U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a roundtable discussion on college sports at the White House on March 6, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
President Donald Trump on Friday called on Congress to “fix” the unsustainable financial situation in college sports due to a relatively new system that pays football, basketball and other players compensation for name, image and likeness rights.
Trump’s comments were made during a White House roundtable on college sports that he hosted.
“The amount of money that very successful schools have spent and lost in a short period of time is staggering,” Trump said. “The situation is only going to get worse.
“It’s crazy,” President Trump said. “Young guys are being signed. We’re signing 17-year-old quarterbacks for $12 million, $13 million, $14 million.”
“We have a seventh-year freshman,” he said. “We’re seeing things we’ve never seen before. Some college players don’t want to go to the NFL because they make more money in college, right?”
“There’s a lot of really bad things going on, but basic questions like who is eligible to play are currently effectively unregulated and decided randomly by judges rather than by reasonable, agreed-upon rules that are very simple and very simply laid down,” he said.
“So this has developed into a major challenge.”
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