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As President Donald Trump carries out one of the most sports-focused administrations in history, his recent “Saving College Sports” executive order has prompted a strong response from veteran sports agent Leigh Steinberg.
“They were responding to a need which was that the recruiting and transfer portal had gone out of control,” Steinberg told Fox News Digital.
The NCAA logo is displayed at the center of a basektball court. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)
The executive order, which aims to regulate the business of college sports by putting restrictions on what parties can pay college athletes and mandating the preservation of resources for women’s sports, came at a time when more money than ever is being made available to college athletes.
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The recent House vs. NCAA Supreme Court settlement legalized, for the first time, universities to directly pay college athletes via revenue sharing. Previously, college athletes were only allowed to make money via NIL. But Trump’s mandate prevents the athletes from being able to legally accept money from any third-party source to play for a certain school.
“It had some positive elements to it in that he’s trying to regulate a field that has been unregulated,” Steinberg said.
Steinberg believes that restricting the “collectives,” meaning the third parties that were paying athletes to pay for certain universities, was essential in keeping recruiting fair.
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“While [schools] can still bring a deal to a player, it’s going to have to fit fair-market value,” Steinberg said. “It should cool off the volatile recruiting-for-money market.”
Steinberg also praised the executive order’s intent to protect and preserve resources for college sports other than football and men’s basketball, especially women’s sports that don’t generate as much revenue.
“It has a series of standards based on the size of the revenue of the athletic department that mandates it does not cut scholarships for players in those sports, so it’s a protective device,” Steinberg said.
“If part of the goal is to provide the most educational opportunities for the most students, and we think that playing sports is one of those, then it can’t simply be college football, basketball and women’s basketball; it’s got to be a broader charge of protecting those sports.”
The executive order only lays out general objectives, and gives the Trump administration 30 days to design a framework before it is implemented.
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President Donald Trump holds up an executive order after signing it during an indoor inauguration parade on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Steinberg believes that the defined language of the order must specifically determine what third parties can contribute to recruiting in order to effectively prevent third-party pay-for-play from occurring, while not hamstringing other resources to college sports programs from boosters and not hampering the NIL market.
“It’s gotta have guidelines in terms of what collectives or outside bodies can or can’t do in terms of contributing money to that recruiting process, and then it’s got to install certain metrics and criteria as to what an acceptable deal is based on player branding and marketing,” Steinberg said.
Steinberg also called for the implementation of a salary cap in college football and men’s basketball.
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