Somewhere in America right now, a college kid who trained his whole life just found out his wrestling program got canceled so the football team could afford its NIL bidding war.
Trump called the people responsible into the White House on Friday to answer for it.
And what Nick Saban told the room is the one thing the NCAA doesn't want Americans to hear.
Nick Saban's Warning About NIL and College Sports
Trump's "Saving College Sports" roundtable brought together the most powerful names in college athletics on March 6 – Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, NCAA President Charlie Baker, Power Four conference commissioners, and senior administration officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The president didn't mince words opening the session.
"This is the future of colleges," Trump told the room.
"The amount of money being spent and lost by otherwise very successful schools is astounding just in a short period of time."
"It's only going to get worse."
Then Saban took the floor – and the legend who walked away from Alabama rather than coach in the NIL era delivered a verdict on what that era has done to the game.
"My goal as a coach, for my players, for our players, was to help them be more successful in life," Saban said.
He described building an environment around personal development, academic achievement, and career preparation beyond football – 668 degrees handed to Alabama players over 17 years.
Then came the gut punch.
"In this current system that we have, that became impossible to do – because people, instead of making decisions about creating value for their future, they were making decisions about how much money could they make at whichever school they could go to or transfer to."
The NIL Bidding War Destroying College Football
The numbers tell the story Saban refuses to sugarcoat.
When NIL restrictions fell after the 2021 Supreme Court ruling, schools stopped competing on facilities and coaching and started competing with cash.
The team that won the 2024 college football national championship had players being paid around $20 million annually.
By 2025, football players at a single university were collectively pulling in $35–40 million – with revenue sharing included.
Outside donor-funded collectives pile on top of that, with some schools spending over $40 million on football rosters alone while the official House settlement cap sits at just over $21 million per school.
Urban Meyer called collectives what they are: cheating.
He walked Trump through exactly how the system works – boosters pool donor money, funnel it to players without the school being technically on the hook, and use it as a recruiting weapon.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey put the transfer portal chaos into one devastating sentence: "I have a basketball player in my league on his sixth campus."
Trump added his own: "We have a seven-year freshman."
What the NIL Era Is Costing Women's Sports and Olympic Programs
Swimming teams eliminated.
Tennis and wrestling programs shut down.
Gymnastics cut.
Track gone.
That's what's happening at universities across the country as football NIL costs devour athletic department budgets and schools scramble to stay competitive.
Trump signed an executive order in July 2025 trying to pump the brakes – banning pay-to-play recruiting payments from third parties and requiring major athletic departments to preserve women's and Olympic sports scholarships.
It wasn't enough.
Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua told the roundtable that college sports are approaching the point of "no return."
He called for people to be "held to the fire" before the runaway spending destroys programs that will never come back.
Congress had a chance to act in December 2025.
The SCORE Act – a bipartisan bill that would have created a national NIL standard, overriding the 30-plus competing state laws, and given the NCAA antitrust protections to actually enforce rules – was pulled from the House floor two hours before the scheduled vote.
Republicans Byron Donalds, Scott Perry, and Chip Roy joined Democrats to kill it.
Trump closed Friday's roundtable with a promise: a new executive order, more comprehensive than July's, within the week.
He acknowledged it will face legal challenges.
He made clear the real fix has to come from Congress – and Congress has failed to deliver for five straight years while the sport burns.
Saban built 668 graduates and six national championships with a philosophy that put the student first.
Donalds, Perry, and Roy don't have a Nick Saban speech to explain what they built when they voted with the left – just a transfer portal, a six-campus basketball player, and a list of canceled Olympic sports programs your tax dollars used to support.
Sources:
- Ryan Morik, "Trump Sets Sights on NIL Regulation, SCORE Act at College Sports Roundtable, Teases Another Executive Order," Fox News, March 6, 2026.
- "Donald Trump College Sports Roundtable Takeaways: Trump Plans Executive Order, Nick Saban Decries Portal Chaos," Yahoo Sports, March 7, 2026.
- "Saban Joins Roundtable at White House Centered on College Sports," ABC 33/40, March 7, 2026.
- "Saving College Sports," WhiteHouse.gov, July 24, 2025.
- "House Cancels Vote on the SCORE Act Amid GOP Opposition," The Hill, December 3, 2025.
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