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NCAA president Mark Emmert's contract extended through 2025

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Jan 1, 2003
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  • Adam RittenbergESPN Senior Writer
NCAA president Mark Emmert has received a contract extension through 2025, the association's board of governors announced Tuesday.

Emmert, who has served as NCAA president since November 2010, had been under contract through October 2023 with an option through 2024. The NCAA announced the extension within a news release that included other action items from the board, including a commitment to modernize rules around name, image and likeness (NIL).

Emmert's extension received unanimous approval from the board.

In March, Georgetown president Jack DeGioia, the chair of the NCAA's board of governors, gave Emmert a vote of confidence amid mounting criticism about inequities during the men's and women's Division I basketball tournaments. Several commissioners and athletic directors voiced concerns about Emmert's leadership in media reports in late March and early April.

Emmert, in a letter to staff, acknowledged that "a number of balls were dropped" at the NCAA women's basketball tournament in San Antonio and that a full review would be conducted.

"I think it would be fair to say that Mark took this very, very seriously and all of my conversations with him -- we have had several over the last 10 days -- at no point did I ever have the sense that he wasn't engaging this with the greatest seriousness possible," DeGioia told The Associated Press in late March.

Emmert has also been facing scrutiny and political pressure for the NCAA's inability to move forward with proposed reforms to its rules prohibiting athletes from earning money off their NIL.

Dozens of states have bills in the pipeline that will prohibit the NCAA from stopping college athletes from being compensated for endorsement and sponsorship deals. Florida and Mississippi are among the states with laws scheduled to go into effect July 1.

Emmert and the NCAA have turned to federal lawmakers for help with NIL. The NCAA is also awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court in an antitrust case the association has been fighting for several years.

Earlier this month, the Greater Baton Rouge Business Journal reported that back-channel efforts were underway to recruit Emmert to become LSU's new president. Emmert, 68, served as LSU's chancellor from 1999 to 2004, and he is close with athletic director Scott Woodward and others around the university and the athletic program.

He served as president at the University of Washington from 2004 until 2010, when he began his duties at the NCAA.

Emmert's name did not appear on a list of candidates from LSU's presidential search committee.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
 
That’s bad news. This guy seems to be universally disliked and has little credibility. 68 years old and loaded with money. Why keep going thru with this nonsense.
 
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Mark Emmert receiving contract extension as NCAA president should draw disappointment but not surprise​

The Board of Governors voted unanimously on Tuesday to extend the contract of Emmert through 2025​

By Gary Parrish


The hilarious announcement was made Tuesday night, but the reaction was even funnier. Buried in a press release blasted out after 9 p.m. ET, the NCAA disclosed that its Board of Governors had unanimously voted to extend NCAA president Mark Emmert's contract by two years through Dec. 31, 2025. Hahaha. But I genuinely didn't understand the initial reaction on Twitter, which seemed to be disappointment mixed with ... surprise.

How could anyone be surprised?

Emmert's extension, though clumsily timed, is just about the least-surprising thing in the world if you understand how this stuff works. Why anybody found it hard to believe that the Board of Governors would want to keep him in power is way more hysterical than the Board of Governors actually voting to keep Emmert in power.

He's perfect for them!

This is a man who traded his soul years ago for a multimillion-dollar annual salary -- someone who sacrificed his integrity to protect, as much as he can, the status quo. Don't ever forget: just because you think he's terrible at his job doesn't mean they think he's terrible at his job. In truth, Emmert has forever been doing what these people want him to do, which is, among other things, stall on any meaningful reform when it comes to name, image and likeness rights for student-athletes. Have there been blunders along the way? Yes, too many to count -- most recently the debacle that was how the 2021 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament was funded and run, which makes the timing of this announcement, at best, tone deaf. But, blunders and all, the Association's top governing body is more than happy to continue to pay Emmert well because he's willing to be the face of their greedy desires.

He's a comfortable whipping boy. It's as simple as that.

I mean, do you really think a Board of Governors largely comprised of university presidents and chancellors actually want student-athletes enjoying true name, image and likeness rights when one byproduct of that would be money that normally goes straight to schools instead going directly to players?

Please.

So what they do is continue to employ a president who is willing to publicly peddle nonsensical reasons for why student-athletes still don't have sensible name, image and likeness rights in April 2021. Emmert fights their fight in the light while they put off reform as long as possible and mostly remain in the shadows.

"As we have previously noted, we recognize the importance of taking swift, appropriate action to modernize our rules," read Tuesday's statement from the Board of Governors. "We also must collaborate with Congress to create a legal and legislative framework at the federal level to support name, image and likeness within the context of higher education."

That. Is. A. Lie.

The NCAA most certainly does not have to collaborate with Congress to modernize name, image and likeness rules. The NCAA has created a bazillion rules over the years without collaborating with Congress -- rules about what coaches can and cannot do, rules about what players can and cannot do, rules about what boosters can and cannot do, so on and so forth. If the NCAA wanted to modernize name, image and likeness rules, it could've done so years ago with literally zero input from Congress. So when the NCAA insists it "must collaborate with Congress" on name, image and likeness rules, that's just the NCAA hoping you're dumb enough to believe it. And because Mark Emmert is fine with being the face of that lie, his contract gets extended through the end of 2025.

Do I understand the disappointment from the masses?

Of course.

The surprise, however, is naivety at its finest.
 
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