Trump's 'Saving College Sports' Executive Order Is Exactly What America’s Athletes Need | Riley Gaines

President Trump recently signed the Saving College Sports Act. This might be the biggest shift in college athletics in a generation and I believe its contents were largely overlooked.

While the media chases manufactured outrage, Trump is delivering real reform. This Executive Order protects women’s sports, secures the Olympic pipeline, reins in the NIL Wild West, and affirms what the NCAA seems to have forgotten: student-athletes are students, not employees.

President Donald Trump.

For too long, the NCAA has operated like a bloated corporation pulling in billions while treating athletes as expendable. They’ve let NIL spiral into pay-for-play chaos, where fake "endorsement deals" mask under-the-table payments to star football and basketball players. Meanwhile, non-revenue programs (think sports like swimming, wrestling, gymnastics, track and field, really anything OTHER than football and men's basketball) are quietly slashed to fund excessive recruiting budgets.

Women’s sports and Olympic hopefuls are the first on the chopping block. So what exactly does the Saving College Sports Act do? Let’s dive in.

The NCAA Has Failed…Again

Trump’s Order finally forces accountability from an organization that has proven itself meaningless time and again — whether it’s turning a blind eye to men competing in women’s sports, letting the transfer portal spiral into chaos, downplaying sexual misconduct by coaching staffs, or standing idle as non-revenue sports disappear. All this while its member schools receive massive amounts of federal money (taxpayer dollars) that indirectly prop up the NCAA’s billion-dollar operation.

• Programs making over $125M must expand scholarships and roster spots for non-revenue sports.
• Schools bringing in $50M+ can no longer gut smaller programs just to chase more TV money.
• Smaller schools are barred from slashing Olympic or women’s teams to pad football profits.

For the first time in years, the NCAA isn’t the one writing the rules. It’s about time someone else held the whistle.

NIL Reform That Actually Helps Athletes

This EO doesn’t ban NIL, but it DOES work to stop the abuses. Athletes can still earn from real opportunities, but those phony "deals" made just to dodge rules? Over.

And by reaffirming that student-athletes are not employees, Trump slams the door on labor lawsuits that could’ve collapsed entire athletic departments.

For the first time, federal agencies like the Department of Labor, DOJ, and NLRB are being tasked to protect college sports, not destroy them through unchecked litigation and legal gamesmanship.

This Isn’t Just About Money. It’s About Fairnesss

24% of D1 athletes report food insecurity. 14% say they’ve been homeless in the past year. Many full-scholarship athletes still live below the poverty line.

Meanwhile, the NCAA clears over $1 billion annually enriching executives and funneling resources to mainly two sports while ignoring the rest. It’s not a broken system. It’s a rigged one.

And it’s not just economic abuse, it’s academic abuse as well. Remember UNC’s fake "paper classes" to keep athletes eligible? Or the allegations that Duke steered basketball players into sham courses to protect playing time? This is a system that commodifies students — and discards them once their eligibility expires.

Trump’s Order says: enough.

The Return of the Presidential Fitness Test

Yes, Trump also reinstated the Presidential Youth Fitness Program that had been shelved the past 13 years when President Obama decided a comparative fitness test was bad for a child’s feelings. It consists of sit-ups, pull-ups, a mile run, sit-and-reach test, and a few other comprehensive fitness checkpoints. For decades, this simple program helped build a culture of strength, endurance, and discipline, but it was scrapped in the name of "equity" and "inclusion," but America’s youth got weaker, slower, sicker, and bigger.

Regular physical fitness testing used to be standardized in schools across the United States.

Restoring it sends a message: We believe in building strong, healthy, competitive kids again.

The Left Will Call It "Control". Trump Calls it Protection

It’s no shock that the NCAA wants total freedom, including the freedom to exploit when it’s profitable and cut athletes loose when it’s not. What Trump is doing is drawing a red line: you can’t gut sports programs for profit and then claim you’re "for the athletes."

And Democrats? They’ve mastered the art of empty slogans about "supporting women’s sports." But when it’s time for action, they fold. Trump didn’t. He acted (again) to protect female athletes from both institutional neglect and radical gender policies that erode fair and safe competition.

In just the past three years, Trump has done more to preserve real opportunities for women in sports than any president in modern history.

This Is a Line in the Sand

The Saving College Sports EO doesn’t just lay out policy; it sets a national standard. It says: the future of college sports should belong to the athletes, the students, and the fans, NOT to NCAA bureaucrats or corporate sponsors auctioning off integrity to the highest bidder.

You can assume schools that ignore it will face real consequences. Just look at how the Trump administration has responded to the usual bad actors who have definitely ignored federal law like Governor Newsom, Governor Mills, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Columbia University, etc.

(Roger LaPointe/The News-Messenger / USA TODAY NETWORK)

We’ve already seen what happens when organizations like the NCAA go unchecked: sports terminated overnight, scholarships erased, and safe and fair competition eliminated…all because a boardroom of mostly unathletic elitists chose to line their pockets over fulfilling their most basic duties.

It’s time to stop pretending the system is working. It’s time to stop treating athletes like dollar signs. It’s time to save college sports. President Trump has made it a priority to do all of that and more.