Rider coach Baggett backs Fair Pay to Play legislation
LAWRENCEVILLE >> Rider head coach Kevin Baggett can remember a time when the NCAA was making money off his image and likeness when he was a player at Saint Joseph’s in the mid-80s.
The Broncs’ eighth-year head coach backed the Fair Pay to Play Act recently signed into law in California.
“I do think these kids should make money on their own,” Baggett said after his team wrapped up practice on Tuesday. “They are using their name, the NCAA has made money on all of us, including myself when I was playing.”
The Fair Pay to Play Act is set to go into effect on July 1, 2023, but it’s going to shake up the college landscape regardless. Several other states have begun the process of passing similar legislation and the fight is only getting started with the notoriously stingy and slow-to-change NCAA.
“As a membership organization, the NCAA agrees changes are needed to continue to support student-athletes, but improvement needs to happen on a national level through the NCAA’s rules-making process,” the NCAA said in a statement shortly after California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the legislation. “Unfortunately, this new law already is creating confusion for current and future student-athletes, coaches, administrators and campuses, and not just in California.
“We will consider next steps in California while our members move forward with ongoing efforts to make adjustments to NCAA name, image and likeness rules that are both realistic in modern society and tied to higher education.”
The Fair Pay to Play legislation doesn’t completely address the complexities of the issue. The number of student-athletes who can actually benefit from their image and likeness is still the top one percent of thousands of Division I student-athletes.
“It’s the rich get richer,” Baggett said. “The high levels is where the guys are going to use their names for those things.”
That may increase the already large chasm that exists between mid and high majors.
“I would like to see it across the board,” Baggett said. “I’d need to see it monitored and everybody benefit from it and not just the high levels like they normally do.”
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Baggett has set a goal to rank in the top three defensively in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
The Broncs gave up 75.3 points per game (73.3 in league games), which ranked 10th out off 11 schools.
“We want to be able to help each other,” senior center Tyere Marshall said. “We wall might not be the best defenders, but we all got each others’ back. We got that trust in each other, that will bring our defense to another level.”
Added Baggett: “We were consistently inconsistent with everything we did. Our guys understand that for us to have the success we want to have we have to be consistent on the defensive end.”
Baggett said he’s unlikely to utilize full-court pressure as much as he did last season. Some of that, though, was dictated by the the team’s penchant for slow starts and needing to rally in the second half of games.
“I’d like to press a little less, but we’re still going to do it because that will give us a chance to get up and down,” he said. “It will go hand-in-hand with our transition offense.”
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While Rider led the MAAC in points per game last season (76.8), it ranked sixth in 3-point percentage (34.1), so the rule change to move the 3-point line back to 22’1¾” — the international distance — may have some impact on the team.
“There were a lot of guys who couldn’t shoot it with the line we had last year,” Baggett said. “Now, you’re going to put it back even further, so I see what they’re doing. There are so many game rule changes that it would be nice for a year if there weren’t many at all if any. But we got to evolve with the rules and we got to get better at it.”
Meanwhile, another rule change is that shot clocks will reset to 20 seconds after an offensive rebound instead of the usual 30.
The one change Baggett wants to see is restoring the five second closely guarded rule.
“It promotes defense,” he said. “All they’re doing right now is promoting offense. I got to adjust. Sometimes change isn’t always great for a head coach, but we’re getting there.”
Coaches also can call live timeouts in the final two minutes of regulation and overtime.
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Senior point guard Stevie Jordan is dealing with knee tendinitis that caused him to sit out practice on Tuesday.
Baggett said Jordan dealt with the issue last season as well, and the team is being proactive by allowing him to rest before the season starts on Nov. 5 at Coppin State.
“We’d rather shut him down now and make sure he’s OK,” Baggett said. “We play in 19 days, so we want to make sure he’s healthy.”
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Rider will play an inter-squad scrimmage on Saturday.
“We want to get used to the shot clock resetting to 20 on an offensive rebound, free throw shooting in a game-type situation,” Baggett said. “The more experience you can get doing that will have us better prepared for November 5th.”
The Broncs have a ‘secret’ scrimmage scheduled against Morgan State of the MEAC (Rider’s first two opponents are MEAC schools Coppin State and Delaware State) and an exhibition at Alumni Gymnasium on Nov. 2 against Division II Slippery Rock.
“We want to play somebody else,” Marshall said. “That’s why we compete every day, so we can feel like ‘we ain’t friends.’ We compete every day to try and get each other better.