'How is this guy still employed?': NCAA's Emmert a survivor

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A dry erase board stuck to the wall behind the door to Mark Emmert's office at NCAA headquarters has three columns drawn on it. At the top of the list on the left, “Academic Success” is handwritten in green marker. The middle column is for “Health & Well Being.” On the right is “Fairness.”

Jotted down under each header are policy goals and initiatives the NCAA has worked to achieve during Emmert’s 11-year tenure leading the nation's largest governing body for college sports.

The ones written in red marker have something to show for them. The ones written in orange are works in progress. The board is mostly covered in red.

Ask Emmert about the NCAA's accomplishments under his watch and he will point to that wall.

“I’m incredibly proud of my work record,” he said during a recent 45-minute interview with The Associated Press.

Many are not so impressed.

While leading the NCAA through a period of unprecedented change, Emmert has faced relentless criticism. For those outside college sports skeptically peering in, he has become the easiest of targets, the face of an unpopular and seemingly ineffective bureaucracy.

“Don’t you think it is time to call your leadership of the organization into question?” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Emmert during a June hearing in Washington.

Others within college sports have been asking the same question, especially in 2021. The NCAA has been hammered over gender-equity issues at its showcase basketball tournaments, saw its authority undercut by a stinging antitrust ruling from the Supreme Court and was forced into a hands off solution allowing name, image and likeness compensation for college athletes.

“How is this guy still employed?" a high-ranking college sports administrator said in a text message to AP...