White House Proposes 4 Big Changes to College Football With Nick Saban's Help
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President Donald Trump’s efforts to reform college athletics got to a new stage today. Co-chaired by former Alabama head coach Nick Saban, a White House-backed committee has now proposed four changes to college sports that make the system more favorable to all teams and other sports.
The committee’s proposed reforms include a coach salary cap, pooled media rights, a new governing body for college sports, and a group of six playoff teams. Their proposal, in three phases, has been described as “the most ambitious federal government intervention into college sports” in history.
The committee was created in President Trump’s bid to curb an “out-of-control” financial arms race that is “driving universities into debt” and could make the nation “lose college sports forever.” As a result, the committee is tasked with regulating NIL deals, transfer rules, and media rights. With rising NIL costs and coach salaries, the committee aims to establish nationwide standards rather than inconsistent state laws to help struggling programs and non-revenue sports.
Regarding the new governing body, the proposal suggested establishing a new College Sports Reform Task Force within the NCAA, which will supersede state laws and have limited antitrust exemptions. The task force would then operate for two years. And even after its dissolution, all rules formed during its existence would have permanent antitrust protection, except if another such body were created in the future or Congress amended them.
The first phase touched on salary caps for both players and coaches.On3’s latest list of college football’s highest-paid coaches featured 13 coaches earning over $10 million, a 650% increase over the last 15 years. To tackle that, the committee proposed a salary cap, which has been lauded as “the most direct intervention into athletic department spending ever proposed.”
It is the same concern for players, who moved from no earnings to over $20.5 million, about which schools are permitted to share with players under the House v. NCAA settlement. In sorting this out, the committee suggested a prohibition on NIL-based salary cap circumvention, noting that programs surpass the $20.5 million limit by using multimedia rights and apparel revenues as reasons for exceeding it.
Furthermore, the Group of Six playoffs have been suggested for the Group of Six conferences: American, MWC, Sun Belt, MAC, CUSA, and the new Pac-12. The aim is to help the conferences improve their visibility and revenue, as they run alongside the CFP in the postseason.
The proposal document also highlighted a similarity to the NBA’s Bird rule, under which programs would be allowed to offer financial rewards to players who remain with them for consecutive seasons. In the NBA, franchises are allowed to exceed the salary cap to sign their own free agents, with players earning such rights after spending three consecutive seasons with the same team.
The second phase of the document proposed pooling media rights upon the expiration of current deals. The SEC currently has a $300 million-per-year deal with ESPN, while the Big Ten has a $1 billion-per-year deal. The committee intends to pool all media rights so as to distribute them more evenly across college sports.
The last phase proposed a 15-member board to oversee a permanent governing body to regulate college sports reforms. “It would be made up of players, power conference commissioners, Notre Dame’s athletic director, two representatives from other conferences, one representative from Division II and III, an independent representative and an attorney,” per CBS Sports.
The SCORE Act vote is scheduled for May 18, while there will be a CSC hearing on May 27. Moreover, Nick Saban has been tipped for a more prominent role in college football.
Nick Saban tipped for bigger role in college football
Nick Saban is inarguably the greatest coach in college football history. Despite retiring to pursue a career in sports media, his ESPN colleague Kirk Herbstreit has tipped him to become the college football commissioner should they ever decide to create one.
“I love the idea ’cause I feel like we’re still legislating the sport as if it were still the 1980s or it’s a regional sport,” Herbstreit said. “Now it’s all about the CFP. Yet, we are governing this sport with conference commissioners that are worried about their constituents and their region. No one’s looking at the entire country.
“My only hope is Nick Saban and people can say he’s got an Alabama twist. If you really know Saban, he has a college football twist. He cares about the players, he cares about the sport. Him being involved with Congress and the President. He’s got a lot of people’s ears and I think he has good intentions. I’m hopeful that he’ll be able to help out.”
Saban is already playing an active role in college sports reforms, but Herbstreit believes the conference commissioners should have a commissioner who represents the interests of college football as a whole, not just one conference.
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