Ohio State Football: NCAA might allow players to get paid directly

The Ohio State football program is focused on two things right now: preparing for the Cotton Bowl against Missouri and figuring out the transfer portal. Ryan Day and his staff aren’t concerned with other things right now. However, a piece of news has dropped today that concerns them.

NCAA President Charlie Baker released a letter detailing a number of things that could mean some big changes for the NCAA. Among those changes are the possibility of schools paying players directly instead of using NIL collectives to do so. That’s not the most interesting thing to me though.

The most interesting thing is the possibility of college football splitting into two different divisions. Baker outlined a scenario in which programs contribute to a fund that would help pay players and put them into a different competing division than the smaller schools.

As far as the Ohio State football team is concerned, the Buckeyes would obviously be in the higher division. It’s unclear how that would all work, but Baker is clearly trying to do stuff differently than his predecessor Mark Emmert. He wants the NCAA to be more flexible.

Perhaps the threat of the big football powers separating from the NCAA completely is what has driven this change. Who knows? I do think it’s good that the NCAA is finally open to new ideas and things changing as opposed to them being stuck in their ways.

This also gives me hope that they might be better at investigating wrongdoing and doling out proper punishments for breaking the rules. Perhaps they actually get the Michigan stuff right and hammer them like they deserve to be hammered. That remains to be seen though.

As more information trickles out about what Bakers wants to do, we will keep you posted. I think it’s a fairly significant departure from how the NCAA used to think.