President Donald Trump inserted himself into the chaos of college athletics and NIL. He signed an executive order that banned third-party payments to athletes without "fair-market" contracts. Legendary broadcaster Tim Brando has already praised the new executive order, but now also from arguably college football's greatest coach, Nick Saban, who has been desperate for this sort of reform for a long time.
It's not surprising to see Saban support this new executive order from the President, as he's been one of the strongest advocates of keeping the educational aspect of college athletics as the primary focus. While not being opposed to paying athletes, he's focused on not losing sight of the forest in the trees.
Nick Saban doubled down on that this week in an interview with Fox and Friends. Snippets of the interview were posted to social media.
Saban sounds off: "Do we want to have universities sponsor professional teams?" pic.twitter.com/HNYanh9BPB
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) July 25, 2025
Nick Saban praised President Trump's new executive order as a "huge step" forward
Saban's frustration is that most college athletics for revenue-based sports are starting to resemble professional sports, but at universities. They've lost the development of people and the education of students in the process. This move by President Trump, in Nick Saban's opinion, helps right the ship.
"I think we need to make a decision here relative to: Do we want to have an education-based model, which the president made a huge step towards doing that, or do we want to have universities sponsor professional teams? I think most people would choose the former. "Nick Saban
According to MSNBC, Nick Saban has been one of the most vocal advocates of Trump signing an executive order of this sort. "Talks of Trump interfering with NIL have been floating around since May, after reports came out of former University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban, during a private congressional roundtable, urging the president to release an executive order on NIL compensation because he claimed players were showing 'less resiliency to overcome adversity.'"
Saban now gets what he was hoping for, but let's see if it actually provides the pathway forward, as many pundits doubt there will be much change at all. The enforcement and clarity of the future will still be necessary as college sports figure this all out.
While the major news focuses on eliminating pay-to-play, the new executive order also aims to support non-revenue sports and promote the pipelines for Olympic and Paralympic athletes through university athletics. The goal is not just to resolve the NIL chaos, but to provide clarity and targeted goals for the futures of many other sports.