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President Donald Trump hosted a college sports roundtable Friday to examine solutions to key challenges, including NCAA authority; name, image and likeness (NIL) issues; collective bargaining; and governance concerns.
Athletic officials in attendance included NCAA President Charlie Baker, former Alabama head football coach Nick Saban, OutKick founder Clay Travis, New York Yankees President Randy Levine and each of the Power Four commissioners, among others.
“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,” he added.
Trump said there has been an “inability to set rules,” noting that different states have different NIL laws, prompting another challenge for college sports.
“If Congress doesn’t take action fast, it could destroy college sports,” Trump said.
Trump ripped “one judge who knew nothing about sports, knew nothing about football, knew nothing about Olympics, knew nothing about anything, just decided everything was unconstitutional.”
He was likely referring to Judge Claudia Wilken, who ruled in 2019 that the NCAA’s limits on education-related benefits violated antitrust law.
“It’s crazy. Only Congress can deliver a permanent fix,” Trump said.
Trump noted he was not aiming to revert to athletes not being paid.
“Although, not the worst idea,” he admitted. “But I think a lot of people would overrule me on that.”
Later on, Trump said he wanted to “just go back to what you had, let some judge tell you can’t do it, you appeal, and you win at some point. Because what you had — what a great system. Everybody was happy.”
Saban said helping athletes become more successful on a personal level has become “impossible” in today’s era.
“People, instead of making decisions about creating value for their future, they were making decisions about how much money could they make at whichever school they can go to or transfer to,” Saban said.
“I think we need to come up with a system, and, obviously, we have to do it with the president’s leadership and also with Congress probably … to allow student-athletes in all sports to enhance their quality of life while going to college but still provide opportunity to advance themselves beyond their athletic career, which is what the philosophy of college athletes and getting a college education has always been about.”
Trump has been adamant about “saving college sports,” even signing an executive order setting new restrictions on payments to college athletes in July.
The president’s order 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.
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 SCORE 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.
Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., said the act “hurts” women’s sports, and strengthening Title IX “has to be part of the SCORE Act.” She also said the SCORE Act “represented a consolidation of what we have today, which is the SEC and the Big Ten” getting a boatload of the money college athletics garners.
Trahan did concur that “maybe the SCORE Act is the right vehicle we continue to tweak,” showing some confidence in it and expressing her desire to work with those at the roundtable to make it successful. U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., said that women’s sports would be “protected,” while Jim Phillips, the ACC commissioner, said 56% of the ACC’s athletic scholarships have gone to women since the House case.
Tim Pernetti, commissioner of the American Conference, said the SCORE Act doesn’t fix college athletics’ “economic crisis.” Meyer admitted he did not like how collectives were still included in the SCORE Act, calling it “cheating.”
“I think if the collective goes away, college sports gets better immediately,” Meyer said.
After deliberations, Trump said he’d write an executive order “based on great common sense.”
“It’s gonna let colleges survive and players survive and let a lot of people be very, very happy,” Trump said.
A month before Trump’s order, Wilken 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.
Fox News’ Jackson Thompson contributed to this report.
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