The college sports industry shouldn't underestimate Donald Trump

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Two quick notes I’d like to share before we get to the newsletter.

1) Earlier this week, we celebrated our 5TH BIRTHDAY. Was this birthday notice like, nearly three weeks late? Stop asking questions. The important thing is that this story ALSO has a 25% off coupon which is good through the end of the week. If you’re on a monthly subscription and want to upgrade on the cheap to annual, or want to finally give the premium EP experience a shot, don’t miss out.

2) I also put together a 5,000ish word primer on how some of the basics of the college sports industry work…from budgets to shoe contracts to broadcast deals. This resource is completely free. Feel free to bookmark, send around, etc.

In other news,

Let me tell you guys a quick story.

Before I became a sportswriter, I used to work as an elementary school teacher. When you’re teaching younger grades, one of the absolute very first things I was taught to do, before digging into literacy promotion or multiplication or the scientific method…was to focus on classroom management.

So, being an idealistic political science major, I thought it would be a great idea to have my 4th grade help vote on classroom rules. I figured if the students had a hand in creating our rules, they’d be more inclined to value and follow them. Not a bad idea, right?

To my surprise, my 4th graders actually picked some pretty strict rules. They believed that constantly disruptive students should lose recess time, the ability to pick their table groups…and eventually, have me call their parents. They asked for rules that promoted cooperation, kindness, and order. I remember the experience making me feel all warm and fuzzy.

But the problem with 10-year-olds is that they completely forget that they asked for tough punishments the second somebody breaks out the Pokémon cards...roughly nine minutes after they drafted the class rules. Appeals to democracy and their own values and preferences fell on deaf ears. And it turns out that consistently and dispassionately enforcing those rules, when you’re a stupid idiot 22-year old like I was, was impossible.

I found myself constantly weighing “ugh is it worth it to write up this report and call the principal and the parent every single time”, or “is it worth losing 20 minutes of math prep fighting over computer access at this exact moment”, and again, because I was 22 and stupid, regularly made the wrong decision. The rules were not regularly enforced. The rules were not predictable.

Which meant that the students didn’t care what was on our Class Rules poster. They cared about what I was actually going to do. By October, I think we replaced the poster with something else entirely.

Stick with me here for a second. Let me switch back to college sports.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that president Donald Trump is considering a college sports-related executive order. The reporting came after Trump met with former Alabama head football coach Nick Saban, and former lots-of-places football coach, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).

Now, the WSJ story didn’t mention specifically what Trump was considering for an Executive Order. But we do know a little bit about what Saban and Tuberville think. Senator Tuberville tweeted about “the need for national standards in NIL” and “leveling the playing field” Tuberville had also expressed concern about the transfer portal (and uh, other stuff). Saban has regularly argued for college sports legislation and raised concerns about the flood of outside money flowing into college sports that could threaten competitive balance.

On Wednesday, Yahoo! reported that the White House is planning on launching a special commission to study issues in college sports. That commission, which could be established via executive order, may reportedly include college sports business professionals, current administrators, and others. I’d bet on Nick Saban being one of those commission members.

After news of last week’s meeting, I saw a lot of variations of this argument from the great Michael McCann of Sportico. It’s one thing to create a commission whose recommendations don’t carry the rule of law…that’s very much within the purview of an EO. But on paper, Trump’s legal authority to address antitrust concerns via executive order, on paper anyway, is limited. An executive order would likely conflict with state courts and state laws. The politics of such a move are complicated.

McCann has forgotten more about sports law than I could ever hope to learn, and I can’t disagree with the substance of what he wrote.

But I’d humbly encourage my readers who actually work in the college sports industry to set that aside for a second and contemplate my elementary school example.

What if the rules don’t matter anymore? What if nobody enforces them?

And how do you prepare for that world?

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