President Donald Trump’s second Executive Order (EO), issued on April 3, sent this writer back to my senior year of high school and a class called “Principles of American Democracy” to understand what effect, if any, his second EO would have on the future of college athletics.
“The relationship between laws and executive orders reflects the ongoing power balance between Congress and the President,” Gov.com tells us. “Sometimes they work together, with executive orders providing detailed instructions for implementing broader laws. Other times, especially during political standoffs, presidents may use executive orders more aggressively, sparking debates about executive overreach and separation of powers.
“When citizens understand these distinctions, they can better evaluate government actions, hold elected officials accountable, and engage more meaningfully in the democratic process.”
It certainly helped this citizen reboot memory on the separation of powers and the difference between a law and an EO, which would not prevail in a court of law. I found it pertinent that Gov.com also reminds us that a president’s EO is written with the intent of providing “detailed instructions for implementing laws” to Congress, particularly during political standoffs.
The second EO certainly provided Congress with detailed instructions, a Congress controlled by members of his own party.
And the EO was much more forceful than his first, which had no effect. The second EO specifically addressed top priorities, including stabilizing caps on player eligibility and movement, the funding of women’s and Olympic sports, prohibiting professional players from playing at the collegiate level, as well as banning collectives.
The EO has had the additional benefit of encouraging the NCAA to push for legislation to streamline eligibility limits.
Members to meet this coming week
While Congress is on recess, members of the NCAA Division I Cabinet will meet this coming week to explore an age-based standard for eligibility with implementation as early as August 2026.
The urgency to simplify the eligibility rule is necessitated by the tidal wave of requests for extended eligibility — 1,450 in the past year — the result of players now wanting to cash in on revenue sharing and NIL deals for additional years.
While two-thirds of those requests have been granted, about 500 have not, leading to 70 requiring expensive litigation. According to Front Office Sports, the NCAA has spent at least $16 million on eligibility cases alone this past year.
The changes considered include:
• Five years for all college athletes to complete their eligibility, beginning on their 19th birthday or their high school graduation, whichever comes first.
• Eliminating redshirt years and medical or injury-related waivers.
• Limiting exceptions to select situations such as maternity leave, military service or religious missions.
While the committee won’t vote they will discuss unintended consequences of the proposed changes, including the impact on current student athletes, and whether the changes would survive expected legal challenges at either a federal or state level should Congress not take necessary legislative action.
The majority agree that five years to play five seasons is best for the good of current and future players, but NIL and revenue sharing have complicated the matter. By placing any limit on the number of years a player is eligible to play is viewed by some as a restraint on the individual’s ability to earn money and therefore a violation of antitrust laws.
According to Front Office Sports, NCAA president Charlie Baker shares Trump’s goal, which is to push the legislative process.
“I think part of the message from (Trump) is, can we figure out some way to push this a little harder through the legislative process and get something on the books that works (a law or an anti-trust exemption) and represents what most people are looking for at this point — which is a much simpler eligibility process, which we’ve been talking to our committees,” he said.
Trump’s EO also “commands the association to create strict guardrails around booster-backed NIL collectives — what it describes as “fraudulent NIL schemes” — and limit the movement of transfers by reinstating the NCAA’s “one-time” transfer rule.
The courts haven’t provided guidance on collectives but have ruled that it is unlawful (antitrust) to limit an individual’s opportunity to transfer only once.
According to Front Office Sports, “Many — including the president himself — expect the order to be challenged legally.”
“… the order is likely geared toward bringing attention to the issue in effort to pressure Congressional lawmakers to reach an agreement on a more concrete solution: legislation,” Yahoo Sports Ross Dellenger wrote. “That’s something of which lawmakers have failed to do in seven years of lobbying from the NCAA for a bill to, most notably, permit college sports leaders to enact and enforce rules without them being legally challenged — in other words, an antitrust exemption.”
And this second EO, which appears to have NCAA President Charlie Baker’s fingerprints on it, provides lawmakers with very specific direction.
Resolving what should be a bi-partisan issue
What should be a bi-partisan issue has been anything.
“Republicans support a more narrow NCAA-leaning bill with athlete restrictions;” Dellenger wrote. “Democrats, many of them harsh critics of the NCAA and power conference leadership, are supporting a more-broad bill with athlete freedoms.”
Much of the hangup centers around employment status - Democrats and enough Republicans advocating for it to stalemate the vote.
“Despite confidence from Republican leadership in the House, the Republican-authored SCORE Act — the one piece of all-encompassing legislation to emerge from a committee — has twice failed to reach the House floor for a vote. Lawmakers are working to bring SCORE to the floor by the month’s end, but they continue the process of whipping votes. Holding a slim House majority, Republicans cannot afford to lose their own members, some of whom oppose portions of the bill.”
Which is likely why the president wrote a second EO.
And if SCORE passes the House, it still must pass the Senate — which requires a 60-vote margin for approval — which is doubtful without significant modification to gain the seven votes necessary. If the president can't whip up enough votes for SCORE to pass, the modification discussion will center on athlete employment and antitrust protections.
Dellenger notes that five presidential committees have been formed “made up of college sports stakeholders, business executives and other dignitaries” to inform congressional legislation.
“Each committee is charged with studying an issue, plus a sixth group, an oversight committee, to review their work,” Dellenger wrote. “The oversight committee includes six presidents/chancellors from Georgia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Kansas, Utah and North Carolina, plus former Clemson president Jim Clements, Cody Campbell, Randy Levine and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The five ‘issues’ committees are Legislative (work with Congress for federal antitrust protection), Rules (determine NIL, portal, eligibility standards), NCAA Reform (future governance), Media (media rights and SBA) and Player-Agent relationship issues.
“Commissioners from the SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and American as well as Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua are assigned to Rules, Media and NCAA Reform committees as well as many other notable names, including Nick Saban, Condoleezza Rice and Adam Silver.”
Saban applauds the president’s efforts to move Congress to agree on legislation.
“I think ultimately, we need Congress to have some kind of anti-trust legislation that keeps us from having litigation (which) actually rules college sports,” Saban said. “Which is how we got where we are right now.”
