President Donald J. Trump signed a wide-ranging executive order on Friday aimed at imposing a new set of national rules for college athletics, seeking to rein in athlete transfers, limit name-image-likeness compensation, and cap eligibility in what the administration billed as a decisive fix for a beleaguered system.
The order, announced by the White House less than a month after the president convened a roundtable of sports and business leaders, represents his most aggressive intervention yet into the turbulent world of collegiate athletics. It threatens to withhold federal funding from universities that do not comply, a significant enforcement tool the administration has wielded during the president’s second term.
But legal scholars and sports law experts immediately questioned the order’s constitutionality and enforceability, noting that it conflicts with numerous state laws and recent court rulings. Like several of Mr. Trump’s previous executive actions, this one appears destined for swift legal challenges.
“The goal here is to create stability and fairness for our student-athletes and our great universities,” the president said in a statement released by the White House. “The current system is broken, and while Congress dithers, I am acting to restore order.”
The order’s mandates, which would not take effect until Aug. 1, include a provision limiting undergraduate athletes to one immediate, penalty-free transfer. A second transfer would require the athlete to sit out a year of competition. It would also impose a strict five-year cap on college athletic eligibility, eliminating the waivers the N.C.A.A. currently grants for medical hardships or other extraordinary circumstances.
Most notably, the order takes direct aim at the patchwork of state laws governing how athletes can profit from their name, image and likeness, or N.I.L. It seeks to establish a uniform, more restrictive national standard, though it provides few specifics, leaving the details to be formulated by the Department of Education.
Administration officials and several people involved in drafting the order, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly, described it less as a final policy and more as a catalyst — an attempt to force a stalled Congress to pass federal legislation addressing college sports.
For years, university presidents and college sports commissioners have lobbied for a federal law to preempt a growing number of state N.I.L. statutes and to provide a limited antitrust exemption, insulating the N.C.A.A. from the constant litigation that has reshaped the landscape of amateurism.
This executive order, however, does not provide an antitrust shield, nor does it address the contentious issue of whether athletes should be deemed employees — a question at the heart of several ongoing lawsuits.
Instead, it attempts to roll back the clock on athlete mobility. The transfer rule would effectively reverse a series of court decisions that dismantled the N.C.A.A.’s “one-time transfer exception” and created what critics call a system of “perpetual free agency.”
“This is a dramatic overreach of executive authority,” said Gabe Feldman, a sports law professor at Tulane University. “An executive order cannot override state law or court rulings. It can’t rewrite antitrust law. This seems designed to be challenged, and it likely will be struck down.”
The administration’s threat to withhold federal funding from noncompliant schools echoes a tactic used in other executive orders, such as a recent — and now blocked — effort to strip funding from NPR and PBS. A federal judge ruled that order violated the First Amendment.
The new sports directive faces similar constitutional hurdles, particularly under the Spending Clause and the Anti-Deficiency Act, which limit the president’s power to unilaterally attach new conditions to federal funds.
Within college sports, reaction was mixed. Some administrators, weary of the legal and regulatory chaos, welcomed any push for federal clarity. Athlete advocates and many lawyers, however, saw it as an unconstitutional effort to restrict athlete rights without due process.
“This isn’t a solution,” said Ramogi Huma, executive director of the National College Players Association. “It’s an attempt to bypass the courts and Congress to impose restrictions on athletes that they have already fought for and won. It won’t hold up.”
With the order set to take effect in August, a wave of litigation is expected almost immediately, ensuring that the future of college athletics will once again be decided not on the field, but in the courtroom.