Tagging along on the listening tour of new NCAA president Charlie Baker: ‘This is the right place for me’

Would he prefer another presidential title (like President of the United States)?

“My future, as far as I’m concerned, for now, is the NCAA,” says the former Massachusetts governor. “There were a lot of things I could have done if I wanted to stay in politics.

“What I was really excited about was college sports, which I played [at Harvard]. Two of my kids did, my wife did. We have zillions of friends who did. I think this is the right place for me.”

Travels with Charlie is definitely a “listening tour.” He says that is the secret to his success.

“I tried pretty hard to be a better listener than a talker,” he says. “I mean, I was always brought up that your receiver is more important than your transmitter.”

Everyone wants a word with him, and Baker politely obliges. Later, during a tour of the USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium with local dignitaries, his wife, Lauren, a former Northwestern gymnast and cheerleader, has to give him a gentle tap to keep things moving.

Baker is proud of his first 100 days in office. He has pledged to meet, either virtually or physically, with representatives of all 97 NCAA conferences.

“I may not have really appreciated just how hard that was going to be,” he says, “but I’ve met with [77] of the 97 in my first hundred days, and I’ll get to all 97 in my first 120 days.”

The night before, while attending a WCWS doubleheader, he was approached by a group of mothers who spied his NCAA lanyard.

They wanted to know how long he has been president.

“I said March,” says Baker with a smile. “And they said, ‘March? That was just like yesterday. What qualifies you to be the president of the NCAA?’ And I said, ‘That’s actually a really good question, because I just finished being governor of Massachusetts for eight years,’ and they were like, ‘Governor of Massachusetts? What does that have to do with the NCAA?’ ”

Baker, a Republican, has already spent 12 days in Washington in his new post. His top priority is to get Name-Image-Likeness regulations passed by Congress.

“There needs to be a federal solution to this or the NCAA needs to put a solution in place with its membership and its conferences,” he says. “Because the way it works now isn’t fair to anybody. It really isn’t.”

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in June 2021 that the NCAA could not prohibit student-athletes from making money off their own name and likeness.

That created a chaotic Wild West situation, with states passing their own laws.

Baker calls the NIL situation “a mess.” He wants certification of agents, uniform contracts, and a registry of deals.

“You can’t have 50 states doing 50 different things in this mad race to the bottom,” he says. “I’ve also had reporters who cover college sports tell me they don’t write stories about NIL because they can’t believe anything anybody says to them. I mean, that’s how opaque and almost mythological this whole thing has become.”

He says the NCAA transfer portal sounds like “a bad sci-fi movie.”

“Almost half of the kids who go into the transfer portal — which everybody says is overused — don’t land anywhere,” he says, “because they’re getting pulled in on rumor and hearsay and misinformation and there really isn’t a place for them to land on the other side.”

Does he think he has inherited a League of Nations of sorts with the NCAA?

“Look, it’s 1,100 members, right? It has 180 committees, and those 180 committees have 1,800 members,” he says. “But I think it’s a mistake to just say it’s too complicated. I think you have to acknowledge that it’s complicated and then figure out a way to actually engage people.”

Why didn’t the NCAA just institute revenue sharing among its members?

“Well, keep in mind that of the 1,100 schools that exist, probably 95 percent-plus of them lose money on athletics,” Baker says. “I mean, they invest in athletics. They don’t make money. Football doesn’t make money everywhere; football only makes money in a few places.

“Football does not make money in most of Division 1. It’s an investment that schools make in their students. And when people paint this broad brush across all of college sports that looks like New Year’s Day, it’s not fair and it’s not accurate.”

Baker says the Listening Tour has left him convinced he can make a difference.

“I learned a ton,” he says. “There are a lot of issues out there that don’t get much attention in college sports that I picked up as a result of this, some of which I think we have the ability to do some work on.”

One of them is aging game officials, many of whom are in their 50s and 60s — and the pipeline is drying up.

“There aren’t a lot of people in their 20s anymore going into officiating,” says Baker.

Sports betting is another issue. When the NCAA basketball tournaments ended, Baker commissioned a survey of students ages 18-22. Fifty-eight percent said they gamble.

“Many of them are betting on the games on their own campus,” Baker says. “So that’s all troubling, right? There are a lot of kids already who are dealing with really rugged stuff — if they miss a shot, if they don’t make a save, if they blow a coverage.”

The pressure on them is incredible, he says. Some athletes have shown him the dregs of social media on their phones.

”It’s brutal,” says Baker. “And to me, we have to help them figure out a way to manage some of that for themselves.”

The Swampscott, Mass., native has faced criticism for not moving to Indianapolis, where NCAA headquarters is located.

Baker has an apartment in Indianapolis that is a 15-minute walk from his office. He likes strolling along the Canal Walk, which has swan boats, but not like the ones in Boston’s Public Garden. He says he spends two or three days a week in Indianapolis and also travels around the country about the same amount of time.

When he gets home to the Bay State, he gets to do something he couldn’t do as governor. He loves to toddle around the North Shore in his restored 1966 Mustang, with Springsteen and AC/DC pulsating from the speakers. He bought the car for $300 when he worked at the Oxford Ale House in Cambridge as a bartender in 1980.

Baker, 66, says his new job is not a money grab (his predecessor, Mark Emmert, earned $2.9 million).

“I’ve never taken a job because of the money, ever, and I never would,” he says. “I’ve always been a sports fan, and so for me, the ability to watch kids play and talk to student-athletes is by far the most interesting part of the job right now.”

Baker takes a tour of the renovated USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium, which in 2020 added several thousand new seats, updated suites, concession stands, and press boxes. He calls it a “Field of Dreams.”

He then settles in to watch Oklahoma rout Tennessee, 9-0, in a mercy rule-shortened five-inning contest.

Division 1 women’s softball is skyrocketing. Since 1980, the number of programs has more than doubled from 143 to 293. Baker says the NCAA has instituted a checklist, or scoreboard, to make sure there is gender equality.

During the game, he notices little things, such as how the entire teams come out for warm-ups.

“The women’s teams in particular are incredibly positive,” he says. “Win or lose, they’re always supporting each other, cheering each other, and you can just see how much they love what they’re doing. I think that’s really special.”

Baker graciously poses for pictures with fans, but he knows he’s not a big-time celebrity. He recalls sitting next to Tom Brady when they were shaving their heads to help fight cancer years ago.

“It was like being invisible,” he says.

Is this new job more fun than being governor of Massachusetts?

“I would say I’m pretty sure it will be more fun a year from now than it is now,” he says. “Why don’t we leave it at that? I want to do this job, and I want to do it well. Membership depending, I’m going to be here for a while.”

Stan Grossfeld can be reached at stanley.grossfeld@globe.com.