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President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “preserve the unique American institution of college athletics by restoring order, fairness, and stability” on Friday.
The order comes roughly a month after Trump hosted a roundtable addressing several hot-button issues last month.
The order “directs Federal agencies to bolster the effectiveness of key college-sports rules on transferring, eligibility, and pay-for-play by evaluating whether violations of such rules render a university unfit for Federal grants and contracts.”
It also says that a “five-year participation window” will be enforced, along with “structured transfer rules” and a “banning (of) improper financial arrangements including pay-for-play agreements facilitated by collectives and similar entities.”
Last month, Trump hosted NCAA President Charlie Baker, former Alabama head football coach Nick Saban, New York Yankees President Randy Levine and each of the Power Four commissioners, among others at his roundtable. Trump called the roundtable to examine solutions to key challenges, including NCAA authority, NIL issues, collective bargaining and governance concerns.
“This is the future, I think, beyond college sports. This is the future of colleges,” Trump said to kick off the roundtable. “The amount of money being spent and lost by otherwise very successful schools is astounding just in a short period of time. It’s only going to get worse. We have to save college sports, and, I believe, colleges.
“Crazy things are happening. … We have a seven-year freshman. We’re seeing things we’ve never seen before. College players not wanting to go pro because they make more money in college.”
“The NCAA has modernized college sports to deliver more benefits for student-athletes, and the Executive Order reinforces many of our mandatory protections – including guaranteed health care coverage, mental health services, and scholarship protections,” Baker said in a statement.
“This action is a significant step forward, and we appreciate the Administration’s interest and attention to these issues. Stabilizing college athletics for student-athletes still requires a permanent, bipartisan federal legislative solution, so we look forward to continuing to work alongside the Administration and Congress to enact targeted legislation with the support of student-athlete leaders from all three divisions.”
Trump said he’d write an executive order “based on great common sense.”
SCORE ACT RECEIVES SUPPORT FROM OVER 20 CONSERVATIVE GROUPS AS NIL REFORM FIGHT REVS UP
The SCORE Act was at the forefront of the roundtable. It was scheduled to be voted on in December but the vote was canceled shortly before.
The White House endorsed the act, but three Republicans — Byron Donalds of Florida, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Chip Roy of Texas — voted with Democrats not to bring the act to the floor. Democrats have largely opposed the bill, urging members of the House to vote against it.
The act would give the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption in hopes of protecting the NCAA from potential lawsuits over eligibility rules and would prohibit athletes from becoming employees of their schools. It prohibits schools from using student fees to fund NIL payments.
The president’s order from July prohibits athletes from receiving pay-to-play payments from third-party sources. However, the order did not impose any restrictions on NIL payments to college athletes by third-party sources. It also demands that schools account for preserving resources for the non-revenue sports.
A month before Trump’s order, a judge approved a settlement between the NCAA, its most powerful conferences and lawyers representing all Division I athletes. The deal means the NCAA will pay close to $2.8 billion in back damages over the next 10 years to college athletes who competed from 2016 to 2025. The settlement also allows for college programs to pay athletes directly.
Last month, Trump signed an executive order to keep the Army-Navy game a standalone contest.
Fox News’ Jackson Thompson contributed to this report.
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