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<\/p>\nWASHINGTON \u2014 A White House roundtable spent nearly two hours discussing the future of college athletics on Friday afternoon, led by President Donald Trump and featuring the most prominent political and college sports leaders in the country.<\/p>\n
The meeting started with repeated acknowledgement of the many challenges facing the industry and ended with a frustrated Trump railing against Senate Democrats and the court system. Trump also promised to produce an executive order in the next week \u201cbecause that\u2019s the only way this is going to be solved.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019m going to sit down, and I\u2019m going to write an executive order based on many of the sentiments made today, many of the sentiments I\u2019ve been hearing over the last year about what a disaster this is for colleges, the players, the families, ruining families, ruining everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There was also talk of reviving the SCORE Act (Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements), a bipartisan-drafted bill that\u2019s currently paused in the House of Representatives but could represent the best available starting point for college sports reform through federal legislation. The bill, as currently drafted, would replace the patchwork of state name, image and likeness laws with a national framework while giving the NCAA limited antitrust protection.<\/p>\n
Trump chaired the event, which hosted more than 50 people from politics, business, and college and professional sports in the East Room of the White House, seated around a massive rectangular collection of tables. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and New York Yankees president Randy Levine served as vice chairs, with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Senator Ted Cruz also in attendance. NCAA president Charlie Baker was there along with several conference commissioners, university athletic directors and presidents. Former college football coaches Nick Saban and Urban Meyer attended, as did NBA commissioner Adam Silver. Representative Lori Trahan, a Democrat from Massachusetts, was the only elected Democrat featured.<\/p>\n
There were no current college athletes in attendance, though multiple speakers, including Levine, stressed that they would be consulted and included in the process moving forward.<\/p>\n
The roundtable reiterated the need for large-scale reform in college sports, likely via Congressional antitrust exemptions and bipartisan legislation. The added financial strain of the House v. NCAA settlement and direct revenue sharing with athletes \u2014 adding over $20 million to the annual budget for most power-conference schools \u2014 has caused an economic crisis for many athletic departments that threatens funding for Olympic and non-revenue sports and smaller programs.<\/p>\n
The event also reinforced how difficult it will be to reach those types of solutions, which is what led to Trump convening this panel in the first place. The question is whether this event, which featured a lot of emotion, grandstanding and saber-rattling \u2014 at times from secondary and tertiary characters who did not sound fully informed on the issues \u2014 brings college sports any closer to a solution. The answer probably depends on the fate of the SCORE Act and whether the calls for compromise and bipartisan action come to fruition.<\/p>\n
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\n Attendees listen during a roundtable discussion on college sports in the East Room of the White House on Friday. (Anna Moneymaker \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
In a joint statement, Big Four commissioners Jim Phillips (ACC), Greg Sankey (SEC), Tony Pettitti (Big Ten) and Brett Yormark (Big 12) thanked Trump, calling the event \u201can important step,\u201d and saying, \u201cFederal action on college sports is long overdue, and we stand with a broad coalition of conferences, student-athletes, coaches, and advocates in supporting the SCORE Act. We look forward to working with both President Trump and Congress to enact meaningful reform for student-athletes across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are the highlights \u2026<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s frustration and (another) Executive Order<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s announcement that he would sign an executive order \u201cwithin a week\u201d with input from several in the room (Trump singled out Saban and Levine in particular) was a result of his frustration from hearing about the challenges of passing legislation through Congress and the way past court decisions have reshaped college sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a lot of Democrats in the Senate that I hear are opposed to almost anything,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
But an executive order can\u2019t make a law, provide antitrust exemptions or override state laws, and any policies in the executive order can be challenged in court \u2014 a reality that Trump repeatedly acknowledged on Friday as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s see if we can get it through the court system, which we might not be able to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve already seen a version of this last July, when Trump signed an executive order titled \u201cSaving College Sports\u201d that was also aimed at addressing the industry\u2019s many issues, but produced no binding changes<\/a>.<\/p>\n Asked how a new order would be different than that one, Trump responded: \u201cIt will be more comprehensive.\u201d<\/p>\n The likely truth is that an executive order solves very little, if anything. What was most notable about Trump defaulting to that option is that it illustrated his frustration \u2014 in terms of college sports and otherwise \u2014 with Congressional Democrats and the court system.<\/p>\n Future of the SCORE Act<\/p>\n Amid the spectacle of a televised roundtable, the most pertinent news regarding the fate of college sports was Speaker Johnson stating that the SCORE Act may finally be on the verge of a vote in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are right on the verge of passage in the House, and we now think we have the votes to do that,\u201d he said Friday.<\/p>\n There seemed to be a tepid consensus within the room to treat the SCORE Act as a basis moving forward, as opposed to completely starting from scratch with new legislation.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s why that could be significant.<\/p>\n Last summer, the SCORE Act passed through committee markup in the House of Representatives, a stage that no comprehensive college sports bill had reached before. It\u2019s a bipartisan bill driven largely by Republican support that checks a number of the most important boxes college sports leadership has been seeking from federal legislation: a limited antitrust exemption to provide protection from lawsuits; pre-emption of varying state laws, particularly regarding athlete compensation; and preventing college athletes from being deemed employees.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was good to hear so many speakers advocate for the SCORE Act, which does address many of the issues that cause both uncertainty and confusion for just about all of us in college sports these days,\u201d Baker later told The Athletic. \u201cThe chance for us to engage with one another informally beforehand and afterward was also a real bonus. I also think everybody appreciated the President\u2019s decision to get us together, given the urgency of the issues we were discussing.\u201d<\/p>\n The SCORE Act does not solve or even address every issue, including the economic strain being felt by many universities, but it would codify the House v. NCAA settlement and provide some stability.<\/p>\n However, it has faced considerable opposition, especially from Senate Democrats and those who want stronger protections and representation for college athletes in terms of compensation, benefits, and the potential for employment status.<\/p>\n Even those who support the SCORE Act acknowledge that it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, something Sen. Cruz stated on Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cThe SCORE Act has many good elements, it\u2019s a very good first step,\u201d said Cruz. \u201cBut the challenge is for this to be passed into law and put on (the president\u2019s) desk, we need 60 votes in the Senate, which means we need at least seven Senate Democrats (to support it). Right now there are zero.\u201d<\/p>\n The SCORE Act faces major hurdles. But there are many who believe that passing the House at least signals momentum and could be an impetus for the Senate to work toward something, even if it requires more change and compromise.<\/p>\n \u201cThe influence of all the people around this table could help us get some of those critical Democratic votes in the Senate,\u201d Cruz said.<\/p>\n The bigger fear is that if the bill can\u2019t even make it through the House, it\u2019s back to square one.<\/p>\n History of court decisions impacting college sports<\/p>\n This new era of college sports \u2014 with athlete compensation, unlimited transfers and all the unregulated chaos that has come with it \u2014 is mostly a result of court decisions against the NCAA in recent years.<\/p>\n One was the NCAA v. Alston case in 2021, in which a historically divided Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the NCAA, voting 9-0 to uphold a lower court decision stating the NCAA cannot limit education-related payments to student-athletes due to federal antitrust principles. It set the stage for the NCAA to remove restrictions on college athletes earning name, image and likeness (NIL) money. It also influenced the House v. NCAA settlement last summer, which resolved a trio of additional antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA and power conferences and allowed schools to pay athletes directly, essentially undoing the amateurism model that was in place for more than a century.<\/p>\n Trump mentioned multiple times over the course of the roundtable his preference to go back to the system \u201cwe had before\u201d in college sports, when athletes were given scholarships but couldn\u2019t earn money outside of that. He blamed the new reality on a \u201cradical left judge from California,\u201d seemingly referencing Judge Claudia Wilken of the Northern District of California, who ruled in the Alston case and presided over the House settlement.<\/p>\n The president was eventually informed on Friday that the Alston decision was appealed to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n \u201cSo the Supreme Court was responsible for this? Gee, that surprises me,\u201d Trump said, sarcastically. He later added, \u201cI think the Supreme Court ought to be ashamed of itself for a lot of reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n A sense of urgency to do something<\/p>\n There was a sense of urgency from many in attendance that something needs to be done as soon as possible, ideally before the next academic year, as budget demands continue to intensify.<\/p>\n One potential financial solution that has caused division within college sports is pooling television rights together across the entire sport of college football, similar to how the NBA and NFL operate, as opposed to individual conferences signing television contracts. Doing so would require getting the SEC and Big Ten on board, as well as amending the Sports Broadcasting Act.<\/p>\n After the roundtable, two senators announced a bipartisan proposal to do just that. The discussion draft released Friday<\/a> by Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) would provide an antitrust exemption so schools and conferences can sell their media rights together. A 14-person committee would oversee the sale and distribution of those rights. Schmitt and Cantwell said in a statement that they\u2019ll introduce their legislation \u2014 called the College Sports Competitiveness Act \u2014 in the Senate next week.<\/p>\n