Trump issues executive order related to paying college athletes

Just about a week away from college football teams reporting to camps, President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order governing how some payments are made to college athletes and to protect other sports that don’t generate lots of money.

The order claims to seek to clarify how universities pay their players, but it’s likely to further confuse an already chaotic landscape as university officials grapple with new revenue-sharing plans as part of a massive legal settlement that took effect on July 1.

The order will continue to allow athletes to market their name, image and likeness, better known as NIL, as long as those NIL deals remain “legitimate, fair-market value compensation … such as for a brand endorsement,” the order read in part.

But it prohibits “third-party, pay-for-play payments to college athletes,” the fact sheet reads. “The order provides that any revenue-sharing permitted between universities and collegiate athletes should be implemented in a manner that protects women’s and nonrevenue sports.”

Athletics department officials from Washington State University and Gonzaga University were not immediately available for interviews Thursday afternoon when the order was announced.

But U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, issued a statement in support.

“President Trump’s executive order is a major step toward restoring fairness in college athletics. It reins in NIL abuses, protects women’s and Olympic sports, and ensures any future revenue-sharing model preserves broad-based participation,” Baumgartner said in a news release. “I applaud the president for signing this executive order, and I look forward to working with him to save college sports.”

Trump’s directive comes on the heels of rules issued earlier this month by the College Sports Commission, which was created by the Southeastern, Big Ten, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences to oversee a revenue-sharing system that was created by the July 1 House settlement.

In essence, the College Sports Commission is taking over the role that once was administered by the NCAA.

The settlement in House v. NCAA ended three separate federal-antitrust lawsuits which all claimed that the NCAA illegally was limiting the earning power of college athletes.

Since NIL payments began in 2021, collectives affiliated with specific schools inked deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars with athletes. They pool funds from donors and boosters and use them to license the NIL rights of specific athletes in exchange for appearances and social media posts.

As part of the suit, some of the $2.8 billion settlement will be distributed to athletes who played before they could take advantage of the current NIL rules.

But the suit also established a clearinghouse, called NIL Go, that must approve all third-party deals over $600, according to previous reporting by the Athletic.

The two main requirements for those deals are that they must be created for a “valid business purpose” and fit within the fair-market “range of compensation.”

The settlement also created a revenue-sharing system that allowed schools to directly pay their athletes up to $20.5 million in 2025. The CSC, created by the power conferences, was established to oversee that revenue-sharing program and it issued rules how schools were to issue those funds.

Earlier this month, the CSC issued guidance that immediately was met with backlash.

The guidance said “an entity with a business purpose of providing payments or benefits to student-athletes or institutions, rather than providing goods or services to the general public for profit, does not satisfy the valid business purpose requirement set forth in NCAA Rule 22.1.3.”

In response, attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman, who argued the case on behalf of the athletes, sent a letter to the College Sports Commission saying its guidance violated the terms of the House settlement and that the board should treat collectives the same as any other third-party business.

“While we want to continue to work together to implement the Settlement Agreement in a cooperative fashion, this process is undermined when the CSC goes off the reservation and issues directions to the schools that are not consistent with the Settlement agreement terms,” the letter said, according to the Athletic.

The CSC guidance also raised the ire of the Collective Association, a trade group of prominent collectives from around the country.

The CSC rules “regarding ‘true NIL’ and ‘valid business purposes’ is not only misguided but deeply dismissive of the collective organizations and the tens of thousands of fans and donors who fuel them,” the association wrote, according to the Athletic. “Any attempt to delegitimize the role collectives play in today’s collegiate athletics landscape ignores both legal precedent and economic reality.”

In regards to those ongoing revenue sharing controversies, Trump’s order directs the U.S. Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations board to clarify the status of student-athletes.

“The order directs the Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission to take appropriate actions to protect student-athletes’ rights and safeguard the long-term stability of college athletics from endless, debilitating antitrust and other legal challenges.”