Trump Wants to Save College Sports.
The SCORE Act Is His Lever — and a Power Five Gift.
President Trump signed an executive order on April 3, 2026 ordering the NCAA to overhaul transfer rules, eligibility limits, NIL, and revenue sharing by August 1, 2026 — and then convened the Power Five commissioners at the White House to demand Congress pass the SCORE Act as the statutory backstop. He has hinted at a second executive order if Congress fails to act.
The bill, formally H.R. 4312, the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act, was introduced July 10, 2025 by Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL-12) and chaired through subcommittee by Energy and Commerce chair Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY-02), with Democratic co-sponsors Janelle Bynum (D-OR-05) and Shomari Figures (D-AL-02). It would preempt the patchwork of state NIL laws, give the NCAA a federal antitrust safe harbor, codify that student-athletes are not employees by virtue of varsity participation, and authorize the association to set transfer, recruiting, agent-registration, and compensation pool rules.
The chaos Trump says he is fixing is real. A 17-year-old quarterback signed a four-year deal worth up to $12 million before he ever took a college snap. A Duke transfer pocketed $8 million to switch schools. Judge Claudia Wilken’s House v. NCAA settlement opened a $20.5-million-per-school revenue-sharing channel last July, and within six months collectives had already routed around it. The unresolved question is whether the SCORE Act actually fixes the bidding war — or whether it freezes the leverage with the SEC and Big Ten schools that were already winning it.
- $20.5Mper-school revenue-sharing cap, year oneAuthorized by Judge Wilken’s June 6, 2025 final approval of the House v. NCAA settlement; effective July 1, 2025; indexed to grow over the 10-year deal — per ESPN.
- $10–12MBryce Underwood, four-year packageMichigan QB signing, NIL deal reportedly backed by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison; the headline figure for 'NIL chaos' coverage — per On3, Yahoo Sports.
- $2.8BHouse v. NCAA back-damages payout10-year payout to athletes who competed at any time from 2016 to present; the settlement that triggered the post-amateur era — per ESPN.
- H.R. 4312SCORE Act, 119th CongressIntroduced July 10, 2025; subcommittee mark-up July 15, 2025; pulled from House floor December 1, 2025; rewrite expected for 2026 — per Congress.gov, Roll Call.
- 31conference commissioners on the joint letterPower Five plus Group of Five plus Olympic-sport conferences signing the joint Congress letter urging SCORE Act passage; led by Sankey (SEC), Petitti (Big Ten), Yormark (Big 12), Phillips (ACC) — per On3.
Executive Order — April 3, 2026: “Urgent National Action to Save College Sports” directs the NCAA and member institutions to overhaul transfer, eligibility, NIL, and revenue-sharing rules by August 1, 2026. The EO sets a five-year participation window per athlete; one free transfer with immediate eligibility; a second transfer permitted only if the athlete has earned a four-year degree; and a ban on athletes returning to college after professional play.
SCORE Act, Section 1: Codifies federal NIL standards. Students may earn money from name, image, and likeness, including endorsements and personal appearances, subject to disclosure to the school and association. Schools and conferences may set reasonable NIL rules under the federal floor.
SCORE Act, Section 2: Preempts state NIL laws.The federal standard is the floor and the ceiling — California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and the dozen other states whose NIL statutes were drafted to give in-state programs a recruiting edge would be displaced.
SCORE Act, Section 3: Codifies that student-athletes are not employeesof their school, conference, or the association by virtue of varsity participation. Direct congressional response to the Third Circuit’s 2024 ruling in Johnson v. NCAA.
SCORE Act, Section 6: The antitrust safe harbor. Adoption of, agreement to, compliance with, or enforcement of any rule established under this Act “shall be treated as lawful under the antitrust laws.” That is the provision insulating the NCAA from another NCAA v. Alston-style Sherman Act loss.
Sponsors: Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL-12) introducing; Energy & Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY-02) shepherding; Reps. Walberg, Jordan, McClain, Fitzgerald, Fry on the GOP side; Reps. Janelle Bynum (D-OR-05) and Shomari Figures (D-AL-02) as Democratic crossovers.
“College sports could be lost forever if Congress doesn't act. We need a national standard. We can't have 50 different states writing 50 different rules so they can pick winners for their own schools.”
President Donald Trump · April 2026 White House college sports roundtable
The college sports labor market did not break overnight. It broke in five distinct judicial and regulatory blows over four years — and Congress watched each one and did nothing.
2021 — NCAA v. Alston (9-0, Supreme Court): Justice Gorsuch’s opinion struck down NCAA limits on education-related benefits as a Sherman Act violation. Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence telegraphed that the entire amateurism model was unconstitutional. Game over for the old order.
2021 — NCAA Interim NIL Policy (July 1): Six days after Alston, the NCAA suspended its prohibition on NIL. State legislatures had already passed competing NIL laws — some permissive, some restrictive — and the patchwork the SCORE Act now wants to preempt was born within a month.
2024 — Johnson v. NCAA (3d Cir.): Third Circuit established a four-prong FLSA test for whether college athletes are employees. The court rejected the NCAA’s “amateurism” categorical defense and remanded for fact-finding. The case is still alive in the district court; the SCORE Act’s Section 3 is the legislative override.
2025 — House v. NCAA Settlement (June 6): Judge Claudia Wilken approved a $2.8 billion back-damages payout and authorized direct revenue sharing of up to ~$20.5 million per Power Five school per year beginning July 1, 2025. The cap is indexed to grow as media-rights revenue grows over the 10-year deal.
2025 — Loopholes Open (December): Within six months of the cap going live, WRAL and others reported that booster-funded NIL collectives were routing around it — treating the $20.5M as a salary-floor for direct school payments and stacking unlimited “third-party” collective deals on top. The cap that was supposed to equalize spending instead rebased the bidding war at a higher number.
The headline figures Trump cited at the White House roundtable came from a small, specific group of marquee deals. They are the “chaos” the SCORE Act is being sold to fix.
Bryce Underwood, QB, Michigan — $10–12 million / 4 years: The headline of NIL chaos. The 17-year-old No. 1 overall recruit in the 2025 class signed a four-year package reportedly backstopped by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s involvement with Michigan’s Champions Circle collective. He had not taken a college snap.
Darian Mensah, QB, Duke — $8 million transfer: Mensah transferred from Tulane to Duke in December 2024 on a reported $8 million collective deal — making him one of the highest-paid transfer-portal additions in college football history.
Arch Manning, QB, Texas — #1 NIL valuation, $0 from collective: Manning’s endorsement portfolio (EA Sports, Red Bull, Uber, Vuori) makes him the highest-valued NIL athlete in college sports. Texas’s collective reportedly does not pay him a dime — the brand value is the brand value.
Drew Allar (Penn State, ~$3M), Dylan Raiola (Nebraska, >$3M), John Mateer (Oklahoma, $2.5–3M): The next tier. All collective-anchored, all roughly the price of a mid-tier NFL backup quarterback contract — for unpaid amateurs at public universities.
The cap context: Each of these collective deals sits on top of the $20.5 million revenue-share envelope each school can spend. That is the loophole that is driving Sankey, Petitti, Yormark, and Phillips to Capitol Hill.
The two provisions that make the SCORE Act controversial are the two provisions that make it valuable to the NCAA. Section 6 is an antitrust safe harbor — meaning the next NCAA v. Alston cannot be brought, because compliance with NCAA rules is, by federal statute, “lawful under the antitrust laws.” Section 3 is an employee-status preemption — meaning Johnson v. NCAA cannot reach its logical conclusion, because Congress has declared by statute that varsity participation does not create an employment relationship.
The American Action Forum and Cardozo Law Review have both warned that this is an unusual delegation of federal regulatory power to a private association — the NCAA — without the standards typically required when Congress hands rulemaking authority to a non-governmental body. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the Senate Commerce Committee’s ranking Democrat, has called the bill a “Power Five giveaway” that hands the schools that won the bidding war the legal armor to keep winning it.
The defenders — Charlie Baker, Sankey, Petitti — argue the alternative is worse: a state-by-state patchwork in which the most permissive state wins every recruiting battle and Title IX, Olympic sports, and women’s programs collapse under unregulated bidding. Both things can be true. The SCORE Act picks the side of consolidated federal authority over fragmented state competition. Whether that authority lives in the Department of Commerce or in a private 501(c)(3) headquartered in Indianapolis is the constitutional fight that will follow whichever bill Congress eventually passes.
For the bill:
NCAA President Charlie Baker— former Republican governor of Massachusetts, has personally lobbied the bill in three separate appearances on Capitol Hill; says SCORE handles “our three biggest issues — the rule piece, preemption on state laws, and defining once and for all that kids who play college sports aren’t employees.”
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey— led the 31-commissioner joint letter to Congress; has publicly thanked Trump for the April EO and called SCORE Act passage “the only durable answer.”
Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti, Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips— all three signed the letter and all three have publicly endorsed the antitrust safe harbor and employee-status preemption provisions.
U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee— supports the framework on the theory that without it, non-revenue Olympic sports collapse first.
Against the bill:
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member, Senate Commerce — called the December 2025 House version a Power Five giveaway that fails Olympic sports and women’s athletics.
Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA)— broke from GOP leadership; argued the bill picks winners and locks in the existing imbalance.
The Drake Group, athletes’ advocacy organizations, and some Olympic-sport coaches— pushed the alternative College Athletics Reform Act and successfully lobbied enough Republicans to force House leadership to pull the December 1, 2025 floor vote.
“We can't keep operating with 50 different state laws. The patchwork is the problem. The SCORE Act is the answer Congress has to give us, and the President has now made that very clear.”
Greg Sankey, SEC Commissioner · 2025 SEC Media Days, restated April 2026
August 1, 2026: Trump’s executive-order deadline for NCAA rule overhaul on transfers, eligibility, NIL, and revenue sharing. If the NCAA rewrites and Congress has not codified, the legal foundation for those rule changes remains the EO — which is challengable in federal court.
119th Congress, second session: The renegotiated SCORE Act is expected back on the House floor in 2026 with softened employee-status language and a narrower antitrust safe harbor in an attempt to win the Democratic crossovers House leadership lost in December.
Johnson v. NCAA, district court remand: Pennsylvania district court fact-finding on whether the four-prong FLSA test makes Penn football and basketball players employees continues. A finding for the athletes triggers minimum-wage and overtime obligations the SCORE Act was designed to preempt.
The second EO Trump teased: If Congress fails to pass the bill, the administration has signaled additional executive-order action — potentially directing the NLRB and Department of Labor on athlete classification, an area where Trump 2.0 already has legal posture.
Trump’s executive order + the SCORE Act would replace the state-by-state NIL chaos with one federal regime — and grant the NCAA the antitrust shield and the employee-status carve-out that no court has been willing to give it. That is a real fix to the patchwork. It is also a permanent transfer of leverage to the SEC and Big Ten schools that were already winning the bidding war.
Dec 6, 2025 · Trump on the House v. NCAA settlement and judicial role in NIL chaos — six months after Judge Wilken’s approval
July 25, 2025 · Trump links to the original Saving College Sports executive order — the first of two college-sports EOs that frame the SCORE Act push
BREAKING: President Trump signs executive order aimed at college sports, targeting transfers, eligibility, and NIL. Order calls on the NCAA to overhaul rules by August 1, 2026 — with federal funding consequences for noncompliant schools.
Greg Sankey, Jim Phillips, Brett Yormark and Tony Petitti — the four Power Four commissioners — have all released statements supporting President Trump’s executive order on college sports and calling on Congress to pass the SCORE Act.
President Trump on college football’s NIL era: ‘Bad things are gonna happen unless they figure this out.’ The President says quarterback salaries hitting $12–$14M means even the rich schools are going to go bust. Live from Parris Island.
NCAA President Charlie Baker on the SCORE Act: it would handle ‘our three biggest issues — the rule piece, preemption on state laws, and defining once and for all that kids who play college sports aren’t employees.’
Riley Gaines on Trump’s Saving College Sports executive order: it ‘protects women’s sports, secures the Olympic pipeline, reins in the NIL Wild West, and affirms that student-athletes are students, not employees.’