If there is one thing we’ve learned over the last decade, it’s that President Donald Trump loves a good executive order. Add in a room with the head of the NCAA, power conference commissioners and legendary coaches like Nick Saban, and the president is in his element.
Recently, Trump convened a summit titled “Saving College Sports,” where he lamented the destruction of the American collegiate system and promised an “all-encompassing” executive order to fix the horrible mess of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) and revenue sharing.
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Those of us who love collegiate sports should be concerned.
Trump’s summit combined nostalgia for the bygone era of scholarships-only for athletes and a healthy dose of skepticism toward the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in NCAA v. Alston, which paved the way for student-athletes to receive NIL payments. Why can’t we go back to the good old days when coaches, universities and athletic conferences raked in cash, hand over fist, while players bore the physical punishment of monopoly-suppressed compensation?
The answer seems fairly obvious, but even if it wasn’t, there is a bizarre, recurring confidence in the face of government incompetence infecting our politics.
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 06: U.S. President Donald Trump (C) speaks as U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) (L) and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio look on during a roundtable discussion on college sports in the East Room of the White House on March 06, 2026 in Washington, DC. The Trump administration held the roundtable titled “Saving College Sports” with leaders from the Power Four conferences, media executives and former coaches. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The federal government isn’t good fixing things
We are talking about a federal apparatus that has already spent decades helping higher education into a crisis. Through a toxic cocktail of subsidized loans and administrative bloat, the government managed to turn the simple pursuit of education into a lifelong debt sentence. Having successfully driven the cost of a diploma into the stratosphere, while the value of a college degree remains the subject of intense debate, Washington has now decided it’s the perfect time to fix college sports too.
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What could possibly go wrong?
For decades, the federal government’s heavy-handed involvement in sectors like healthcare and housing has driven up prices at a pace that makes standard inflation look like a light jog. Conversely, in the few areas where the free market is actually allowed to function — think computer software, consumer electronics or toys — prices have plummeted while quality has improved.
So why, exactly, do we think the executive branch has the magic touch to save the market for 19-year-old quarterbacks?
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Tennessee’s own U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican, has a way of cutting through this administrative fog. He clearly understands the sheer lack of capability found within the D.C. bureaucracy. To hear him tell it, “[The federal government] couldn’t pour water out of a boot if you had the instructions written on the heel.”
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It’s an image that perfectly captures the absurdity of federal politicians navigating the hyper-regional, tradition-steeped and economically complex world of collegiate athletics. If they can’t handle the boot, they certainly shouldn’t be handling the transfer portal.
A free market is good for college sports
The current NIL landscape is admittedly chaotic. Between the $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement and the rapid shift to direct revenue sharing, athletic departments are scrambling to figure out exactly how to administer the new reality. But that’s the point. When the people who are actually paid to solve the problem look to winners of popularity contests to save them, we’re doomed. To make matters worse, the president doesn’t even have clear authority from the Constitution or Congress to address NIL issues. Trump even admitted during the roundtable that he expected to be sued but hoped for a favorable judge.
That isn’t governance; it’s a vanity project on a topic where the president isn’t needed. If there is a legitimate federal interest in creating national standards for college athletics, that responsibility lies with Congress. Even then, the legitimacy of that interest is debatable.
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The free marketplace, messy as it may be, is already sorting this out. The House settlement was a market correction to decades of an artificial amateurism cap that would have made a Soviet central planner proud. Schools are now forced to compete for talent based on a player’s actual value. Yes, it means other departments will have to tighten their belts. But those are challenges for fans, donors and university presidents — not the occupant of the Oval Office.
Limited government conservatives need to wake up and stop playing footsie with Big Government Republicans. Just because a Republican is holding the pen doesn’t make an executive power-grab any more palatable than when a Democrat does it. We should reject the hubris that suggests a single order from Washington can save an industry that thrives precisely because it belongs to the people, not the bureaucrats.
Most of us would prefer our college football teams to improve every year like our cell phones, instead of being as confusing and expensive as our healthcare.
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College sports will survive NIL. It will survive revenue sharing. The question is whether our commitment to limited government can survive this latest bout of executive fix-it fever.
Cameron Smith, columnist for The Tennessean and the USA TODAY Network Tennessee
USA TODAY Network Tennessee Columnist Cameron Smith is a Memphis-born, Brentwood-raised recovering political attorney raising four boys in Nolensville, Tennessee, with his particularly patient wife, Justine. Direct outrage or agreement to smith.david.cameron@gmail.com or @DCameronSmith on Twitter. Agree or disagree? Send a letter to the editor to letters@tennessean.com
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Let the free market, not Trump, ‘fix’ NIL in college sports | Opinion
