On July 24, 2025, President Trump signed the “Save College Sports” Executive Order (the “Executive Order” or “Order”), introducing the voice of the executive branch into the rapidly evolving landscape of college sports in a post-Alston world. The Executive Order sheds light, for the first time, on the administration’s policy views on the numerous issues facing college athletics, communicating its aims to “maximize the educational benefits and opportunities provided by higher education institutions through athletics” and to quiet the chaotic nature of issues surrounding the amateurism question, name, image and likeness (“NIL”) payments to college athletes, and Title IX matters.
Pre-Alston
The edict’s arrival is the result of a decades-long tug-of-war over the rights of college athletes, particularly where those rights may conflict with the business of intercollegiate athletics. As pertains to NIL alone, the landmark O’Bannon v. NCAA case served as the first battleground for the publicity rights of student-athletes, when former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon and others filed a class action suit against the NCAA, alleging violation of antitrust law for prohibiting student-athletes from sharing in the revenue from the use of their NIL in various forms of media, including video games, as was the case for O’Bannon. 802 F.3d 1049 (9th Cir. 2015). The NCAA maintained that paying its athletes would be a violation of its policy of pure amateurism in sports, and, therefore, the athletes could not be paid for the use of their NIL via revenue sharing. The Ninth Circuit found the NCAA’s amateurism argument unpersuasive and determined the NCAA’s amateurism policy to be a violation of antitrust laws that could be cured by providing a full cost-of-attendance scholarship to athletes.
Alston v. NCAA (2021)
Following O’Bannon, the NCAA again came under scrutiny in the Alston case, this time for antitrust violations dealing with the NCAA’s restrictions on “non-cash education-related benefits” to athletes. NCAA v. Alston, 141 S. Ct. 2141 (2021). The United States Supreme Court ultimately found that the NCAA’s rules limiting education-related compensation did in fact violate antitrust laws. Though Alston did not itself directly address NIL, Justice Kavanaugh’s blistering dissent in the opinion, castigating the NCAA for its blatant and broad antitrust violations, seems to have served as a catalyst for, or at least the first domino in, the wave of changes that quickly followed. Almost concurrently with the issuance of the Alston decision, the NCAA, prompted by state legislation which conflicted with and undermined its regulations, issued its Interim Name, Image, and Likeness Policy (“Interim Policy”), which authorized college athletes at member institutions to profit from their NIL activities for the first time. The Interim Policy on NIL still prohibited pay-for-play compensation, but both litigation (e.g. the Johnson v. NCAA case) and National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) challenges (e.g. Dartmouth men’s basketball petition to unionize, former General Counsel of the NLRB Jennifer Abruzzo’s formal guidance that student-athletes are employees) mounted thereafter, placing pressure on the NCAA’s amateurism model as well.
Subsequent Guidance, Other Developments, and Impact
Following implementation of the Interim Policy, the NCAA issued further guidance in May and October of 2022, as an attempt to establish baseline boundaries surrounding NIL. The May 2022 guidance sought to target booster activity in recruiting athletes to schools, as collectives took hold across the country, often using NIL as a legal, or at least legally gray, bridge to induce matriculation by desired athletes. The October 2022 guidance emphasized the importance of universities’ role in NIL and their relationship with college athletes, encouraging schools to offer support in the areas of financial literacy, taxes, social media practices, and entrepreneurship for athletes, while also implementing guardrails around that limited support.
Around this same time, many states began to propose legislation to create a structure for the now-permitted NIL activities, motivated in part by a desire to protect the state’s athletes and in part by a desire to create recruiting advantages for the state’s colleges and universities. What followed, however, was a mix of increased litigation on a variety of related issues and proposed (but thus far unsuccessful) federal legislation aimed at overriding discordant state laws and judicial determinations, both with respect to NIL and the potential classification of athletes as employees, which continues to complicate the debate surrounding the rights and employment status of athletes at universities. Most notably, in Johnson v. NCAA, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit acknowledged last year that student-athletes might be employees of their schools under the Fair Labor Standards Act. And just a couple of months ago, House v. NCAA saw the approval of a $2.8 billion settlement, which will now allow schools to pay athletes directly (in excess of scholarship limits) for the use of their NIL in media broadcasts, further narrowing the distinction between amateur and professional athlete. But if the pending litigation and proposed legislation were not enough, there are also the concerns of athletes and others as to the ability of non-revenue generating sports to survive at universities following these changes, which some fear could disproportionately impact women’s sports and Olympic sports as a result of reduced funding availability, triggering Title IX issues. These concerns are not confined to informal speculation or private worry but have themselves surfaced in formal litigation contexts.
The Executive Order
It is in this environment that the Executive Order proposes to streamline the multitude of issues that have spawned in the wake of the Alston decision. The Executive Order tackles this herculean objective on four pillars: (1) protection of women’s and non-revenue sports and prohibition of pay-for-play, (2) clarification of student-athlete status, (3) protection against litigation, and (4) protection for the development of the U.S. Olympic team.
With respect to the first pillar, the Executive Order directs the Secretary of Education, in consultation with the Attorney General, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Education (sic), and Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to develop a plan within 30 days of the Order to advance certain policies “through all available and appropriate regulatory, enforcement, and litigation mechanisms.” The referenced policies include: a call for collegiate athletic departments to increase scholarship opportunities and maximize roster spots for non-revenue sports at schools earning over $125 million in revenue; maintain the number of scholarship opportunities and maximize roster spots for non-revenue sports at schools earning over $50 million; and not to disproportionately reduce scholarship opportunities or roster spots for sports based on revenue generation at schools earning $50 million or less. The referenced policies also include a call to implement any revenue-sharing policies with an eye toward preservation of women’s and non-revenue sports and a prohibition of third-party, pay-for-play payments (NIL transactions are excepted). E.O. Sec. 2. It is not clear from the language of the Executive Order how “revenue,” “non-revenue sports,” or “pay-for-play” are defined.
Under the second pillar, the Executive Order instructs the Secretary of Labor and NLRB to determine and implement measures to “clarify[] the status of collegiate athletes” in a way that will “maximize the educational benefits and opportunities provided by higher education institutions through athletics.” E.O. Sec. 3. It does not opine on what the executive branch believes that clarification should be, or whether student-athletes should or should not be deemed employees, and it does not specify a deadline for such clarification.
Next, the Executive Order directs the Attorney General and Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to “stabilize and preserve college athletics… by protecting the rights and interests of student-athletes and the long-term availability of … scholarships and opportunities when such elements are unreasonably challenged under antitrust or other legal theories.” E.O. Sec. 4. To do so, the Attorney General and Chairman are to review litigation positions, guidelines, policies, and other actions and develop a plan to implement revisions to these in future within 60 days of the Order. The language does not make clear what or whose litigation positions, guidelines, or policies would be included under this section.
Under the final pillar, the Order instructs that the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison are to consult the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee about “safeguarding the integral role and competitive advantage that American collegiate athletics provide in developing athletes that represent the United States in international competitions.” E.O. Sec. 5. The Order does not prescribe any specific method or plan for doing so and does not impose a deadline for the consultation.
Looking Ahead
What does the Executive Order mean for the future of college athletics? In the immediate future, we do not expect it to create significant change to the status quo. While the Executive Order reveals the administration’s priorities and general view on what college sports should look like going forward, it does not itself take concrete steps towards advancing its stated aims. The Order communicates to various federal agencies general missions to address the present issues but does not provide detailed roadmaps to meet those ends and does not establish any enforcement mechanisms to see its directives through. In fact, the Executive Order explicitly disclaims its own enforceability at law or in equity. E.O. Sec. 6(c). To the extent we can expect to see changes as a result of the Executive Order, we would need to look to the Attorney General, Department of Education, and Federal Trade Commission, among others named, over the coming months to see how those agencies have interpreted and carried out the more general instructions of the Order. This could potentially be a futile endeavor for those agencies whose responsibilities have been reduced in the administration’s efforts to make government functions more efficient. For instance, although the Secretary of Education is tasked under the Order with developing plans to preserve women’s sports and non-revenue sports, among other things, the recent cuts to the U.S. Department of Education could seriously impair the Secretary’s ability to tackle this new assignment.
Separately, the Executive Order could be vulnerable to legal challenge. Setting aside the Order’s own enforceability disclaimer, because federal law remains exclusively within Congress’s province, the Executive Order would not be enforceable and, to the extent any federal agency might act under its direction, litigation could still result. That said, because the Order merely invites the named federal agencies to review the ongoing issues and implement strategies to address them, but does not burden them with consequences for failing to take any specific steps, appetite for litigation on the Order may depend on how much or how little federal agencies embrace their directives. Interestingly, to address the preservation of women’s sports, specifically, and avoid the threat of legal challenge for unenforceability, the president could issue Title IX guidance, which would fall within his authority.
Although the Executive Order seeks to streamline the pending legal issues in college athletics, we will need to await further policy or action from the federal agencies named in the Order to understand what the more unified college sports landscape President Trump envisions will look like and whether the vision will be applied. In the interim, we can likely expect the trajectory of change and challenge to continue until such a unified system is achieved.
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