Last month, President Donald Trump finally waded into the college sports landscape with yet another executive order. Boldly titled “Saving College Sports,” the order comes after months of signaling his administration was going to fight on one more university battleground. Much like his other executive orders regarding colleges and universities, this one includes some good, some bad, and a lot of confusing open ends. Its highest usefulness, perhaps, is how it encapsulates most of the fault lines and growing pains plaguing college sports’ transition from school-sanctioned “amateurism” to something similar yet fundamentally different as student athletes are finally more fully compensated for their labors.

Back in May, Trump created a presidential commission on college sports, which included former Alabama and LSU head coach Nick Saban and billionaire and Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell. Saban lauded the executive order, having raised many of the complaints included in it over the past several years.

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The order follows a landmark settlement in June between the NCAA, the nation’s largest sports conferences, and lawyers representing all Division I athletes that, for the first time, permits schools to pay student-athletes directly. The ruling in Grant House and Sedona Prince v. National Collegiate Athletic Association is the next major break from the old system that began in 2021 with the allowance that college athletes could receive compensation for their name, image, and likeness, colloquially known as NIL deals.

As ESPN’s Dan Murphy explains, since 2021, “college athletes have been allowed to make money from third parties via name, image and likeness deals. Boosters quickly organized groups called collectives that used NIL money as de facto salaries for their teams, in some cases paying millions of dollars mostly to top-rated basketball and football players. Now, that money will come straight from the athletic departments.” The settlement ended three separate federal antitrust lawsuits, which argued, correctly, in my opinion, that the NCAA was illegally limiting the earning power of college athletes. Furthermore, “The NCAA will pay nearly $2.8 billion in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who competed in college at any time from 2016 through present day. Moving forward, each school can pay its athletes up to a certain limit. The annual cap is expected to start at roughly $20.5 million per school in 2025-26 and increase every year during the decade-long deal. These new payments are in addition to scholarships and other benefits the athletes already receive.”

In addition, the settlement stipulated that beginning July 1, any endorsement deal between athletes and third-party vendors and boosters will be vetted by the recently formed College Sports Commission to determine if it is for a “valid business purpose.” It is into this morass that Trump’s “Saving College Sports” order waded less than a month later.

The order touches on several key areas that are worth going over, not to find clarity — there is none, nor shall there be for the foreseeable future, unfortunately — but to better comprehend the thorniest briars at play in the landscape of college sports and to determine what direction Congress and other executive agencies might go in the future.

In perhaps its most confusing section, the order prohibits “third-party, pay-for-play payments to collegiate athletes.” According to its fact sheet, “This does not apply to legitimate, fair-market-value compensation that a third party provides to an athlete, such as for a brand endorsement.” Crucially, pay-for-play payments are already barred under NCAA rules and have been since the NIL allowances were put in place. For example, a Texas oil billionaire can’t give his alma mater’s star wide receiver $1 million simply because he’s a very good wide receiver who plays for his team. Instead, what we have is what was explained above, endorsement deals by third-party vendors or boosters to pay players for their name, image, or likeness. This hypothetical Texas booster cannot pay for on-the-field performance, but Pete’s Tires And Also Oil could pay that same player for appearances at their store or in their commercials. This is, of course, the same thing with just more steps, and the order offers no clarity or differentiation from the status quo. Indeed, it does not aid in the definition of terms or delineation of what is a legitimate business purpose as required by the College Sports Commission and the House v. NCAA settlement. This is one of the major litigation and regulation hurdles for college sports, determining where these lines are.

As the great Andy Staples points out, this commission enforcement arm has already had to retract some of its rulings dictating which third-party payment businesses were considered legitimate. It originally barred businesses charging for the opportunity to meet players, but it was forced to revoke that stricture once players’ lawyers argued that it is, quite obviously, a legitimate business model in any other context, such as the service Cameo or any number of celebrity meet-and-greet models.

There remains a further lack of clarity, as well, whether these collectives are viewed as an arm of the schools or if they stand alone as third-party actors or somewhere in between. This is particularly important as it pertains to the $20.5 million revenue-share cap imposed by the House ruling: If collectives are beneath the school umbrella, what amount are they permitted to funnel to specific sports, and through what method? If they remain outside, then any direct-to-athlete or direct-to-recruit endorsement payments continue to elide that cap, as is the case now, with countless headline-grabbing million-dollar payouts to star transfers.

Speaking of million-dollar payouts to star players, the order also includes the frankly baffling concept of monitoring a “fair-market value” for these payments. Firstly, what is fair-market value? Excepting bumbling governmental intervention, fair-market value is simply what people will pay. As Jake Crain of the Crain & Company show put it, this idea is “frankly un-American.” Furthermore, the idea of the College Sports Commission being tasked with this adjudication is laughable. The notion that, whether by algorithm or convention, they must determine every single payment over $600 to a student athlete to ensure it is not only for “a valid business purpose” but that it also meets some nebulous concept of “fair-market value.” Are deals weighted by geography and regional capital? Are positions — quarterback, running back, shooting guard, libero, coxswain — all weighted differently in compensation allowances? What about brand name, conference pedigree, or team quality? Arch Manning, Texas’s star quarterback of Manning family fame, undoubtedly has a higher Q Score than Taylen Green, my quarterback at the University of Arkansas. Manning has also won fewer games than Green, but he plays on a better team. One is reportedly receiving more than $6 million in NIL deals, the other only around $2 million. Is this difference representative of the fair-market value range? Is it “fair” that one receives three times the other while both receive 10-15 times more than offensive linemen on their teams? Who knows? Definitely not the government, I can tell you that, and probably not the College Sports Commission either.

On one of the thorniest issues for college sports, the executive order punts. And wisely so, I might add. “The Order directs the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify the status of student-athletes in order to preserve non-revenue sports and the irreplaceable educational and developmental opportunities that college sports provide.” This direction is regarding whether student athletes should be legally, financially, and contractually considered as employees, contractors, the vaguely defined “amateurs,” or some fourth thing somewhere in between.

Calling student athletes “amateurs” was the NCAA’s decadeslong dead horse it’d lovingly trot out to beat any time it would receive correct pushback about not paying players any portion of the billions of dollars its collective efforts garnered every year. It still holds sway among many fans and lawmakers, and it is fairly clear — if not from the order, then from Trump, Saban, and the brain trust around his college sports policy team — this part of the order wishes the NLRB to define athletes’ status closer to the amateur designation than employee one. Nevertheless, not attempting to unilaterally define what is one of the crux issues at play in how and how much athletes are compensated is a wise decision from Trump and his team, as whatever answer we arrive at eventually will be one undoubtedly won in a courtroom.

The order also notes, but does not address in any detail, several additional considerations that often are overlooked in conversations about college football and basketball NIL deals and television rights. These include “the preservation and, where possible, expansion of opportunities for scholarships and collegiate athletic competition in women’s and non-revenue sports” and a directive to the “Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison to consult with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Teams and other organizations to protect the role of college athletics in developing world-class American athletes.” There is a real fear, and potential, unfortunately, that the increased domination of the two major college sports and the coalescing of all major Division I schools into “super conferences” will crowd out the funding, considerations, and attention of other sports such as track, hockey, gymnastics, swimming, volleyball, and so on. This also relates to the development of U.S. Olympic athletes, the vast majority of whom participate in collegiate athletics.

While offering, quite bluntly, very little new to the conversation, the executive order at least makes clear the Trump administration’s priorities — largely aimed at preserving what remains of the old college sports status quo while providing regulated allowances to paying student athletes. As I have made clear, I have both functional and intellectual qualms with the design of some of these priorities.

But I want to acknowledge that I do agree with the purpose of them. Trump, Saban, and company are correct that the current system is untenable and could rupture into something unrecognizable from the college sports landscape that we all grew up with and fans such as myself have loved, pain and all, for as long as I can remember. Paying players is right and good, and much of this will, when the dust settles, shake out into something I expect to be far better than the worst-case scenario. But that reality does require some messy policy making and court battles: managerial due diligence that the NCAA and its feckless nanny-staters and hangers-on simply ran away from when they opened the doors to the wild west back in 2021 without a plan. Indeed, it’s quite clear their plan was Pontius Pilate’s: wash their hands of the whole enterprise and leave it to the government.

TRUMP SHOULD BREAK THE COLLEGE PIPELINE

As Trump’s order notes, there are 30 different state-level NIL laws and countless lawsuits working their way through various courts. Things are, in a word, messy, and will remain so for the time being until a more cohesive way forward is made. Congress is trying its hand with various salves, the most prominent college sports bill being the bipartisan SCORE Act. Sadly, it’s not a very good bill and is likely to face heavy resistance in the Senate — it is already being opposed by several states’ attorneys general, led by Tennessee’s Jonathan Skrmetti.

That’s not to say the sky is falling, though. The tumult of NIL and conference realignment will continue for some time before settling, but the sports themselves will stay at least as long as the television deals and generational rivalries do. Once we get some decent reins on this thing, it’ll run just fine.