Two weeks back, President Donald Trump passed an executive order directing his Cabinet to develop a plan aimed at preserving the sanctity of college sports. He instructed his Cabinet to come up with a plan within 30 days to preserve opportunities in college sports and prevent college athletes from becoming professionals. In his order, the POTUS set out specific guidelines for preserving athletic scholarship based on an athletic department’s annual revenue.
Per ESPN, one of the foremost instructions of this order dictates schools to not permit athletes to accept “third party, pay-for-play payments.” To enforce the same, Trump has directed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to use future federal funding decisions as a tool for schools to abide by this policy. Though in policy, the NCAA has always prohibited athletes from accepting such payments from third parties.
What’s interesting is there is a catch to this. Some of the schools had found ways to pay their athletes via contracts which were essentially endorsement deals on paper. However, in reality, they functioned as de facto salaries.
This became a serious issue college sports leaders wanted to tackle in the NIL era of the NCAA, essentially putting a taint on NIL itself.
St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino recently spoke about this in an appearance on CBS’ “Inside College Basketball” podcast. He believes President Trump might never actually undo the NIL.
“They keep talking every year about it. I don’t think the NIL will ever go away. I don’t think what President Trump has done is really going to be of any significance. I don’t think they can really control the NIL unless they form a union, right? Because if you’re not unionized, there’s going to be lawsuits by the players, probably thousands of lawsuits manipulated by the agents,” Pitino SAID (25:56).
Through his point, Pitino also highlighted how the NIL was beneficial for the players’ agents as well. The agents reserve a 2 to 3 percent cut on players’ NIL deals, essentially earning 10 to 15% of NIL money in college sports. Hence, it would become a legal limbo for the federal government to tackle with. Though the administration is working on a plan around POTUS’ executive order, there is no explicit direction to scrap the NIL as of yet.
College Sports Commission was launched to enforce President’s executive order
Following President Trump’s orders, the Power 4 conferences launched a new enforcement agency called the College Sports Commission. This agency would vet all third-party deals athletes signed, ensuring the payments are not covered as a pay-for-play arrangement. However, there hasn’t been any clarity on the enforcement of this arrangement should be further prioritized.
The executive order further mandated athletic departments bringing in more than $125 million to increase their number of scholarship for non-revenue sports. However, athletic departments that brought in at least $50 million cannot reduce the number of scholarships they offer in such sports.
There has been a constant effort to recognize college sports athletes as ’employees.’ However, college sports leaders have been adamantly opposed to such propositions. Furthermore, the leaders argue that schools cannot afford to field the same number of teams if all athletes were declared employees. Also, they claim most college athletes do not want to be considered employees.
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