Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Ten For Wren – May 24, 2024
May 24, 2024 10:00 AM | General
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – As we wind down another successful sports season, West Virginia University Director of Athletics Wren Baker addresses some of the hot topics concerning the Mountaineers as he readies for the start of another fiscal year in July.
Here are ten questions for Wren:
WVUsports.com: The spring sports season is wrapping up with golf competing in the NCAA championships and baseball vying for another NCAA tournament berth, concluding what must be considered one of WVU's strongest overall seasons in years. Can you speak to the overall success of the department this season?
Wren Baker: I think we've had a great year overall, and we're really proud of some of our sports who had their best seasons ever or their best seasons in a long time. We've been intentional about trying to make strategic investments that will allow us to compete, and it's good to see those pay off and a huge credit goes to our student-athletes and our coaches.
I know our coaches very much take to heart that they don't just represent their team or the department and University, but more importantly the entire state so it's really cool to see the success they've had this year.
WVUsports.com: Football continues to enjoy offseason momentum following the Duke's Mayo Bowl victory, an outstanding turnout for the Gold-Blue Game and strong season ticket sales leading into the season opener against Penn State. What excites you most about the upcoming season?
Wren Baker: I think seeing the momentum continue. We'll see where we end up, but the trend lines in terms of our ticket sales from a season perspective are very, very good. That's so important as we look at trying to get our budget in a more competitive place, especially with what's on the horizon in terms of expenses and revenue sharing-type stuff with the court case settlements. It was amazing as we got out this spring at the Caravans just to see the energy. It's been a wild couple of years for our fan base, but they are so passionate, invested and committed and I can't wait for that first game. It's going to be a big-time atmosphere.
WVUsports.com: The Mountaineer Athletic Club Caravan has ended; overall, what was your message to the fans you met at the various stops?
Wren Baker: It's amazing the support we've had through some choppy waters. I would specifically mention the Baylor men's basketball game late in the year with the bad weather, and we had not been playing well and weren't having a great season, and yet we had a packed house just speaks to how important the teams are to the fans here. Our fans follow the national news, so they know that there is instability right now in college sports and the model that we've done in terms of how we spend money and how we make money. I have shared with them that there are some challenging times ahead, and it would be naive not to recognize that. They can participate in this by buying tickets, supporting the MAC and supporting the Country Roads Trust and ultimately, we're going to find a way to charter those choppy waters together because our programs are too important to the state for us not to be successful.
When I look to hire coaches, this passion is something I explain to them. You want coaches who are going to treat people the right way and coach student-athletes the way you want your own kids to be coached. You want good tacticians and good recruiters, but something that is probably unique here, you need someone who can embrace being the face of this state. I tell people, the hardest thing for coaches, athletic administrators and student-athletes is they work so hard and when you are someplace where you feel people don't care that gets exhausting at times. You will never wake up one day here wondering if people care. People definitely care. For many of our coaches, they are not going to walk anywhere in this state and be anonymous. It's just not going to happen. That is something that is a great privilege and it's also a big responsibility. It's something that needs to be understood and to be honest, I maybe overemphasize during the interview process, but I think it's really, really critical that anybody who comes here understands that because it's part of the job.
When I was at North Texas, a big university with 43,000 students, you are in (Dallas-Fort Worth) and in six years there, maybe five times when I was away from campus, somebody stopped me and wanted to talk about North Texas athletics. Here, I have never gone into a public place without somebody either saying 'Let's go Mountaineers' or 'thanks for being here.' Somebody is going to acknowledge you in some way, and that's part of the responsibility of having a leadership position at WVU.
WVUsports.com: The MAC tour included a couple of non-traditional stops in Manassas, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina. How was the response at those two locations, what are your thoughts moving forward on the MAC's outreach in areas beyond the state and what more can be done to increase participation?
Wren Baker: I think it's important for a ton of reasons. WVU has cranked out a lot of graduates for a lot of years, and yet our state's population has declined to 1.8 million or whatever it is currently. That tells you that a lot of our graduates come from out of state and a lot of them are moving out of state. When you go to Charlotte and there were well over a hundred people at that caravan, and you ask them where they are from, and they were all from West Virginia. I didn't meet any that were actually from Charlotte.
On a side note, we've got to do a better job of creating opportunities inside this state that keeps our graduates here because that's important for the overall health and welfare of the state and our future prosperity. But my point is, there are a lot of people who are doing very well who care about our teams and our programs that are living in Washington, D.C., Charlotte and other places, too. We haven't determined if we are always going to go to those two or are we going to rotate two with a couple of others. I was in Cincinnati earlier this year at an alumni event just to try and connect. I think it's important for our athletic department that we get to those areas because we need to grow our support and make sure people stay connected with their alma mater and this department because they care about what's happening.
It's also important for our institution as we navigate our enrollment challenges, and we need to find ways to grow enrollment. A better presence and a better brand with some of your best ambassadors – people who love this place and went to school here – are living in metropolitan areas where there is a wealth of potential students, it's probably a great strategy overall for the University just as much as it is for the athletic department.
WVUsports.com: You've now had some more time with new men's basketball coach Darian DeVries while traveling the state for various events. What are you learning about him that you didn't know during the interview process, and what has impressed you most about how he's building Mountaineer basketball thus far?
Wren Baker: I'm impressed with his authenticity, and everybody who has had a chance to talk to him sees this. He has charisma, but he's not 'salesy' at all. There is just a real, direct, frank, candidness to him instead of a straight sales pitch. He has an incredible work ethic, and he constantly thinks outside the box trying to find ways to look at things a little differently. The other thing is I've been impressed with is his schedule since he's gotten here has just been incredible, but I saw him at just about every weekend home baseball series so he's trying to invest in our community and our other teams. He's developing great relationships with our other coaches.
Even though the week on the Caravan wears you down because it's six different places in eight days, we had a blast spending that week together. It was a lot of different coaches learning from each other and building camaraderie with each other, and I think he's doing a great job of fitting in. I said from the start, you don't have to be from West Virginia to adapt to being a West Virginian, and Randy Mazey is a great example of that. If you didn't know he wasn't from here you'd think he's always been here, and I think coach DeVries very quickly will do that as well.
As far as putting together his team, he hasn't gotten in a rush, and he hasn't taken kids that he hasn't felt good about their character, and if you go back to his press conference, he said all those things. Listen, there are some financial constraints because some of these kids are looking for big NIL money and some of this is you are looking for kids who are committed to the program who want to be a part of something special and will be committed to each other. He has taken his time and done a really good job of evaluating, not just talent, but character as well.
WVUsports.com: The Country Roads Trust is having its Million Dollar May Campaign with a little more than a week remaining. What can you tell Mountaineer fans about the continued support of the Trust?
Wren Baker: I can't emphasize enough how critical the Trust is. It is as important as anything that we're doing. We're a little bit limited in what we're able to do directly, but indirectly, a lot of those restrictions have been lifted. We can go out there and push the Trust, we can encourage and advocate for people to support it and we need our fans to support it. Eventually, and I think in the not-too-distant future, NIL will probably come in-house for the most part so whatever you're doing to establish the Trust will probably all come back to us, and we'll dovetail it all together. I know that will be helpful for a lot of people, but in the meantime, we desperately need people to support NIL opportunities and the best way to do that at WVU is through Country Roads Trust.
We are very lucky to have Stephen (Ford) and his team, and particularly Oliver (Luck) and Ken (Kendrick) who made the decision to form the Trust and do what they can to support our athletic programs. We need to grow our resources in all areas, including NIL opportunities to the very best of our abilities. It's kind of like I tell my girls sometimes, in life, you don't get to run somebody else's race. You run your race and if you are worrying about someone else's race and what their path looks like and what obstacles they have, then you're not focused on your own race. For us, we just have to remain laser-focused on building as much in our resource allocations as we can and consistently reinforcing that to everybody out there. If we do that, then I think we'll be happy with the results.
WVUsports.com: What can you report to Mountaineer fans about the recently completed Big 12 meetings?
Wren Baker: We had lots of discussions about the future of college athletics. There is a lot of instability right now, and it appears we are heading toward a settlement of the three court cases that could end up being four. That would take care of the back damages on the NIL issues and then have a go-forward opportunity to share revenues with student-athletes in exchange for some of their NIL rights. When you are in a situation like WVU, you look at our brand value, it's top 30 in the country when you look at viewership, when you look at licensing and all the different brand valuations all third parties do. If you look at our performance right now in the Directors' Cup standings, I believe we're 35th. Then, if you look at our budget, we're 61st and there are less than 70 power conference teams now, so we've got to find a way to grow that.
We don't have to have a top-20 budget, but we've got to find a way to move from 61 to 40 because I think if we can do that, we can move from top 30 to top 20, and the implications would be significant for our department. There is instability right now and there's concern, and that was discussed a lot at the Big 12 meetings, but this settlement does provide an opportunity to start to get clarity on where we're going. I've said this for the last couple of years, the most frustrating thing is we know we have to go from point A to point B, and we know the road map to get there is going to be tough – there are going to be mountains that we've got to climb in the middle of blizzards, and there are going to be valleys that are flooded, and it's not going to be an easy path to get there. Right now, no one can tell us where point B is so you can't even start to build a road map no matter how challenging it is because you don't know where you're going. I think the settlement now provides some clarity on where point B is likely to be – doesn't identify it exactly – but at least what neighborhood and what state it's in. We spent the better part of our time talking about this and we've got some more meetings next week in Dallas. There are a bevy of issues for us to figure out, but we will. As I said on the Caravan, we're going to improvise, adapt and overcome because this means too much to West Virginians and to the health of this state. The alternative is to die, and that's not something that we're prepared to do in terms of our athletic programs, so we're going to figure out how to get through this together.
WVUsports.com: The House vs. NCAA case seems to be nearing its conclusion. In lay terms, what are its most significant implications and what does Mountaineer Nation need to know about it?
Wren Baker: The NCAA, historically, has had a lot of rules to level competition and try and have competitive equity. Pro sports do the same. They have salary caps, and there are penalties for exceeding those salary caps. They have rules about when you can contact people and when you can't. They can deny you the opportunity to interview a coach on your staff, even if it's an assistant coach. The reason that they can do that is because they have sat in a room with the players association and collectively bargained those things.
The NCAA has set rules that are similar, in place, but they have not allowed the student-athletes to have representation. For years, those rules went unchallenged because the money was not what it is today. Now, because of the explosion of revenue that's come into the system and how that revenue is being spent, and more particularly where it's not being spent, to the student-athletes who are directly responsible for bringing the revenue in, those rules have been challenged. You can't arbitrarily set caps on what individual players can do without some sort of collective bargaining agreement. The problem is, there are a lot of us in athletic administration and a lot of presidents as well that would have collectively bargained several years ago, but you can't collectively bargain because there was no process to do this with someone who was not an employee.
I think there is still hope, maybe even post-settlement, that there is a significant revenue share and the players are getting a lot of the rights that we've been criticized so hard for that now they would allow an antitrust exemption with the privilege for the student-athlete to be able to come to the bargaining table and bargain things so that they have a voice and representation. At a higher level, we are where we are because we've set rules, whether that's on scholarship limits, NIL compensation or transfer restrictions to equalize the playing field, and we had no legal standing to do that.
People will say, "Why did you settle?" We were going to lose. That's the heart of it. Will it cause us to have less money to invest in some of our other sports and will it cause us to potentially take a step away from some traditional values that college athletics have had? Perhaps. But the courts have said time and again we do not have the right to put these restrictions in place. You have no antitrust exemption, and these restrictions are illegal without having collectively bargained them with student-athletes.
At some point, we must realize that we can continue to do what we're doing. Not everybody loves this, and I get it. I'm the father of two daughters, and I hope we can all find a way to share this revenue and not hurt opportunities for female athletes, but we are going to be challenged to think differently because we've been taking revenue-sport money, which is primarily football, and we've been funding an entire athletic department with it. To revenue share, decisions must be made moving forward, and I don't know what that looks like. I know that we're committed to trying to provide the best experience we can to our student-athletes to have an opportunity to represent our institution in a meaningful way.
We love success. Our golf team just had one of its best seasons ever. I saw how proud people were – people that have never watched one of our golfers play. It means something to people in West Virginia. We want to be committed to be competitive, but we know we're going to be challenged for how we can do that with where we're headed. However, I'm confident that we can figure it out. I think the next six-to-12 months will tell us a lot. The revenue share is estimated to be around $20 million, give or take because it's a percentage.
How many schools open up at $20 million? That seems like a big hill to climb right now at WVU, but if the rest of the Big 12 finds a way to get there, then you've got to find a way to get there. There is going to be a lot of real-time assessing the market, the competition and what people are doing, and we know that two leagues, through their TV contracts coming up and through their negotiations with the College Football Playoff revenue, are going to be better positioned to absorb these costs than the others. But even in those leagues, there is a lot of worry and concern, especially those teams in the bottom third of those leagues in terms of resources. In the Big 12, there is a pinch because we've seen some dissolution through conference expansion, so our distribution is down, and that expense line is about to take a sharp increase.
WVUsports.com: With the Big 10 and SEC payouts continuing to rise, financially, what continues to concern you for WVU to remain competitive nationally in this regard?
Wren Baker: We had a really good football year last year, and I think we will have another really good one. We were able to do very well at retaining our football student-athletes – the best it's been in a while. We've also brought in some new guys, and I don't know the exact numbers distributed to our football players, and there are schools that probably tripled or quadrupled what we did. There has always been a difference in terms of resources, and that's not something that's new. We don't have to be in the top 10; that's just not a realistic goal considering the state we're in, our population, the amount of industry here and so forth. What we need to be striving toward is being in the top half of the power conference programs, and if we are, we've shown time and again that the characteristics of West Virginians, with our hard-working, blue-collar, chip-on-our-shoulders mentality, resonate with our teams, and they are prepared to out-punch their weight class. We are prepared to continue to punch above our weight class. What we'd like to do is not punch above three or four weight classes. We're sitting right now at right around a $100 million budget, and there are probably now 15 schools that are twice that. In anything in life … politics, religion, race cars where there is a winner and a loser, if you give somebody twice of what you have, it's really, really hard. We need people's support and help, but we also have to do our part, too.
I have a responsibility to grow our budget. Our budget the last five years has remained relatively static and flat. You almost never see that in college athletics. One of the reasons that we've been stymied here is we do not have enough premium seating at football and basketball and that's a big part of this puzzle piece, and it's something people are going to hear more and more about in the fall as we get into the later stages of our facility assessments. If we can build this building, we can change our financial paradigm because we can net millions of dollars over the costs, and I think that's a really important piece.
I was recently preparing a presentation for our Board of Governors, and our debt service relative to other Big 12 schools is pretty high and yet our budget is in the bottom grouping. We had to invest in a basketball practice facility and a football facility and some other facilities that don't generate revenue. It was the right thing to do because we were behind as a result of not having as many years in a power conference as other people have, but somewhere along the way, we probably should have said, 'Hey we really need to invest in a facility that can create more suites, clubs and premium areas.' We are now in a place where we can't continue to kick that can down the road. We have to invest to change our financial outlook.
WVUsports.com: Finally, what's your message to Mountaineer Fans for the holiday weekend?
Wren Baker: I hope everybody has a great time and stays safe. Watch out on the highways to make sure you are taking care of yourself and our fellow West Virginians. Memorial Day is always toward the end of our athletic season and for me, I would just say thank you. Thank you for supporting us all year. Thank you for welcoming me and my family and thank you for your unwavering support of WVU. We can't wait to see you this fall and celebrate a lot more wins and more good times together.
Here are ten questions for Wren:
WVUsports.com: The spring sports season is wrapping up with golf competing in the NCAA championships and baseball vying for another NCAA tournament berth, concluding what must be considered one of WVU's strongest overall seasons in years. Can you speak to the overall success of the department this season?
Wren Baker: I think we've had a great year overall, and we're really proud of some of our sports who had their best seasons ever or their best seasons in a long time. We've been intentional about trying to make strategic investments that will allow us to compete, and it's good to see those pay off and a huge credit goes to our student-athletes and our coaches.
I know our coaches very much take to heart that they don't just represent their team or the department and University, but more importantly the entire state so it's really cool to see the success they've had this year.
WVUsports.com: Football continues to enjoy offseason momentum following the Duke's Mayo Bowl victory, an outstanding turnout for the Gold-Blue Game and strong season ticket sales leading into the season opener against Penn State. What excites you most about the upcoming season?
Wren Baker: I think seeing the momentum continue. We'll see where we end up, but the trend lines in terms of our ticket sales from a season perspective are very, very good. That's so important as we look at trying to get our budget in a more competitive place, especially with what's on the horizon in terms of expenses and revenue sharing-type stuff with the court case settlements. It was amazing as we got out this spring at the Caravans just to see the energy. It's been a wild couple of years for our fan base, but they are so passionate, invested and committed and I can't wait for that first game. It's going to be a big-time atmosphere.
WVUsports.com: The Mountaineer Athletic Club Caravan has ended; overall, what was your message to the fans you met at the various stops?
Wren Baker: It's amazing the support we've had through some choppy waters. I would specifically mention the Baylor men's basketball game late in the year with the bad weather, and we had not been playing well and weren't having a great season, and yet we had a packed house just speaks to how important the teams are to the fans here. Our fans follow the national news, so they know that there is instability right now in college sports and the model that we've done in terms of how we spend money and how we make money. I have shared with them that there are some challenging times ahead, and it would be naive not to recognize that. They can participate in this by buying tickets, supporting the MAC and supporting the Country Roads Trust and ultimately, we're going to find a way to charter those choppy waters together because our programs are too important to the state for us not to be successful.
When I look to hire coaches, this passion is something I explain to them. You want coaches who are going to treat people the right way and coach student-athletes the way you want your own kids to be coached. You want good tacticians and good recruiters, but something that is probably unique here, you need someone who can embrace being the face of this state. I tell people, the hardest thing for coaches, athletic administrators and student-athletes is they work so hard and when you are someplace where you feel people don't care that gets exhausting at times. You will never wake up one day here wondering if people care. People definitely care. For many of our coaches, they are not going to walk anywhere in this state and be anonymous. It's just not going to happen. That is something that is a great privilege and it's also a big responsibility. It's something that needs to be understood and to be honest, I maybe overemphasize during the interview process, but I think it's really, really critical that anybody who comes here understands that because it's part of the job.
When I was at North Texas, a big university with 43,000 students, you are in (Dallas-Fort Worth) and in six years there, maybe five times when I was away from campus, somebody stopped me and wanted to talk about North Texas athletics. Here, I have never gone into a public place without somebody either saying 'Let's go Mountaineers' or 'thanks for being here.' Somebody is going to acknowledge you in some way, and that's part of the responsibility of having a leadership position at WVU.
WVUsports.com: The MAC tour included a couple of non-traditional stops in Manassas, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina. How was the response at those two locations, what are your thoughts moving forward on the MAC's outreach in areas beyond the state and what more can be done to increase participation?
Wren Baker: I think it's important for a ton of reasons. WVU has cranked out a lot of graduates for a lot of years, and yet our state's population has declined to 1.8 million or whatever it is currently. That tells you that a lot of our graduates come from out of state and a lot of them are moving out of state. When you go to Charlotte and there were well over a hundred people at that caravan, and you ask them where they are from, and they were all from West Virginia. I didn't meet any that were actually from Charlotte.
On a side note, we've got to do a better job of creating opportunities inside this state that keeps our graduates here because that's important for the overall health and welfare of the state and our future prosperity. But my point is, there are a lot of people who are doing very well who care about our teams and our programs that are living in Washington, D.C., Charlotte and other places, too. We haven't determined if we are always going to go to those two or are we going to rotate two with a couple of others. I was in Cincinnati earlier this year at an alumni event just to try and connect. I think it's important for our athletic department that we get to those areas because we need to grow our support and make sure people stay connected with their alma mater and this department because they care about what's happening.
It's also important for our institution as we navigate our enrollment challenges, and we need to find ways to grow enrollment. A better presence and a better brand with some of your best ambassadors – people who love this place and went to school here – are living in metropolitan areas where there is a wealth of potential students, it's probably a great strategy overall for the University just as much as it is for the athletic department.
WVUsports.com: You've now had some more time with new men's basketball coach Darian DeVries while traveling the state for various events. What are you learning about him that you didn't know during the interview process, and what has impressed you most about how he's building Mountaineer basketball thus far?
Wren Baker: I'm impressed with his authenticity, and everybody who has had a chance to talk to him sees this. He has charisma, but he's not 'salesy' at all. There is just a real, direct, frank, candidness to him instead of a straight sales pitch. He has an incredible work ethic, and he constantly thinks outside the box trying to find ways to look at things a little differently. The other thing is I've been impressed with is his schedule since he's gotten here has just been incredible, but I saw him at just about every weekend home baseball series so he's trying to invest in our community and our other teams. He's developing great relationships with our other coaches.
Even though the week on the Caravan wears you down because it's six different places in eight days, we had a blast spending that week together. It was a lot of different coaches learning from each other and building camaraderie with each other, and I think he's doing a great job of fitting in. I said from the start, you don't have to be from West Virginia to adapt to being a West Virginian, and Randy Mazey is a great example of that. If you didn't know he wasn't from here you'd think he's always been here, and I think coach DeVries very quickly will do that as well.
As far as putting together his team, he hasn't gotten in a rush, and he hasn't taken kids that he hasn't felt good about their character, and if you go back to his press conference, he said all those things. Listen, there are some financial constraints because some of these kids are looking for big NIL money and some of this is you are looking for kids who are committed to the program who want to be a part of something special and will be committed to each other. He has taken his time and done a really good job of evaluating, not just talent, but character as well.
WVUsports.com: The Country Roads Trust is having its Million Dollar May Campaign with a little more than a week remaining. What can you tell Mountaineer fans about the continued support of the Trust?
Wren Baker: I can't emphasize enough how critical the Trust is. It is as important as anything that we're doing. We're a little bit limited in what we're able to do directly, but indirectly, a lot of those restrictions have been lifted. We can go out there and push the Trust, we can encourage and advocate for people to support it and we need our fans to support it. Eventually, and I think in the not-too-distant future, NIL will probably come in-house for the most part so whatever you're doing to establish the Trust will probably all come back to us, and we'll dovetail it all together. I know that will be helpful for a lot of people, but in the meantime, we desperately need people to support NIL opportunities and the best way to do that at WVU is through Country Roads Trust.
We are very lucky to have Stephen (Ford) and his team, and particularly Oliver (Luck) and Ken (Kendrick) who made the decision to form the Trust and do what they can to support our athletic programs. We need to grow our resources in all areas, including NIL opportunities to the very best of our abilities. It's kind of like I tell my girls sometimes, in life, you don't get to run somebody else's race. You run your race and if you are worrying about someone else's race and what their path looks like and what obstacles they have, then you're not focused on your own race. For us, we just have to remain laser-focused on building as much in our resource allocations as we can and consistently reinforcing that to everybody out there. If we do that, then I think we'll be happy with the results.
WVUsports.com: What can you report to Mountaineer fans about the recently completed Big 12 meetings?
Wren Baker: We had lots of discussions about the future of college athletics. There is a lot of instability right now, and it appears we are heading toward a settlement of the three court cases that could end up being four. That would take care of the back damages on the NIL issues and then have a go-forward opportunity to share revenues with student-athletes in exchange for some of their NIL rights. When you are in a situation like WVU, you look at our brand value, it's top 30 in the country when you look at viewership, when you look at licensing and all the different brand valuations all third parties do. If you look at our performance right now in the Directors' Cup standings, I believe we're 35th. Then, if you look at our budget, we're 61st and there are less than 70 power conference teams now, so we've got to find a way to grow that.
We don't have to have a top-20 budget, but we've got to find a way to move from 61 to 40 because I think if we can do that, we can move from top 30 to top 20, and the implications would be significant for our department. There is instability right now and there's concern, and that was discussed a lot at the Big 12 meetings, but this settlement does provide an opportunity to start to get clarity on where we're going. I've said this for the last couple of years, the most frustrating thing is we know we have to go from point A to point B, and we know the road map to get there is going to be tough – there are going to be mountains that we've got to climb in the middle of blizzards, and there are going to be valleys that are flooded, and it's not going to be an easy path to get there. Right now, no one can tell us where point B is so you can't even start to build a road map no matter how challenging it is because you don't know where you're going. I think the settlement now provides some clarity on where point B is likely to be – doesn't identify it exactly – but at least what neighborhood and what state it's in. We spent the better part of our time talking about this and we've got some more meetings next week in Dallas. There are a bevy of issues for us to figure out, but we will. As I said on the Caravan, we're going to improvise, adapt and overcome because this means too much to West Virginians and to the health of this state. The alternative is to die, and that's not something that we're prepared to do in terms of our athletic programs, so we're going to figure out how to get through this together.
WVUsports.com: The House vs. NCAA case seems to be nearing its conclusion. In lay terms, what are its most significant implications and what does Mountaineer Nation need to know about it?
Wren Baker: The NCAA, historically, has had a lot of rules to level competition and try and have competitive equity. Pro sports do the same. They have salary caps, and there are penalties for exceeding those salary caps. They have rules about when you can contact people and when you can't. They can deny you the opportunity to interview a coach on your staff, even if it's an assistant coach. The reason that they can do that is because they have sat in a room with the players association and collectively bargained those things.
The NCAA has set rules that are similar, in place, but they have not allowed the student-athletes to have representation. For years, those rules went unchallenged because the money was not what it is today. Now, because of the explosion of revenue that's come into the system and how that revenue is being spent, and more particularly where it's not being spent, to the student-athletes who are directly responsible for bringing the revenue in, those rules have been challenged. You can't arbitrarily set caps on what individual players can do without some sort of collective bargaining agreement. The problem is, there are a lot of us in athletic administration and a lot of presidents as well that would have collectively bargained several years ago, but you can't collectively bargain because there was no process to do this with someone who was not an employee.
I think there is still hope, maybe even post-settlement, that there is a significant revenue share and the players are getting a lot of the rights that we've been criticized so hard for that now they would allow an antitrust exemption with the privilege for the student-athlete to be able to come to the bargaining table and bargain things so that they have a voice and representation. At a higher level, we are where we are because we've set rules, whether that's on scholarship limits, NIL compensation or transfer restrictions to equalize the playing field, and we had no legal standing to do that.
People will say, "Why did you settle?" We were going to lose. That's the heart of it. Will it cause us to have less money to invest in some of our other sports and will it cause us to potentially take a step away from some traditional values that college athletics have had? Perhaps. But the courts have said time and again we do not have the right to put these restrictions in place. You have no antitrust exemption, and these restrictions are illegal without having collectively bargained them with student-athletes.
At some point, we must realize that we can continue to do what we're doing. Not everybody loves this, and I get it. I'm the father of two daughters, and I hope we can all find a way to share this revenue and not hurt opportunities for female athletes, but we are going to be challenged to think differently because we've been taking revenue-sport money, which is primarily football, and we've been funding an entire athletic department with it. To revenue share, decisions must be made moving forward, and I don't know what that looks like. I know that we're committed to trying to provide the best experience we can to our student-athletes to have an opportunity to represent our institution in a meaningful way.
We love success. Our golf team just had one of its best seasons ever. I saw how proud people were – people that have never watched one of our golfers play. It means something to people in West Virginia. We want to be committed to be competitive, but we know we're going to be challenged for how we can do that with where we're headed. However, I'm confident that we can figure it out. I think the next six-to-12 months will tell us a lot. The revenue share is estimated to be around $20 million, give or take because it's a percentage.
How many schools open up at $20 million? That seems like a big hill to climb right now at WVU, but if the rest of the Big 12 finds a way to get there, then you've got to find a way to get there. There is going to be a lot of real-time assessing the market, the competition and what people are doing, and we know that two leagues, through their TV contracts coming up and through their negotiations with the College Football Playoff revenue, are going to be better positioned to absorb these costs than the others. But even in those leagues, there is a lot of worry and concern, especially those teams in the bottom third of those leagues in terms of resources. In the Big 12, there is a pinch because we've seen some dissolution through conference expansion, so our distribution is down, and that expense line is about to take a sharp increase.
WVUsports.com: With the Big 10 and SEC payouts continuing to rise, financially, what continues to concern you for WVU to remain competitive nationally in this regard?
Wren Baker: We had a really good football year last year, and I think we will have another really good one. We were able to do very well at retaining our football student-athletes – the best it's been in a while. We've also brought in some new guys, and I don't know the exact numbers distributed to our football players, and there are schools that probably tripled or quadrupled what we did. There has always been a difference in terms of resources, and that's not something that's new. We don't have to be in the top 10; that's just not a realistic goal considering the state we're in, our population, the amount of industry here and so forth. What we need to be striving toward is being in the top half of the power conference programs, and if we are, we've shown time and again that the characteristics of West Virginians, with our hard-working, blue-collar, chip-on-our-shoulders mentality, resonate with our teams, and they are prepared to out-punch their weight class. We are prepared to continue to punch above our weight class. What we'd like to do is not punch above three or four weight classes. We're sitting right now at right around a $100 million budget, and there are probably now 15 schools that are twice that. In anything in life … politics, religion, race cars where there is a winner and a loser, if you give somebody twice of what you have, it's really, really hard. We need people's support and help, but we also have to do our part, too.
I have a responsibility to grow our budget. Our budget the last five years has remained relatively static and flat. You almost never see that in college athletics. One of the reasons that we've been stymied here is we do not have enough premium seating at football and basketball and that's a big part of this puzzle piece, and it's something people are going to hear more and more about in the fall as we get into the later stages of our facility assessments. If we can build this building, we can change our financial paradigm because we can net millions of dollars over the costs, and I think that's a really important piece.
I was recently preparing a presentation for our Board of Governors, and our debt service relative to other Big 12 schools is pretty high and yet our budget is in the bottom grouping. We had to invest in a basketball practice facility and a football facility and some other facilities that don't generate revenue. It was the right thing to do because we were behind as a result of not having as many years in a power conference as other people have, but somewhere along the way, we probably should have said, 'Hey we really need to invest in a facility that can create more suites, clubs and premium areas.' We are now in a place where we can't continue to kick that can down the road. We have to invest to change our financial outlook.
WVUsports.com: Finally, what's your message to Mountaineer Fans for the holiday weekend?
Wren Baker: I hope everybody has a great time and stays safe. Watch out on the highways to make sure you are taking care of yourself and our fellow West Virginians. Memorial Day is always toward the end of our athletic season and for me, I would just say thank you. Thank you for supporting us all year. Thank you for welcoming me and my family and thank you for your unwavering support of WVU. We can't wait to see you this fall and celebrate a lot more wins and more good times together.
Mark Kellogg,Jordan Harrison & Meme Wheeler | Baylor
Sunday, February 01
Ross Hodge | Baylor Postgame
Sunday, February 01
Treysen Eaglestaff & Brenen Lorient | Baylor Postgame
Sunday, February 01
SWIM: Senior Day Recap
Saturday, January 31
