NCAA President Charlie Baker was credited with a little more than $3.4 million in total compensation for his first 10 months on the job in 2023, the association’s new federal tax records show.
The documents, which the NCAA provided Friday, June 27, also show that former president Mark Emmert received slightly more than $1.4 million in base salary and more than $600,000 in other benefits during his final months with the association. Emmert also received nearly $4.3 million in severance during the 2023 calendar year, an amount that was disclosed on the tax records that the NCAA filed last year.
Emmert base compensation for his last full calendar year as the NCAA’s president was nearly $2.85 million.
Under IRS rules, while non-profit organizations — including the NCAA and college athletics conferences — make most financial disclosures on a fiscal-year basis, they are required to report employee compensation figures on a calendar-year basis. They must use the calendar year completed during the given fiscal year. For the NCAA, the fiscal year covered by the new return ended Aug. 31, 2024, so the 2023 calendar year is used for compensation reporting.
Other information revealed by the new return included:
The association had nearly $62.2 million in outside legal expenses during its 2024 fiscal year, not including legal-cost recoveries from insurance. The expense total was comparable to the one for its 2023 fiscal year, for which the NCAA reported $61.5 million in such expenses.
Going back to fiscal 2014, when the Alston antitrust case began, the NCAA has reported $495 million in outside legal expenses and more than $128 million in legal-cost recoveries from insurance.
As of Aug. 31, 2024, the association had nearly $803 million in endowment funds, nearly all of which was in a ‘board designated or quasi-endowment.’ That represents an increase of more than $237 million in the value of those funds since the same date in 2023 and a $345 million increase (75%) since 2022. A quasi-endowment involves money that is intended to be retained and invested, but unlike a permanent endowment, its principal can be spent.
The new total gives some insight into the NCAA’s plans and capacity for paying for the central office’s share of a proposed $2.8 billion damages fund that is part of the settlement of three athlete-compensation antitrust cases and is set to be paid out over 10 years.
