NCAA Board satisfied with Emmert on inequity issue

The chairman of the NCAA’s Board of Governors gave President Mark Emmert a vote of confidence Saturday, saying the association’s top governing body was satisfied with how he has addressed inequities in the college basketball tournaments and with his leadership through a tumultuous 10 days.

Georgetown University President Jack DeGioia told The Associated Press the board met Friday, along with the Division I Board of Directors, to hear from Emmert and discuss issues that have in some ways overshadowed the women’s games in San Antonio and men’s tourney in Indianapolis.

“I think there’s a clear understanding that the NCAA fell short in San Antonio, but a recognition that the response has been commensurate with the challenge,” DeGioia said. “And now we’ve got important work in front of us that we will need to engage.”

DeGioia said Emmert made the decision earlier this week to hire a law firm to review potential gender equity issues related to how the NCAA conducts all its men’s and women’s championship events. The board approved Emmert’s recommendation to retain Heckler Kaplan, DeGioia said.

“I think it would be fair to say that Mark took this very, very seriously and all of my conversations with him — we have had several over the last 10 days — at no point did I ever have the sense that he wasn’t engaging this with the greatest seriousness possible,” DeGioia said. “And I think the evidence of that was his move to bring in the Kaplan firm.”

The NCAA and Emmert have faced a torrent of criticism over the last two weeks over failing to provide equal amenities to the teams in the Division I tournaments.

Emmert told the AP on Friday that a lack of communication between staffs working on each event and a focus on COVID-19 protocols led to oversights and inequities. Further scrutiny on the way the NCAA runs the two tournaments has revealed vast differences in budgets and the way the events are branded and promoted.