President Trump Declares He Will Produce an Executive Order to Fix College Sports

STILLWATER – Watching and listening from afar and we can be hopeful, but not completely convinced, that the President of the United States can do something to provoke change and improvement in college sports. We all know that the advent of NIL; even with a federal court ruling designed to alleviate crazy overspending and establish some semblance of balance parity to especially Division I college athletics and, more precisely, football; has caused a new arms race. Instead of facilites as in the past, schools now race to rally big money boosters to fund collectives that can outbid competing schools for talent. Throw in the transfer portal era of limited movement between schools and tampering to provoke it. College athletics, while still successful in drawing fans has become an unsustainable exercise.

President Donald Trump brought together a group of the leaders in college and professional sports including conference commissioners like Brett Yormark of the Big 12, Tony Petitti (Big Ten), Greg Sankey (SEC), Jim Phillips (ACC), and Tim Pernetti (American), NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, and famed coaches like our friend at Pokes Report Mack Brown, Urban Meyer, and former Alabama and Hall of Fame head coach Nick Saban.

The panel discussion ended with President Trump and a declaration, but the discussion before was energetic and passionate.

Saban was the first to speak out of the college associated congregation. He said his goal was to see athletes in college be prepared for success in life and through an environment that would help them through personal development and academic support. Saban said the system that should promote that had become a failure.

“I think we need to come up with a system, and we obviously have to do that with the president’s leadership and also Congress, probably, whether it’s antitrust legislation or whatever it is, to allow student-athletes in all sports, including women’s and Olympic sports, to enhance their quality of life while going to college,” Saban stated. “But still provide opportunity to advance themselves beyond their athletic career, which is what the philosophy of college athletics and getting a college education has always been about. And how much does anybody talk about getting an education anymore? Nobody talks about it at all, which is the most important thing any of these student-athletes can do in terms of enhancing the future.”

Mack Brown spoke intensely of the tampering going on and how it disintegrates the integrity that college sports is supposed to display. He also spoke of the lack of integrity with a lot of the people working as “agents” supposedly on behalf of the athletes. Instead they are stealing from the athletes and giving little of the support that professional agents deliver.  

Texas Tech is a school that has benefitted greatly in this era with the help of uber booster and former football player Cody Campbell, now the chair of the Board of Trustees at his alma mater. Campbell, a multi-billionaire from the sale of his Double Eagle Energy enterprises has paid for a lot of incoming athletic talent at Tech.

“Many of the agendas in this room and outside this room are going to become impossible," said Campbell. “The reality is nobody’s going to get everything. If we're going to come to a solution on this, we have to find a place where we’re all equally unhappy, just like any other business deal.”

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips told the president, “We need your help,” and said none of the commissioners in the room has been told by any players that they want to be considered employees.

“They're smart enough to understand what that means,” Phillips said of moving to collective bargaining like professional sports.

Sankey; like Saban, Brown, Phillips, Yormark, and much of the college contingent; urged near immediate solution. 

“We’ll fracture more if we fail to act,” Sankey said.

The President had his answer. He said he will write an executive order within a week that will “solve all of the problems” in college sports and actively address the future of one of America’s great traditions.

“I will have an executive order within one week, and it will be very all-encompassing,” Trump said. “And we’re going to put it forward, and we’re going to get sued, and we're going to see how it plays, OK, but I’ll have an executive order, which will solve every problem in this room, every conceivable problem, within one week, and we’ll put it forward. We will get sued. That’s the only thing I know for sure.”