President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order on July 24, 2025, entitled "Saving College Sports," adding a new layer of complexity to the dynamic and constantly evolving landscape of college sports. The new Executive Order directs members of President Trump's Cabinet to "provide the stability, fairness, and balance necessary to protect student-athletes, collegiate athletic scholarships and opportunities, and the special American institution of college sports," in response to what the Administration refers to as the "mortal threat" of third-party pay-for-play deals.
Addressing a "Mortal Threat" to College Sports
The Executive Order takes aim at third-party pay-for-play and donor driven collective deals in college sports (not to be confused with direct revenue sharing by schools, as permitted by the House settlement, while preserving the ability of college athletes to continue to pursue fair market value brand deals. The new Executive Order claims that third-party pay-for-play deals are a "rudderless system in which competing university donors engage in bidding wars for the best players, who can change teams each season" and that they create an "oligarchy of teams [with access to wealthier donor pools] that can buy the best players." The concern, according to President Trump's Order, is that university donors will funnel the vast majority of resources to support college football and basketball programs—to the detriment of other programs (including Olympic sports).
In response, President Trump's order would create rules and regulations that prohibit third-party pay-for-play deals from university donors and collectives to athletes, protect collegiate athletic scholarship opportunities, and promote women's and Olympic sports.
Protecting Women's Sports, Non-Revenue Sports, and Prohibiting Third-Party Pay-for-Play
Section Two of the Executive Order sets out parameters for promoting women's and non-revenue sports. For example, the order issues the following scholarship directives, based on athletic department revenue:
- Athletic departments generating more than $125,000,000 in revenue during the 2024-25 season are directed to provide the maximum number of roster spots in non-revenue sports permitted under the House settlement, and to increase the amount of scholarships they offered in non-revenue sports over the previous year;
- Athletic departments generating between $50,000,000 and $125,000,000 are directed to provide the maximum number of roster spots in non-revenue sports and as many scholarships as they did in the 2024-25 season; and
- Athletic departments generating $50,000,000 or less are warned to refrain from "disproportionately reduc[ing] scholarship opportunities or roster spots for sports based on the revenue that the sport generates."
The Executive Order also sets out to ban third-party pay-for-play payments (i.e., payments from donors directly to athletes to entice athletes to play at a certain university). This should not be confused with third-party sponsorship agreements for fair market value (i.e., brand endorsements), which the Executive Order treats as a distinct concept and does not set out to prohibit. This builds off of the House settlement and the creation of the College Sports Commission—a newly formed watchdog that evaluates the fair market value and business purpose of every NIL deal valued over $600.
Revisiting Employment Status
The Executive Order also directs the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to certify college athletes' employment status. Given that the Executive Order's stated goals include "preserv[ing] the critical educational and developmental benefits of collegiate athletics," the current administration will likely confirm that student-athletes are not employees, which it previously signaled is its position by departing from prior efforts to certify them as employees. Such a determination, should it come, would limit college athletes' ability to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain with the NCAA and its member universities.
A Better Path Forward
While many of the stated goals of the Executive Order (i.e., regulating the transfer portal and promoting women's and Olympic sports) are commendable, questions remain as to whether the Executive Order is the most appropriate means to achieve these goals, and more generally, whether it is appropriate for the executive branch of government, rather than Congress or the NCAA, to make these changes.
One of the greatest challenges affecting college athletics is the transfer portal. As it currently stands, athletes are permitted to transfer after every season, effectively becoming free agents each year as other universities attempt to recruit them, sometimes utilizing lucrative compensation packages to do so. Critics of the current system argue that the constant movement of college athletes stunts their individual academic development, undermines the ability of coaches to build and develop teams, introduces exceptional unpredictability in team planning, creates a system where the top spending programs take formerly undervalued prospects who were well coached at smaller programs without providing any return value to the smaller programs, and otherwise provides an environment of instability that is challenging for coaches and athletic directors to manage.
President Trump, Congress, and the NCAA should look to professional sports for models that can remedy these issues. In professional sports, team owners and players negotiate collective bargaining agreements that set the metes and bounds of contracts, health and safety, revenue sharing, etc. Such negotiations include caps on how much a single player can earn, how many days per week teams are permitted to practice, insurance benefits for athletes, and how many games will be played in a season. There is nothing that prevents the NCAA from imposing similar rules that would strike a fair balance of protecting college athletes' health and safety and their right to profit from their performance and NIL, while stabilizing the transfer portal (i.e., requiring athletes to spend at least two seasons at their first school).
Additionally, revenue to support and promote women's college sports and Olympic sports (such as track and field, swimming and gymnastics among others), can be derived by encouraging free market solutions, instead of limiting the amount of money available to and earned by college football and men's basketball players. The NCAA and Congress should focus on rules and policies that would provide incentives for athletic departments to drive revenues across all sports and aspects of their business. This includes grants and tax breaks for field and arena improvements, encouraging national broadcasts of women's and Olympic sports, supporting live events, better utilizing arena/stadium facilities when not in use for games, moving to national sponsorship models and improving sponsorship rates and terms, using media and entertainment platforms to drive value, monetizing game-day adjacent activities (such as tailgates, festivals and concerts, and zoning for bars, restaurants, hotels and other ancillary properties and investments near sports venues), and otherwise enabling the free market to work to reward the most competitive business models.
Instead of flat-out banning third-party pay-for-play agreements and limiting donor investments into college sports, the NCAA and Congress should work together to implement equitable transfer rules and encourage revenue generation across all sports; which, when combined, will provide much needed stability and accomplish President Trump's goals, while also allowing college athletes to be fairly compensated for their work.
Takeaways
The Executive Order does not create any binding law. Rather, it directs agencies and departments of the current Administration to create new laws and policies regulating college athletics, prioritizes college athletic legislation towards the top of the congressional agenda, and publicly announces the Administration's stance on the issue.
Representatives Brett Guthrie, Tim Walberg, and Jim Jordan, each of whom helped advance the SCORE Act to the House floor (the farthest any Federal NIL legislation has so far progressed), issued a statement lauding the Executive Order as a perfect complement to their bill, which recently advanced to a full committee vote. The SCORE Act, which may be voted on after the summer recess, includes NCAA-favorable clauses that are in line with President Trump's views, inter alia, a requirement that all NIL deals meet a valid business purpose related to the promotion of goods or services (aligning with the College Sports Commission's guidance), and language that pre-empts state NIL laws. Democrats have been critical of the SCORE Act for not going far enough to protect college athletes, and have offered an alternative proposal, introduced by Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Lori Trahan as the College Athlete Economic Freedom Act. Their bill does not seem to have sufficient support to move forward.
While the current conditions and requirements of the House Settlement remain intact, it is clear that the Trump Administration remains keen on implementing further guardrails that appear intended to scrutinize third-party pay-for-play deals. To that end, interested stakeholders (i.e., universities, athletic programs, collectives), should work with their advisors to continue to monitor any legislative and legal developments in the space, to ensure continued compliance with any paradigmatic changes brought upon by the Trump Administration.
Manatt's college athletics team will continue to monitor and provide updates on NIL rules and regulations as they develop, including with respect to Section 4 of the Executive Order, which directs the Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission to review and potentially revise litigation guidelines affecting collegiate athletics, and to plan for future litigation challenges within 60 days of the order.
We are available to counsel college athletic departments and athletes navigating the complex terrain of college athletics and those seeking advice on driving revenue to support their programs and athletes.
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