Trump urges Congress to ‘fix’ college football money mess
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable discussion on college sports at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 6, 2026.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
President Donald Trump on Friday called on Congress to “fix” what he described as an untenable financial situation in college sports because of the relatively new system of paying football, basketball and other players under the name of name, image and likeness compensation.
Trump’s comments came at a White House roundtable on college sports he hosted.
“The amount of money that very successful schools have spent and lost in a short period of time is astounding,” Trump said. “It will get worse.
“This is crazy,” Trump said. “Young people are signing 17-year-old point guards for 12 million, 13 million, 14 million dollars.”
“We have a seven-year freshman class,” he said. “We’re seeing things we’ve never seen before. We have college players who don’t want to go to the NFL because they make more money in college, right?”
“There are a lot of really bad things going on, but basic questions like who is fit to play are now barely regulated and are decided randomly by judges rather than reasonable, agreed rules that can be drawn very simply and very simply,” he said.
“So this turned into a huge challenge.”
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