Trump signs executive order to expand NCAA's control over college sports
President Trump signed an executive order Friday designed to give the National Collegiate Athletic Association more control over collegiate sports.
The president's order aims to increase the NCAA's control over college athletes and programs, and threatens to review federal government grants and contracts for colleges that don't comply with NCAA rules.
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," the White House said in a fact sheet announcing the signing.
It also calls for clearer rules on eligibility limits, including a five-year participation window, and structured transfer rules, medical care for student athletes, protection against "unscrupulous agent conduct," and assurances that women's and Olympic sports are protected.
The order also calls on Congress to pass legislation addressing these issues.
Name, image and likeness — or NIL — rights granted by a court settlement mean that Division I student-athletes may be directly paid by colleges. The president has railed against the new system, which is costing some schools millions in payments. The $2.8 billion settlement was retroactive, so colleges are on the hook for NIL opportunities denied to student-athletes from 2016-2025.
"What they've done is destroyed college sports and destroying colleges because colleges can't afford to pay quarterbacks, that never threw a ball before, that a 17 years old, $12 million dollars to play college, because every college is going to go bankrupt," Trump said in a speech to the Republican congressional campaign arm in March.
The president has also publicly lamented about how the new NIL policies could affect women's sports and the Olympics, noting that many American Olympians train at U.S. colleges.
At a college sports roundtable in early March, the president also vowed to write a broad executive order to address the issue and expressed hope that it would trigger congressional action.
The Trump administration is still pushing for congressional action to standardize the rules surrounding the name, image, and likeness policy. The SCORE Act – a House of Representatives bill that stalled — would regulate compensation received from NIL and beef up protections for college athletes.
