The White House is getting in on NIL
President Trump and Nick Saban are creating a new commission to meddle with college athletics
Defenders of the NCAA rejoice - your time has come. The government is finally stepping in on NIL and the state of college athletics, with President Trump looking to launch a new commission to attempt to fix the sport, per Yahoo! Sports’s Ross Dellenger.
The move comes on the back of a meeting between coaching great Nick Saban and President Trump that focused on how NIL has “damaged” college football, according to the Wall Street Journal. Additionally, Senator and former FBS coach Tommy Tuberville noted last week that President Trump was considering an executive order to oversee college athletics.
This isn’t the first time President Trump has waded into the college athletics waters in his second term. April 9, just days after the penultimate House v. NCAA hearing, over 100 Power Four administrators and stakeholders traveled to Washington D.C. to lobby the government for federal NIL guidelines.
The Commission
Before we get into the nitty gritty, it’s important to note that the White House has been very tight lipped about any potential executive orders coming down relating to college athletics or NIL. We have very limited information to go off of, so its hard to judge what’s real and what’s not.
What we do know is that the commission is likely going to be established by the coming executive order, making it a part of the executive branch for checks and balances purposes. Dellenger’s reporting shows that there’s to be two co-chairs of the commission — Saban and Cody Campbell.
But who is Campbell? Well, he’s the billionaire behind Texas Tech’s incredibly successful and incredibly ambitious Matador Club collective and the bank behind Joey McGuire’s second-ranked transfer portal class.
Campbell has also scratched his writing itch, penning three NIL-related opinion pieces for right-leaning publication The Federalist. Of the three pieces, two are essentially asking for government intervention to save college athletics through NIL regulation. One of them is even titled “Only Congress And The President Can Save College Sports.”
Throughout his pieces, Campbell is not decrying NIL or the fact that college athletes can get paid. Instead, he’s looking for a system that can sustain all college sports. Sounds reasonable, right?
He does point out some of the unfair truths in the system - Olympic sports do not and have not ever generated revenue at 99 percent of schools; football and men’s basketball are the big money generators that are bankrolling entire departments. Those are facts you can see in any school’s budgetary reporting. He also goes after other ideas, particularly the House v. NCAA settlement and the antitrust exemption many are seeking and hoping for.
At this point, I’m sure you think you know where this is going - two curmudgeonly right-leaning dudes are going to blow up any sense of equality. But I don’t know if that is the case.
In reading Campbell’s pieces, I don’t get that sense. In fact, he talks a lot about how the current economic situation in college athletics is used to promote equality. He points out how Olympic sports and lower-level divisions are the lifeblood of college athletics and where its heart and soul reside. And he’s right. Sure, watching UNC-Duke in Cameron Indoor or The Game the Saturday after Thanksgiving are special, but it’s the small moments that build up college atheltics. It’s the midweek MACtion, the Brawl of the Wild, the small rivalries between D3 schools - that’s what makes it truly special.
We can look at his actions in The Matador Club and see that committment to all athletes, not just the football team. In fact, the second team that got a stipend pledge from the collective way back in April 2023 was the softball team.
And, by all reports, Saban’s conversation with President Trump didn’t focus on why NIL is bad. It focused on how the lack of regulation was bad. By initial reports, this isn’t the end of the college athletics world. And yes, getting a billionaire as a co-chair of a college athletics commission isn’t ideal, but I think this can turn out well for everyone.
How does this affect the House settlement?
That is where things get muddy — really muddy.
Let’s all return to eighth grade civics class for a moment. Who can tell me the branch of government that’s supposed to create laws?
That’s right — the legislative branch. This commission would fall under the executive branch as a Presidential Commission — still something that carries weight but not something that can be officially codified into law.
The House v. NCAA settlement is coming down the pipe through the judicial branch, which oftentimes doesn’t make laws at all. Instead, they rule on the validity for it. And since the House settlement is from a lawsuit and being bargained between the suit’s plaintiffs and defendants, it falls under the purview of the Justice Department and judicial branch.
So who wins between the judicial and executive branches? That’s actually a trick question so don’t fault yourself if you don’t know the answer immediately.
Anything the executive branch does can be challenged by the judicial branch through a lawsuit. That would mean, most likely, that the House settlement and any restrictions or NIL-related governance contained within its terms would supercede anything this Presidential Commission does. We can see that happening with a whole host of President Trump’s executive orders so far where judges have halted or killed the order entirely. So, what Judge Wilken rules would most likely stand.
And where exactly does the House v. NCAA settlement stand? Both parties filed an amendment to the settlement yesteday, May 7, allowing for athletes currently on rosters to be grandfathered in and not count towards roster caps. We’ll see if Judge Wilken is appeased by that and approves the settlement or denies it ouright like she’s theatened to do.
So the judicial branch wins, right? In that small case, yes. But the legislative branch is cooking up their own idea.
A bipartisan team of Democrats Cory Booker (New Jersey), Chris Coons (Delaware) and Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), along with Republicans Ted Cruz (Texas) and Jerry Moran (Kansas) have been deep in negotiations the past few months to submit a culminating final bill for federal NIL regulation. According to Dellenger’s reporting, the group is “as close as they’ve ever been.”
We venture more into politics here (note: I’m not a political reporter nor do I ever plan to be so take this with a grain of salt) and wonder how President Trump’s involvement will impact that Senatorial bill. Would it be worked into whatever the Commission decides? Will they continue to work separately and release conflicting bills and/or executive orders to be interpreted by the judges of the world?
There’s so much that’s unknown here.
Right now, I believe that the easiest path to actual regulation and order in college athletics is the House settlement. We may get a resolution on that very soon. This Presidential Commission hasn’t even been announced. Will it continue if the House settlement is approved?
So yes, this is a big story. Anytime the President looks to form federal guidelines for anything relating to college athletics is. But in a sea of potential regulators and regulations and bills and hearings and comisssions, it’s impossible to know what’s really going to happen.
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