Trump's College Sports Executive Order Adds Chaos to an Already Wild Legal War

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! If you're pregnant and about to give birth, maybe avoid hockey games—or else your child might be known for getting born during a 5–1 drubbing. We're coming to you a day early this week with reaction to President Donald Trump's executive order that he thinks will fix college sports (it will not).

We'll start with that, move on to some sports TV news, and close with thoughts on the Masters ticket lottery. Giddy up. But first, congratulations to Reason's own Phillip "

The Ultimate Fris" Bader on winning our women's bracket challenge, followed by Carl "

Milwaukee's Best" Peterson in second. Yours truly came in third—smart enough to pick UCLA to win, not chalky enough to beat Phillip and Carl. Locker Room Links After bailing out the government authority that owns Progressive Field and Rocket Arena, Cleveland's Democratic Mayor Justin Bibb is looking at raising fees on fans and businesses to fund stadium repairs.

If you try to teach your underage child how to bet responsibly in New York State, you might get banned from concerts and casino restaurants. FanDuel Sports Network (formerly Bally Sports Network and Fox Sports Network) is coming to an end soon after the NBA and NHL seasons. "

New Jersey cannot regulate Kalshi's prediction market, US appeals court rules." England's Premier League is "voluntarily" (after a consultation with the government) banning gambling sponsors on jerseys starting next season. Now teams (usually smaller ones) are trying to find tens of millions of lost dollars.

Augusta National Golf Club is famously extremely protective of its image—it has at least 67 registered or pending trademarks on various phrases and images. Volleyball on the rise: Two women's volleyball matches are happening at Wrigley Field over Labor Day weekend. Elsewhere in Reason, our new cover story on presidential power: "

Trump Realized He Can Just Do Things. Who Can Stop Him?" Michigan's best players are a guy Mick Cronin buried, a guy who was a bust at North Carolina, a guy who came off the bench at Illinois and a guy who played at freaking UAB.

Get outta here. https://t.co/cSUiYxV5un — Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) April 5, 2026 Can the President Regulate College Sports? This certainly isn't the first time Trump has tried to bring order to a chaotic situation and just ended up making it messier. The president signed an executive order late on Friday attempting to overhaul how college sports function.

The order says college athletes can only play five seasons, and they must happen during a five-year window (even though state judges are already saying otherwise). It also allows only one transfer (even though a 2024 antitrust legal settlement already said the NCAA can't restrict transfers). Any schools that accept an athlete breaking these rules risk losing their federal funding.

It also asks the attorney general (whoever that may be) to invalidate state laws that are in conflict with the order. The order takes effect on August 1. Yet by the time you read this, the executive order may have already been challenged and stopped in federal courts.

You might think the president would be more focused on the big issues of the day, like inflation or the war he chose to start against Iran, but anyone who's been a dedicated reader of this newsletter knows the president talks about fixing college sports almost every week. Many people are frustrated with the constantly changing rules governing college sports, especially transfers and eligibility. A more proactive version of the NCAA may have taken the lead on these issues before the courts forced their hand.

Instead, the NCAA has basically said there's not much they can do, and asked Congress to figure out their mess. Now we have rules created by lawsuits that are ever changing and different by state. These rules are, for good reason, not something the president can change with the swipe of a pen.

But the Trump executive order has made the chaos even worse. Schools are stuck between a rock and a hard place: follow the president's set of rules, or follow the rules that were set by various court decisions? They have to break someone's rules, and that's going to lead them straight back to court.

Apparently the real goal of Trump's executive order is "to spur legislative action," sources told The Athletic. But even rules passed by Congress are going to end up getting challenged on constitutional grounds. Attorneys' billable hours remain undefeated.

The American college sports system is weird and unique. No other country spends as much time, energy, or money on collegiate sports. But Trump's executive order is a great argument for getting federal government funding out of higher education altogether. "

American universities spent $60 billion in federal money in 2023, more than 30 times what they spent in 1953, accounting for inflation," according to calculations in The New York Times. Schools wouldn't have to worry about the president taking all that federal funding away over sports regulations if they didn't take any federal funding. Stopping Streaming in its Tracks Did you know businesses don't like competition, and often try to use the government to protect themselves?

Fox Corp. and Sinclair Broadcasting certainly know it, since they're trying to get the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to knock down league broadcasting deals with streamers. "

Fox Corp. and Sinclair Broadcasting last Friday submitted statements to the FCC that effectively characterized the streamers as a clear and present danger to the local TV business, with Fox labeling the digital interlopers as an 'existential threat,'" Anthony Crupi writes for Sportico. Sinclair (which "operates or otherwise provides services to 185 TV stations," as Crupi describes it) seems to feel entitled to the NFL. Their FCC letter said: ”

Sports programming is also critical to the financial model that supports local broadcast journalism. Without high-value live sports on broadcast television, local broadcast journalism will suffer." The context here is that CBS is renegotiating its deal with the NFL, and FOX is expected to be up next.

The old-school broadcasters are worried the NFL might replace them if they get a better offer from a more cash-rich streamer like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Apple TV. So now Fox and Sinclair are crying foul to the FCC, hoping for regulation or any kind of government pressure to stave off the streamers. The FCC's recent request for comment on sports streaming was, as I wrote, "clearly a shot across the bow of sports leagues—a warning that the FCC may consider regulating games on streaming services in some way, or requiring leagues to broadcast every game on TV or the old-school regional sports networks.”

Threats to old business models are how a competitive economy should work. That's what happens when businesses innovate and deliver new benefits for consumers. Fox and Sinclair aren't entitled to NFL media rights any more than the Cowboys are entitled to a Super Bowl: You've got to be competitive and earn it.

But instead of competing, Fox and Sinclair are hoping that whining to the FCC will get them some help.