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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:

1. 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;
2. 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
3. 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.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.