Ol’ Sir Charles Barkley is back at it again.
NCAA president Charlie Baker recently sat down for an interview with CBS’ March Madness analysts, and said that he intends to get politicians involved with NIL to get it more regulated.
Baker said:
“I think the other thing I would speak to specifically, is try to create what I’d call consumer protections for families and student athletes around name, image, and likeness (NIL) which one of the ADs referred to as ‘the only thing that’s true about it at this point is everybody lies.’
So I would love to create some transparency and accountability around that, so the families actually know what they’re getting into, and I would really like to see some sort of uniform standard contract so that somebody signs it, they know they’re signing the same kind of agreement that everybody else is signing.”
He was then asked about how he plans to accomplish this going forward, and that’s when he responded:
“We’re gonna talk to some folks in Washington about this, and there’s a fair amount of appetite to try to deal with this. They’ve been hearing from a lot of the same people I’ve been hearing from.
But I think it’s incumbent on the NCAA to also develop a program that we believe we could implement if the feds can’t actually put something together on their own.”
Needless to say, Charles Barkley wasn’t a fan of the whole “talk to some folks in Washington” statement from Baker.
He responded to the comments, saying:
“Our politicians are awful people… I would actually go to people who care about basketball, I would put a committee together but some coaches, put some players and let’s try to work this thing out.
We can’t ask these politicians nothing, those are awful people, democrats and republicans, they’re all crooks.”
Sir Charles wasn’t messing around. At the end of the day, you have to respect Barkley for his willingness to speak his mind about a topic that can significantly impact a college athlete’s future, for better or for worse.
And this isn’t the first time Barkley has called out politics during one of his TV segments. Back in February, he called out congress for making a big deal about “classified documents” involving President Biden, Trump, and former Vice President Mike Pence:
“You sound like these fools in Washington DC. Worried about papers at Trump’s house, Biden’s house, or Pence’s house, like they’re about to sell them to the Russians or something.
Man, shut the hell up. Shut the hell up.
President Biden and Vice President Pence, and crazy Trump are not gonna sell nuclear secrets to somebody, stop wasting our time Congress.”
