President Trump’s plans to reform the business of college sports are ramping up this week – and college athletes are slated to join the talks for the first time, On The Money has learned.
Sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter say 30 collegiate athletes from various sports will be part of the ongoing discussions spearheaded by the White House, New York Yankees President Randy Levine and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Levine and DeSantis are co-chairs of Trump’s new Saving College Sports Roundtable, a group of about two dozen executives from the college and professional levels, to fix the financial side of college sports. They’ll tackle the insane money grab known by its acronym, NIL, or “name, image and likeness.”
The upcoming meetings involving the athletes have not been reported and they are set to address simmering concerns about the president’s reform process – including gripes that it didn’t include input from the college players themselves.
An NCAA rep tells On The Money that group has “enacted long overdue change in college sports and will continue to tackle emerging issues facing student-athletes and administrators. The NCAA will not comment on confidential DI Cabinet meeting agenda items at this time.”
On The Money did not immediately learn the names of the athletes who will participate in a series of Zoom calls beginning on Wednesday.
The roundtable sought out a diverse group of athletes from the big four NCAA conferences, Division II and III schools and schools like Notre Dame that are independent from conferences. The players involved cover most major college sports from football to basketball to Olympic competitions, sources said. They added that there will be significant representation of women at the coming meetings.
“This will be a big week for the roundtable,” said one person with knowledge of the matter. “This is really coming together.”
Last week, Trump signed an executive order — the first major action from the working group — designed to clamp down on the financial incentives that many believe has turned college sports into a free-for-all, with players jumping from school to school in search of more lucrative endorsement deals.
The NCAA is considering a new rule that mirrors one of the cornerstones of Trump’s executive order that limits a college athlete’s so-called eligibility to remain a student athlete – including how many times an athlete can transfer to another school, limiting it to just once.
An NCAA spokesman had no immediate comment.
A longtime college sports fan, Trump announced the roundtable at a White House confab last month. The move came after he heard how college sports became a mess in recent years, after the NCAA allowed athletes to cash in on their name, image and likeness through advertising and endorsements.
That all began in 2021, and now critics say the college sports system is in significant disrepair as student athletes jump from school to school in search of the best endorsement deals.
Yes, some top college athletes can cash in on lucrative endorsement deals. Arch Manning, the highly touted quarterback from the University of Texas and heir to the Manning football dynasty, has for one inked an NIL deal worth nearly $7 million.
But the system also siphons resources from academic pursuits and is making it difficult to finance sports outside of football and basketball, which attract the biggest endorsement dollars. Smaller schools are at a disadvantage since their ability to dangle lucrative NIL endorsement deals is limited by money from third parties, known as collectives, which tap into the donor base of bigger schools to help with recruitment.
The White House roundtable firmly believes that student athletes should be compensated for various endorsement deals – just not at the expense of upending all of college sports.
The executive order — if it withstands likely legal challenges – allows student athletes one transfer and requires funding for women’s sports and Olympics programs that have been getting shafted under the money grab. Also, the collectives would face federal regulation.
Input from the college athletes will be used to form the basis of recommendations to Congress, which is looking at federal legislation to ensconce the executive order into law. Legislation in both the House and the Senate is expected to start taking shape in the coming weeks, sources said.
