"Does a whole lot of nothing" - CFB insider points at major flaw in Donald Trump's NIL executive order, scoffs at POTUS' "saves college sports" remark

President Donald Trump and his administration made huge news in the college sports world on Thursday with a new executive order. Titled "Saving College Sports," this executive order aims to eliminate third-party pay-for-play payments from college sports. However, in reality, it does not appear to change much from how college sports payments are made at the moment.

On Friday, Ari Wasserman and Andy Staples did a live stream on the On3 YouTube channel. On the stream, Staples spoke about the impact of this executive order on college sports.

"President Donald Trump has signed an executive order, the title of which is, "Saving College Sports." Does it actually save college sports? I don't know. I think it probably does a whole lot of nothing, but here's what it says," Andy Staples said (Timestamp 17:45). "There's the potential, if they really wanted to go crazy, to do a lot of stuff. I don't think they're going to. "The headline of it is it prohibits third-party pay-for-play, which means some booster can't go pay a player for being good at football. Can't say, I'm gonna give you $1 million because you are a really good wide receiver. Here's the thing, that's already against the rules in college sports. The NCAA prohibits that and has prohibited it since NIL became allowed in 2021."

Staples continued to speak about the impact of Donald Trump's executive order.

"The way they've been paying players all along is within these guidelines because the executive order also says you can have third-party payments if they are, essentially, endorsement deals, which is what they've been doing."

Donald Trump's executive order comes after the antitrust settlement in June

College sports fans were hit with a huge bit of news on Thursday when Donald Trump signed his latest executive order on Thursday. This new executive order aims to prevent college athletes from becoming professionals. It set out a set of guidelines that aims to preserve athletic scholarships while eliminating third-party, pay-for-play payments.

However, as Andy Staples said, these types of payments have been outlawed since the introduction of NIL in 2021.

The timing of this executive order is interesting because it comes after the NCAA and power conferences agreed to the antitrust settlement in June. This settlement will allow schools to pay athletes up to $20.5 million annually. It is essentially a salary cap for college sports. These payments will act as endorsement contracts, which are not outlawed by the executive order, and will still be permitted.

Edited by Alexander O'Reilly