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President Donald Trump’s hosting a White House meeting next week with some of college football’s biggest names – and it’s all about figuring out what the hell happens next with college sports. CBS Sports’ Brandon Marcello confirmed that at least 35 people have been invited to what they’re calling the “College Sports Roundtable,” set for 4 p.m. ET on March 6.
How many actually show up? That’s still up in the air.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Randy Levine – yeah, the New York Yankees president – are listed as vice chairs alongside Trump on the invitation. The four power conference commissioners got invites too: Jim Phillips from the ACC, Brett Yormark running the Big 12, Tony Petitti over at the Big Ten, and Greg Sankey from the SEC. Gloria Nevarez, who’s been leading the Mountain West through some turbulent times, is on the list as well.
Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua’s coming, along with other university leaders and administrators from across the FBS. It’s basically a who’s who of college sports power brokers.
The invite list reads like a college football Hall of Fame reunion mixed with a business summit. Former coaches Nick Saban, Mack Brown and Urban Meyer are expected. So are Heisman winners Tim Tebow and Charlie Ward. NBA commissioner Adam Silver got an invite, as did Tiger Woods and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – who previously served on the College Football Playoff selection committee, so she’s not exactly new to this world.
Media executives from ESPN and Fox Sports are invited too, which makes sense given how much TV money drives everything in college athletics these days.
Why This Meeting Matters Now
Billionaire businessman Cody Campbell’s also on the guest list. He’s chairman of Texas Tech’s board of regents, a former college football player himself, and he’s been pushing hard for what he calls a “Saving College Sports” campaign. Campbell’s been advocating for federal intervention – stuff like potential changes to antitrust protections and a reexamination of how conferences structure and sell media rights.
College sports is in total flux right now. Court rulings over the past few years have basically stripped away the NCAA’s authority piece by piece, and that’s accelerated the whole professionalization of college athletics. The name, image and likeness (NIL) marketplace is the Wild West at this point.
Schools are getting ready for a revenue-sharing era while trying to navigate a mess of different state laws and ongoing legal battles. It’s not exactly a smooth process.
Congress has held multiple hearings on NIL, whether athletes should be classified as employees, and antitrust protection for the NCAA and conferences. But lawmakers haven’t actually passed any comprehensive legislation yet – they’ve basically just talked about it. Trump signed an executive order last summer called “Saving College Sports” that directed federal agencies to look into athlete classification and third-party NIL enforcement.
That order didn’t produce any real changes, though.
The White House session’s expected to cover governance, athlete compensation, collective bargaining concepts – all the big stuff – and what role the federal government might play in stabilizing a system that pretty much everyone agrees is at a breaking point. Whether one afternoon meeting can actually get all these people with completely different agendas to agree on anything is another question entirely.
But the guest list alone shows just how big this debate’s gotten – and how much political weight it’s carrying now.
