Donald Trump predicted the destruction not just of college sports but the entire US collegiate system unless the industry is fixed quickly – something some sports leaders who joined him Friday at a White House summit agreed could only happen by raising more money to pay players.
Trump suggested he would write an “all-encompassing” executive order within a week in hopes it would spark action from Congress. He said he expected the order to trigger a lawsuit that could put the issue back in front of the court system that approved industry-changing payments to players for their name, image and likeness.
That new system has left many schools drowning in red ink, while rules governing their payments to players are only slowly taking hold.
“The whole educational system is going to go out of business because of this,” Trump explained, when asked why he was devoting time to college sports with the war in Iran and other issues dominating the headlines.
During the meeting in the East Room – which included lawmakers, conference commissioners, the president of the NCAA and CEO of the US Olympic team but none of the NCAA’s 550,000 college athletes – Trump said, “I thought the system of scholarships was great.” He was harkening to the recently ended era in which players received little to nothing beyond financial aid.
He said the “horrible” court settlement that led to the current system – a settlement that virtually everyone in the room agreed to – “threw the sports world and the college athletic world into ‘tithers’”.
Everyone at the meeting agreed that the industry needs to be saved from the spiraling costs associated with the onset of NIL payments.
They also mostly agreed that a bill called the Score Act that would provide the NCAA with a limited antitrust exemption (opposed by many Democrats) and would preempt state laws regarding NIL could be the base of any change. House speaker Mike Johnson suggested the bill, which has struggled to get through the lower chamber, could now have enough support to pass.
An essay published earlier this week by the University of Louisville’s president and athletic director went through an unflinching list of the way payments to players have recalibrated college sports and sent much of the industry spiraling into the red. It said Louisville’s athletic department is running a $12.5m deficit and is hardly alone.
How to generate more revenue – and the wide differences that exist over how to fund the growth – received less attention at the White House meeting full of big-picture speeches about the perils facing college sports.
Shortly after the meeting, Senators Eric Schmitt, R-Mo, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash, re-upped an idea that has been popular over the past several months. They plan to introduce a bill next week that would give conferences the option of pooling their media rights – a practice forbidden by the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act.
“The revenue side is inextricably linked to the success of this,” Schmitt said. “I do think we can come together.”
Another key backer of that idea, Texas Tech regent Cody Campbell, was at the meeting and told Trump he would like to be part of a smaller working group that helps him draft his executive order.
Campbell has suggested pooling TV rights could raise another $6bn, which could keep football, basketball and Olympic-sports programs solvent for decades. The Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten disagree with that conclusion.
Speaking to Trump, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey urged the Senate to act, but he wasn’t focused on the broadcasting piece.
“This is not about revenue, this is about structures and national standards,” he said before listing a number of issues the Score Act, as currently written, would address.
Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose committee is key to getting a bill passed in the upper chamber, said lawmakers need to look at both the cost and revenues side in formulating a law.
“If we wait another year, wait another two years, the programs in your state are going away and the students in your state are losing their scholarships,” Cruz said. “It would be an absolute travesty if we let that happen.”
Trump repeatedly dogged US district judge Claudia Wilken – whom he called a “radical left judge” – for approving the so-called House settlement that put this system into play.
He seemed surprised that Wilken’s decision – which was signed off on by the NCAA, the major conferences and the athletes themselves after a years-long legal process – had not been appealed.
He was also taken aback when told the Supreme Court in 2021, by a 9-0 ruling in a case called NCAA v Alston, had set things in motion to create the system now seen by many as in peril.
“So, the Supreme Court was responsible for this? Gee, that’s surprising,” Trump said.
But the president was crystal clear about the stakes involved in saving college sports.
He acknowledged that potentially the biggest losers in all this could be Olympic and women’s sports, whose budgets in college athletic departments are funded via revenue generated by football and basketball programs across the country.
US Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland told Trump the US team has topped the medals table at eight of the last 10 Summer Olympics, largely on the strength of athletes developed in the college system.
“The economic pressures are unsustainable,” she said. “We’ve heard this several times and we know that Olympic-sport budgets inevitably rise to the top as the first to be cut. In some cases, it’s women’s sports, but also men’s sports that could be eliminated. We must keep our eye on both.”
