Trump to sign executive order to expand NCAA’s control over college sports

President Trump is expected to sign an executive order as soon as Friday regarding National Collegiate Athletic Association control over collegiate sports, according to a senior White House official. 

The president’s order aims to increase the NCAA’s control over college athletes and programs and threatens to review federal government grants and contracts for colleges and universities that don’t comply with NCAA rules. 

Name, image and likeness — or NIL — rights granted by a court settlement mean that Division I student-athletes may be directly paid by colleges. The president has railed against the new system, which is costing some schools millions in payments. The $2.8 billion settlement was retroactive, so colleges are on the hook for NIL opportunities denied to student-athletes from 2016-2025. 

“What they’ve done is destroyed college sports and destroying colleges because colleges can’t afford to pay quarterbacks, that never threw a ball before, that a 17 years old, $12 million dollars to play college, because every college is going to go bankrupt.,” Trump said in a speech to the Republican congressional campaign arm in March. 

The president has also publicly lamented about how the new NIL policies could affect women’s sports and the Olympics, noting that many American Olympians train at U.S. colleges. 

At a college sports roundtable in early March, the president also vowed to write a broad executive order to address the issue and expressed hope that it would trigger congressional action.

The Trump administration is still pushing for congressional action to standardize the rules surrounding the name, image, and likeness policy. The SCORE Act – a House of Representatives bill that stalled — would regulate compensation received from NIL and beef up protections for college athletes.