NCAA President Charlie Baker Throws His Predecessor Mark Emmert Under The Bus For Prior Transgender Policies
The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary and seven witnesses met Tuesday for what marked the 10th hearing centered around Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and the future of college athletics. While much of the conversations involved senators and witnesses talking in circles about 'the wild, wild west' that is the NIL era of college sports, recently-appointed NCAA president Charlie Baker took a clear stance on a topic involving transgender athletes.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R - Missouri) took a moment during his five minutes of allotted time to remind everyone of Riley Gaines' previous testimony in which she explained that her and fellow female swimmers were forced to not only compete against transgender athlete Lia Thomas, during the 2022 NCAA Championships, but also share a locker room with the biological male.
Gaines, host of OutKick's 'Gaines For Girls' podcast, testified that she and other female swimmers were not forewarned, let alone did they ever give consent to share a changing room with Thomas.
This led Sen. Hawley to his simple, yet incredibly important question to Baker: Is having biological men share locker rooms with women still NCAA policy?
Baker said he wouldn't "defend" what happened in 2022 as he wasn't NCAA president at the time - which came across as him admitting he disagreed with the policy and the acts that transpired - before throwing his predecessor, Mark Emmert, under the bus.
“I’m not going to defend what happened in 2022, I wasn’t there, I was still governor of the commonwealth (Massachusetts). What I will say is we have very specific rules and standards around the safety and security of all our student-athletes and anyone who hosts our national championships has to accept that they know what they are and then abide by them accordingly," Baker, who took his post as NCAA president in March 2023, stated.
After Sen. Hawley followed Baker's comments by questioning whether those policies include female athletes having to share locker rooms with biological men, the NCAA president admitted that the previous policy wouldn't be the one used now.
“I don’t believe that policy would be the policy that we would use today,” Baker said.
NCAA President Charlie Baker To Provide New Transgender Policy Details In Writing
Baker did not lay out any specific details about what this 'new' policy entails, but other Senators in the room did attempt to get more information out of him.
Following Sen. Hawley's questioning, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R - Tenn.) asked for specifics and while Baker didn't go into further detail, he assured no student-athlete would be put into a situation that makes them uncomfortable.
"I can state pretty clearly that no one is going to get forced into any situation that makes them uncomfortable, we make that very clear in the guidance that we give who hosts one of our championships," Baker stated.
Sen. Mike Lee (R - Utah) put together a third effort to try and have Baker lay out specific details, but Baker did not want to discuss them, instead saying he would provide those in writing. The Utah Senator proceeded to ask Baker if he, or the NCAA, had provided any sort of apology to Gaines or other competitors forced to share a locker room with Thomas, to which Gaines explained on X, formerly Twitter, that no apologies had been made.
Follow Mark Harris on X @ItIsMarkHarris. You can also email him at mark.harris@outkick.com.