If you were surprised by Wednesday’s news that President Trump is forming a college sports commission, you weren’t alone.
Amanda Christovich of FrontOfficeSports.com reports that the report of the planning commission “was met with surprise” on Capitol Hill. Per the report, a lobbyist said that the development sparked “scrambling and confusion” on both sides of the aisle.
It speaks to a lack of coordination between the White House and Congress. Given the low likelihood that any executive order could supersede existing federal law (especially the antitrust statutes), collaboration will be critical to the implementation of any effort to alter the current college sports system.
Which leads back to the fundamental question of why the federal government is wasting time and resources on devising rules that, given the report that Nick Saban will co-chair the commission, will remove rights that college players have secured through the court system. Less money and reduced freedom of movement will be inevitable.
For the players, not the coaches like Saban — who have enjoyed those freedoms for years.
It’s obvious that’s where this is heading. While there could be perfunctory representation of player interests on the commission, expect it to be stacked in a way that will lead to the outcome that Saban has desired from the moment he realized that, in the Wild West of the NIL, those who can recruit the best players in a climate of equal, and restricted, resources for the players will no longer be the quickest draw.
While the current system cries out for change in order to prevent college football from becoming even more lopsided than it was in the pre-NIL days, it’s for the colleges to come up with a solution. Not the federal government.
