As expected, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order regarding NIL payments.
The fact sheet detailing the order’s main points says it all.
“President Trump recognizes the critical role of college sports in fostering leadership, education, and community pride, the need to address urgent threats to its future, including endless litigation seeking to eliminate the basic rules of college sports, escalating private-donor pay-for-play payments in football and basketball that divert resources from other sports and reduce competitive balance, and the commonsense reality that college sports are different than professional sports,” the fact sheet reads, via Amanda Christovich of FrontOfficeSports.com.
The “endless litigation” mentioned in the fact sheet was the result of a corrupt system that violated the antitrust laws and exploited players. The “endless litigation” was about making things right. About making them legal.
The executive order, as expected, is about turning the clock back to the days before the courts gave players power, along with the ability to make money. And the fact sheet reads as if Nick Saban himself wrote it from Trump.
(As if Saban wrote it for Trump. Saban.)
It’s unclear whether the executive order has any potency. It’s not a law. Like the SCORE Act, which is working its way toward a party-line vote in the House — and which likely will become law and, under the guise of solving an overblown CRISIS! that the NCAA and its members should be expected to solve on its own — pick the pockets of players by artificially limiting what they may earn.
Through it all, the players have no voice. That’s how the prior system lasted for decades, until the courts blew it up. Now, the other two branches of the federal government are doing their damnedest to override that progress.
Consider it another inalienable right. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness through the watching of college sports where the kids who are playing the games have limits on what they can get paid.
