LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – President Donald Trump’s executive order on college sports is built on a simple idea: restore order to a system that has drifted into chaos.
Transfers without limits. Compensation without clear boundaries. State laws pulling in different directions. A financial arms race that even the biggest athletic departments admit they may not be able to sustain.
The order tries to pull all of that back toward the middle.
But the question that follows is just as simple, and harder to answer:
Can it?
Because for all of its reach, the order steps into a legal landscape that has already reshaped college athletics in ways no executive action can easily reverse.
A system already redefined by the courts
For years now, the most important decisions in college sports haven’t come from commissioners or university presidents. They’ve come from courtrooms.
The clearest marker came in the Supreme Court’s 2021 NCAA v. Alston decision, which struck down NCAA limits on certain education-related benefits and, more importantly, made plain that the NCAA’s old model would no longer get the benefit of the doubt from the courts.
That ruling didn’t create NIL on its own. But it accelerated the collapse of the old guardrails.
Since then, the basic direction of the law has been clear: judges have grown increasingly skeptical of broad restrictions on athlete compensation and movement, and increasingly willing to treat college sports as a marketplace subject to the same legal scrutiny as other businesses.
That matters here.
Because while Trump’s executive order doesn’t directly impose salary caps or transfer restrictions, it leans on the idea that a national governing body can set and enforce rules in those areas, and that schools can be pressured to follow them.
That’s where the tension begins.
Those are the same kinds of restrictions courts have already been wary of. And any attempt to restore them, even indirectly, is likely to draw immediate legal scrutiny.
Power — and limits — of an executive order
The order does not rewrite the rules of college sports on its own.
What it does instead is tie compliance to something universities care deeply about: federal funding.
Schools that receive federal contracts or research grants could face scrutiny — even potential penalties — if they violate rules tied to eligibility, transfers or certain forms of athlete compensation.
It’s a powerful lever. But it’s also an indirect one.
Executive orders can guide how federal agencies act. They can influence behavior. They can create pressure.
They do not override state law. And they do not settle constitutional questions.
So what emerges is less a mandate than a choice: comply with the framework the order encourages, or risk consequences tied to federal dollars.
For universities, that may be enough to matter. For courts, it may not be enough to hold.
Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford
A collision course with state laws
The order openly anticipates conflict with state NIL laws and directs the Justice Department to challenge those that interfere with national rules.
That’s a bold step. But it’s also an uncertain one.
States have spent the last several years passing laws specifically designed to give their schools a competitive advantage in recruiting and compensation. Those laws were written with legal challenges in mind.
Now, instead of a patchwork of policies, college sports could see a patchwork of lawsuits.
And it’s not guaranteed the federal government wins all of them.
The problem of defining “fair market value”
One of the order’s central ideas is limiting so-called “fraudulent” NIL deals, payments that exceed fair market value.
On paper, that sounds straightforward. In practice, it’s anything but.
What is the fair market value of a starting quarterback? A backup guard? A gymnast with a large social following?
Those are not fixed numbers. They fluctuate with exposure, performance, market demand and booster interest.
Which means enforcement becomes subjective.
And subjective enforcement tends to end up in court.
That has been part of the problem from the start. College sports leaders have talked for years about separating legitimate endorsement money from disguised pay-for-play. But drawing that line in a way that satisfies judges, schools, athletes and boosters all at once has proved nearly impossible.
The missing piece: Congress
All of this is unfolding against a larger backdrop that may ultimately matter more.
In Washington, lawmakers are already working on broader solutions, including the SCORE Act in the House and the SAFE Act in the Senate.
The two bills approach the same problem from slightly different angles.
The SCORE Act is built more around structure, creating a national framework for athlete compensation and regulation, including the possibility of limited antitrust protection that would allow those rules to stand without being immediately struck down in court.
The SAFE Act leans more toward athlete protections, focusing on transparency in NIL deals, agent oversight and safeguards for athletes navigating a rapidly professionalizing system.
Both represent something the executive order does not.
Durability.
An executive order can direct how the federal government operates. A law passed by Congress can change the rules everyone operates under, setting national standards, overriding conflicting state laws and potentially giving those rules a stronger chance of surviving in court.
That doesn’t mean legislation would solve everything. Any law would face legal challenges of its own. Questions about athlete compensation, employment status and gender equity would not disappear overnight.
But it would move the debate onto firmer ground.
Can it?
The executive order is an attempt to bring structure back to a system that has been reshaped by litigation, politics and money.
It may create pressure. It may influence behavior. It may even slow some of the chaos at the margins.
But on its own, it is unlikely to do what its supporters want most: settle the future of college sports.
Not when the courts have already weakened the old restrictions. Not when states have built their own competing rules. And not when the only durable fix would have to come from Congress.
So can it? Probably not by itself.
And that may be the clearest measure of where college sports really are now: too big, too fractured and too legally exposed to be pulled back into order by executive pen alone.
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