WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that bars payments from university boosters and some other private-sector donors to college athletes.
The NCAA changed its rules in 2021 to allow athletes to profit from their own name, image and likeness, or NIL. A White House fact sheet Thursday said third-party payments from boosters and other private donors “created a chaotic environment that threatens the financial and structural viability of college athletics.”
“Waves of recent litigation against collegiate athletics governing rules have eliminated limits on athlete compensation, pay-for-play recruiting inducements, and transfers between universities, unleashing a sea change that threatens the viability of college sports,” the order said.
A patchwork of laws exists across states, with no federal NIL law in place. A federal judge in June approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement, which paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes.
“While changes providing some increased benefits and flexibility to student-athletes were overdue and should be maintained, the inability to maintain reasonable rules and guardrails is a mortal threat to most college sports,” the executive order said.
According to the White House fact sheet, the order’s prohibition of “third-party, pay-for-play payments” does not apply to “legitimate, fair-market-value compensation that a third party provides to an athlete, such as for a brand endorsement.”
The order also seeks to preserve and expand “opportunities for scholarships and collegiate athletic competition in women’s and non-revenue sports” and calls on the secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify the “status” of college-athletes.
A day before the order, two U.S. House panels advanced a measure that would set a national framework for college athletes’ compensation and bar them from being recognized as employees.
That bill, the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act, or ‘‘SCORE Act,” was approved in the House Energy and Commerce and Education and Workforce committees, which both have jurisdiction.
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