Trump Issues an Executive Order to Dictate the Rules for College Football and Enforce Them by Cutting Federal Funding

Donald Trump views executive orders, not as mere directives for the administration of the government, but as edicts expressing his demands for control over all parts of society, as if he were an absolute monarch entitled to have the final say on everything. That now includes the internal rules of college football.

CBS Sports reports:

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order of “urgent national action to save college sports,” an intervention at the highest level aimed at federally regulating NIL collectives, limiting transfer movement, capping player eligibility, and enacting funding requirements for the Olympics and women’s sports, the White House announced Friday.

Trump’s recommendation includes strict guardrails on player transfers and even mentions the return of the NCAA’s “one-time” transfer rule, with an exception for grad transfers. …

Trump’s order includes a provision to review federal government grants and contracts for schools and potentially cut funding if they fail to comply with NCAA rules, according to the fact sheet released by The White House. …

Many of those in attendance at Trump’s gathering last month favored the SCORE Act, first introduced in July 2025 by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Backed by the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, the SCORE Act aims at regulating payments made to collegiate athletes, but has not passed.

This is another attempt by Trump to weaponize federal funding to impose his edicts on universities. And note that this is not just a grab for direct presidential control over NCAA rules. It is also an attempt to use executive decrees to bypass Congress entirely.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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