President Trump delivers new executive order attempting to regulate college sports

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — On the eve of the announcement of the Final Four, the president of the United States is making a splash.

Minister Donald Trump issues final executive order to regulate college sports on Friday.

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The 10-page order comes a day before the NCAA’s marquee event, the men’s basketball tournament, reaches its peak event in central Indiana.

The decision grants the NCAA the ability and recommends that the organization limit athlete transfer movement, limit senior player eligibility, enforce funding requirements for women’s and Olympic sports, and ban NIL collectives. As an enforcement tool, the order relies on reducing a university’s federal funding; This is an incentive for schools and conferences to comply with the concepts.

The decision directs the NCAA to update its rules by Aug. 1 — to the maximum extent permitted by law — in order to “bring order and stability in certain key areas,” a source who reviewed the document told Yahoo Sports. Most importantly, one of these areas is transfer.

Compliance with these rules will be important in determining whether schools will continue to receive federal funding.

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Many people, including the president himself, expect a legal challenge to the decision.

Perhaps the most important concepts in the document are efforts to regulate athlete actions and compensation.

The order not only grants, but orders the association to establish strict guardrails around promoter-backed NIL collectives — which it describes as “fraudulent NIL schemes” — and limit the movement of transfers by reinstating the NCAA’s “one-time” transfer rule. Courts found this rule illegal in antitrust rulings. The rule would allow athletes to transfer once before requiring them to miss a season as a penalty for subsequent moves.

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The decision does not unilaterally and immediately change the transfer rule, which is a critical concept. Language is crucial as thousands of players, some of whom have already transferred, prepare to enter the basketball portal that opens on Tuesday.

The decision bans professional athletes from returning to play in college and encourages the NCAA to define an athlete’s eligibility window at five years. The NCAA eligibility standard is currently four competitive seasons over five years. This is a critical issue that even the most ardent NCAA opponents believe should be regulated.

More than 70 athletes sued the board last year over players using state and local judges to extend their eligibility. The NCAA alone spent $16 million litigating eligibility cases.

Trump writes that the NCAA should implement revenue sharing that “preserves or expands scholarships” in women’s and Olympic sports; prohibiting the use of federal funds for NIL or revenue sharing; and prohibit “improper financial activities, including collectives.”

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Women’s and Olympic sports are said to be Trump’s focus, as he believes non-revenue-generating programs are being eliminated or at least defunded as schools devote more resources to football and men’s basketball in an intense and competitive recruiting environment where athlete compensation has been legalized.

Finally, the order preempts certain state laws that conflict with the order, possibly including various state laws regulating NIL.

But the actual impact of the order remains unclear and is questionable given that Trump’s previous executive order, announced in July, had no real impact on the industry. However, this is more comprehensive and direct than the last one, which merely directed cabinet members to create rules and was never implemented.

Executive orders, especially those that disregard court orders, are subject to legal review. In fact, courts have struck down many of the president’s orders over the past few months, rendering them moot and unenforceable. One White House roundtable last monthThe president himself predicted that any order would be legally challenged. He said he “hopes” for a positive judgement.

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Why can’t the sector “return to the old system?” Trump asked this question to a group of dignitaries at a roundtable event on March 6. “I would like to go back to exactly what we had and present it to the court.”

Like the roundtable event itself, the order is likely intended to draw attention to the issue in order to pressure Congressional lawmakers to agree on a more concrete solution: legislation. That’s something lawmakers failed to do during seven years of lobbying the NCAA for a bill that would, most importantly, allow college sports leaders to enact and enforce rules without legal challenge — in other words, antitrust immunity.

However, share anger on both sides of the aisle over an issue that many initially thought was bipartisan in nature. This has not been proven to be true.

Republicans support a narrower bill based on the NCAA that would impose restrictions on athletes; Democrats, many of whom have been harsh critics of the NCAA and power conference leadership, support a broader bill on athlete freedoms.

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Despite the confidence of the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, the Republican-written SCORE Act (the only all-encompassing bill to come out of a committee) twice failed to reach the House for a vote. Lawmakers are working to bring SCORE to the floor by the end of the month, but they continue the process of whipping out votes. With a slim majority in the House, Republicans cannot afford to lose their own members, some of whom oppose parts of the bill.

Even if it passes the House, SCORE would need to make significant changes to pass the U.S. Senate, which requires a 60-vote margin for legislation to pass. That means seven Democrats voted in favor of the measure; This is a difficult task.

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In the Senate, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) are negotiating separately on a bill; But if past debates are any indication, the two disagree on a wide range of bill concepts, most notably government oversight of college sports, athlete employment and the scope of antitrust protections.

Meanwhile, five presidential committees made up of college athletic stakeholders, corporate executives and other dignitaries began meeting this week to inform congressional legislation. Each committee is tasked with examining an issue, while a sixth group, an oversight committee, is also tasked with reviewing its work.

The oversight committee includes six president/chancellors from Georgia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Kansas, Utah and North Carolina, as well as former Clemson president Jim Clements, Cody Campbell, Randy Levine and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The five “subject” committees include Legislative (works with Congress for federal antitrust protection), Rules (sets NIL, portal, eligibility standards), NCAA Reform (future governance), Media (media rights and SBA), and Player-Agent relationship matters.

Commissioners from the SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and American, as well as Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua, are appointed to the Rules, Media and NCAA Reform committees, as well as many other notable names like Nick Saban, Condoleezza Rice and Adam Silver.

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Conference commissioners react to executive order

Here’s what each power conference commissioner said after the executive order was issued Friday night.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey: