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When President Donald Trump hosts an event in the Oval Office and opens things up to questions from the media, as he did on Friday while hosting members of the 1980 Miracle on Ice team, you get a lot of dumb questions.
I mean, I get that opportunities to ask the president a question are at a premium, but with Jim Craig and Mike Eruzione on hand, is that the time to ask about Venezuela?!
President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd before the start of the NFL Super Bowl 59 football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
Anyway, at least one member of the press asked a question that made a lot of sense, and it had to do with NIL.
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That’s fitting, as back when the Miracle on Ice team played, the Olympics were strictly for amateurs, and most of the team was plucked from various collegiate rosters.
Had they played 40-plus years later, they may have been rolling in some of that NIL dough.
But, as the president noted — and Sen. Ted Cruz would agree with — the current state of NIL is simply not sustainable and could cause serious damage to college athletics, and even the Olympics.
U.S. President Donald Trump, joined by the 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team, holds up a bill to honor the team in the Oval Office of the White House on Dec. 13, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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“I think that it’s a disaster for college sports,” President Trump said. “I think it’s a disaster for the Olympics, because, you know, we’re losing a lot of teams. The colleges are cutting a lot of their — they would call them sort of the ‘lesser’ sports, and they’re losing them like at numbers nobody can believe. They were really training grounds, beautiful training grounds, hard-working, wonderful young people. They were training grounds for the Olympics.
“And a lot of these sports that were training so well would win gold medals because of it. Those sports don’t exist because they’re putting all their money into football. And by the way, they’re putting too much money into it, into football.”
President Trump noted that the top-performing athletic programs aren’t making enough money to sustain themselves, given the rate at which they’re paying highly sought-after players.
U.S. President Donald Trump stands with Ohio State Head Coach Ryan Day as he welcomes the 2025 College Football National Champions from Ohio State University to the White House during a ceremony on the south lawn in Washington, District of Columbia, on April 14, 2025. Ohio State won the national championship by defeating Notre Dame 34-23. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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“They’re putting all of their money in, and I know something about it,” President Trump said. “They will not be able to stop. You have a college president [saying], “I’m telling you, sir, we give a guard $7 million, we’re going to win the national championship,’ and they’ll give them seven, then they won’t win it.
“And even if they do win it, colleges cannot afford to be paying the kind of salaries that you’re hearing about.”
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