David J. Phillip/Associated Press

NCAA president Mark Emmert believes paying men's basketball and football players would result in schools eliminating other sports.

"If you were going to move into a model where you are just paying football and basketball athletes...the way athletic departments are going to do that is they're going to eliminate other sports," Emmert told NCAA.com's Andy Katz.

In a March 2 interview with Ralph D. Russo of the Associated Press (h/t the Chicago Tribune), Emmert said the NCAA expects to make some changes to clean up some of the issues in college sports:

"Yes we've got these very serious issues which require serious change and they erode people's belief in the integrity of all college sports. That's a very serious problem and that's got to be addressed and we're doing that right now and I'm really optimistic that before basketball season next year we're going to have really meaningful change that makes this circumstance, if not completely go away, dramatically better than the problems that exist today."

Emmert was speaking in the wake of the federal investigation that includes detailed documents and bank records listing cash payouts and travel expenses to top recruits connected to more than 20 Division I basketball programs, per Yahoo Sports' Pat Forde and Pete Thamel.

Emmert, the NCAA Board of Governors and Division I Board of Directors established a Commission on College Basketball last October to examine the way the organization operates after the investigation became public.