarter for you, and a quarter for you,\u201d he explained as he mimed money being split essentially into separate pots. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we now have roster maxes in all sports, but scholarships are uncapped, I can tell you anecdotally\u2026 we\u2019ll see what the data says at the end of the year. I think the data at the end of the year is going to show an enormous increase in the number of fully scholarship women athletes, and part of that (is) driven by the fact that a number of the new sports we have are women\u2019s sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those new sports include women\u2019s wrestling, which experienced rapid growth during the 2024-25 season, and women\u2019s flag football, which is \u201cmoving up (as an) emerging sport,\u201d Baker said. The NCAA will also host championships in acrobatics and tumbling and stunt during the 2026-27 season. It may still be too soon to know for sure, but for Baker, \u201cthe scholarship numbers are going in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The full impact of the executive order will take time to understand, but Baker said there\u2019s reason to believe it will streamline and clarify eligibility across the board. <\/p>\n

All too often, he explained, one school or athletic director will accuse the NCAA of denying an extra year to a student athlete, but then approving one for another. The order will presumably eliminate that experience, something Baker also said \u201cwould be really hard for us to do on our own.\u201d The order is not expected to impact the transfer portal, which opens April 6.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 The NCAA has seen enormous growth and gains in the last three years, but concerns about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,15900,217,7456,231,772,1544,26765],"class_list":{"0":"post-696864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-charlie-baker","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-march-madness","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-basketball","14":"tag-ncaab","15":"tag-title-ix"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116343579661823139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}