President Donald Trump calls out state of college football, says athletes are 'being traded like playing cards'

As he signed an executive order calling for the return of the Presidential Fitness Test on Thursday, President Donald Trump also assessed the state of college sports. Trump’s remarks came one week after he signed an executive order related to college athletics.

Standing in front of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition – a group that includes Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell – Trump called out the state of college football. He specifically took aim at the transfer portal and the amount of player movement in the sport.

Trump pointed out the need for “sanity” in college athletics as he continued to call for the protection of non-revenue and women’s sports. That, he said, is one of the focal points of the council.

“It’s a mess, what happened,” Trump said from the Roosevelt Room. “What they’re doing with college football. And the fans are upset about it. Players are being taken from team after team and being traded around like playing cards.

“A lot of money’s passing, and nobody knows what’s happening. So these people behind me are very much involved in figuring that whole thing out and working on it and trying to bring some sanity to that incredible – not only the football, college sports.”

In his executive order last week, Trump called for the protection of non-revenue sports while also calling for a ban on pay-for-play related to NIL. While assessing the current landscape, he noted the amount of dollars – likely referring to revenue-sharing – going toward football and basketball after the House v. NCAA settlement’s approval.

The wide expectation is 75% of rev-share dollars will go to football while 15% head toward men’s basketball, 5% goes to women’s basketball and 5% to other sports. At Ohio State and Nebraska, some rev-share dollars are being directed toward women’s volleyball while Oklahoma is including softball, baseball and women’s gymnastics.

But President Donald Trump stressed the need for protection of Olympics sports, as well. It’s part of the “mess” he sees in college athletics.

“Very, very bad for women,” Trump said. “Very bad what’s happening, because now, all of a sudden, there’s no women that are able to get the money that they’re talking about. It seems to be going mostly to football, some basketball. Women’s sports are being totally decimated. We know that with this. It’s all going into football and some, to basketball and everything else is being left behind.

“Women are being left behind and lesser sports are being left behind, and the Olympics is being decimated because that was, like, training for the Olympics. Now, we’re not going to have many of those sports left. The smaller sports, they’re almost going to be completely wiped out. This is crazy what’s going on. … Last Thursday, we terminated third-party pay-for-play schemes in collegiate athletics. We saved college sports, but now, we have to heal it because it’s really a mess. It’s a real mess.”