By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports
Donald J. Trump has not been reluctant to go where no previous U.S. president has gone before and Thursday, he rocked the college sports landscape by issuing an executive order that did exactly that.
Not since Teddy Roosevelt decried the violent nature of football and ordered college officials to make the game safer more than 100 years ago has a president made such a direct impact on the sports staged by colleges and universities.
The White House announced Trump has set new guidelines for name, image and likeness and revenue sharing deals. His order banned “third party, pay-for-play payments to college athletes” but did not prohibit the players from making endorsement deals. The decree also said the House settlement outlining multi-million revenue-sharing between universities and athletes must not threaten scholarships for women’s sports and so-called Olympic sports that do not produce revenue approaching expenses.
His sweeping order tasks the National Labor Relations Board with “clarifying the status of collegiate athletes” in an apparent move to stymie efforts by some student-athletes to earn status as university employees to expand their benefits past completion of their college days.
The order was titled “Save College Sports.”
Immediate questions developed on how his order will be administered. He instructed federal officials to develop a plan within 30 days to use “regulatory, enforcement and litigation mechanisms” to enforce his order.
There were elements of the order that clashed with the recent House settlement that among other things created a $2.8 billion NIL compensation pool for prominent Division I competitors from 2016-21, with it being partially funded (up to 40 percent) by non-Power 4 conference members including the four Division I college athletic programs in north Louisiana – Grambling, Louisiana Tech, Northwestern State and ULM – with annual payments of about $300,000 into the pool over the next 10 years.
NCAA President Charlie Baker issued a statement that thanked Trump for the “focus on the life-changing opportunities sports provides millions of people.”
The statement noted “there are some threats to college sports that federal legislation can effectively address … (using) a bipartisan solution with Congress and the (Trump) Administration.”
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com