For the most part, however, the order is aspirational and refrains from enunciating policy positions. Notably absent are specific declarations that the NCAA and its members ought to be exempt from antitrust scrutiny or that college athletes aren’t employees.
The absence of many specifics is important for several reasons. For starters, agencies that would be directed by Trump are already capable of issuing regulations and other administrative actions to exert control over college sports.
To that point, in the last week of Joe Biden’s presidency, federal agencies entered the college sports legal debate without an accompanying executive order. The Department of Education issued a fact sheet expressing that colleges paying athletes for their NIL counts as athletic financial assistance under Title IX. A month later, Trump’s Department of Education rescinded that fact sheet.
Biden’s Department of Justice also filed a statement of interest in the House litigation. The statement expressed that a revenue share cap of $20.5 million, while better than not sharing any revenue, is still an antitrust problem, because it’s a cap that hasn’t been collectively bargained. The DOJ under Trump didn’t pursue the issue as U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken weighed the granting of final approval to the settlement.