Trump executive order takes aim at college sports : NPR
President Trump is held with the head coach of Ohio State Ryan Day (R) while welcoming the national champions of university 2025 football from Ohio State University at the White House during a ceremony on April 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump’s new decree seeks to ban “payment” agreements and obliges schools to provide scholarships in female and Olympic sports – and this hits the threat of retaining federal funds to schools as a mechanism of application.
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Washington – President Trump targeted university sports with a new executive decree Signed Thursday which aims to empower federal agencies, including the United States Ministry of Education, which leads funds to public universities, to help apply new provisions on sports scholarships and “Pay-For-Play” license agreements for athletes.
The order orders the country’s most important sports departments to maintain certain number of scholarships for female and Olympic sports. And he seeks to brake lucrative agreements, image and resemblance – known as Nile – who have considerably transformed the compensation of athletes in recent years.
“The future of university sports is threatened unprecedented,” said the order. “A national solution is urgent to prevent this situation from deteriorating beyond reparation and protecting unrevised sports, including many female sports, which include the backbone of intercollegial athletics, stimulate American superiority at the Olympic Games and other international competitions and catalyze hundreds of thousands of students to feed the American success of Myriad Ways.”. “”
If the provisions of the order Will Adopt LEGAL MUSTER is an open issue, said legal experts at NPR. However, it represents the President’s growing interest in sporting issues and in particular university athletics.
“This is perhaps not a binding legal framework – but it is absolutely a signal: the federal government, and now presidential policy, are increasingly ready to intervene in the future of university sports,” said Noah Henderson, professor of sports management at the University of Loyola Chicago.
Trump’s order comes the month after the approval of The colony of the houseA legal agreement of collective appeals which opened the door to the sports departments of the college of division I to pay directly the players, upsetting the long -standing tradition of the amateurism of the NCAA.
Jared Jones of LSU Tigers famous with fans after defeating the Coastal Carolina Chanticles to win the Baseball Finals of the NCAA College World Series last month in Omaha, Neb.
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This regulation, which allows schools to compensate athletes up to an initial ceiling of $ 20.5 million, has increased anxieties of the future of unrealized sports, including most female and Olympic sports, while schools divert resources to compensate for athletes in order to remain competitive in the income-generating sports and basketball sports.
“Absence of railing to stop madness and ensure a reasonable and balanced use of resources in college sports programs which preserve their educational and development advantages, many university sports will soon be to exist,” said order.
Among the “railings” that the order seeks to impose are the requirements according to which the sports departments of the highest paid colleges provide more possibilities of scholarships in non-revenue sports than during the school year 2024-2025.
This provision would apply to around 30 of the country’s largest sports departments, According to 2024 data.
In an index of the way that its provisions could be applied, the ordinance directs the Ministry of Education – in which the Trump administration is located The process of dismantling – To use the disbursement of federal funds, the application of title IX and the laws of interstate trade to influence schools. Most of the largest sports departments in the country belong to public universities, such as the Ohio State University and the University of Texas.
These are “fairly extreme actions,” said Sam Ehrlich, professor at the Wood State University who follows collegial sports disputes. “Is it just a threat or something that will really lead to something? Will the executive branch actually be in these situations to enforce this? And what will be the involuntary consequences if it is followed?” He added.
Payment transactions for the playing rights games are also a target of the Trump administration order. The NCAA has granted such transactions since a decision of the Supreme Court in 2021, which came to dominate the financial landscape of university sports in division I.
Athletes, especially football and basketball players, now earn thousands or even millions of dollars a year in zero offers, some of which are linked to a marketing campaign, but others are indeed compensation to play.
Null transactions that are paid are “inappropriate and should not be authorized by universities,” says the order of Trump, in particular transactions which carry a “fair market value” for a brand approval or another legitimate objective.
Heads of university athletics have pressure on Washington for years to help brake the wave of disputes that reshaped university sports on remuneration and eligibility issues.
The Executive Decree has been aligned with many of the priorities set out in recent years by NCAA, the organ director of university athletics, whose long -standing policies concerning eligibility and remuneration have been deeply eroded in the last decade by dispute.
“The association appreciates the emphasis put by the Trump administration on the opportunities that have changed the life that university sports offer to millions of young people and we are impatient to work with students-athletes, a bipartite coalition at the Congress and the Trump administration to improve university sports for the coming years,” said the president of the NCAA, Charlie Baker, in a press release.
The NCAA has long been pressure for federal legislation in order to protect it from disputes and will continue to do so, he added.
But the signature by Trump of the order of Thursday could be a risk of “Deepen the partisan divisions in university sports rather than creating the necessary consensus for a long -term reform,” said Henderson – in particular in the Senate, where the republican majority falls seven votes less from the 60 votes necessary to overcome an obstacle to new legislation.
The five “power conferences” in university sports quickly applauded the decree. In a joint statement from the Southeast, the Atlantic coast, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 conferences, they declared:: “We hope that the Congress sends federal legislation to the office of President Trump as soon as possible.”
The order also orders many federal agencies to enter the fray. The National Labor Relations Board is invited to issue rules and advice “with regard to the clarification of the state of college athletes” to ensure that they continue not to be judged legally considered as employees for the purpose of labor law. Managers of the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are responsible for preparing for participation in future disputes on university sports.
