Nick Saban reacts to President Donald Trump's executive order relating to college sports

When President Donald Trump initially expressed concern about the current state of collegiate athletics back in May, he turned to Nick Saban for advice. After meeting in Tuscaloosa, Trump tabbed the legendary former Alabama head football coach as a co-chair on a yet-to-be-realized presidential commission on college sports alongside billionaire Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell.

And while Trump’s proposed presidential commission never went beyond those initial discussion phases, Saban’s input helped create the framework of what would become Trump’s recent executive order, titled “President Donald J. Trump Saves College Sports.” The White House announced the order on Thursday.

A day later, Saban praised the president’s executive order as “a huge step” toward moving college athletics back to an “educational model” after the House v. NCAA settlement effectively ended the NCAA’s “amateur” model and ushered in revenue-sharing with student-athletes. That began on July 1.

“I think President Trump’s executive order is a huge step in providing the educational model which is what we’ve always sort of tried to promote to create opportunities for players, male and female alike, revenue and non-revenue, so they can have development as people, students and develop careers or develop professionally if that’s what they choose to do,” Saban said during a Friday morning appearance on FOX’s Fox and Friends. “I think we need to make a decision here relative to do we want to have an education-based model, which I think the President made a huge step toward that, or do we want to have universities sponsor professional teams. And I think most people would choose the former.”

Trump’s “Save College Sports” executive order delivers on multiple agenda items that the NCAA and Power Four administrators have lobbied Congress for in recent months. That includes directing key members of his administration — specifically his secretaries of Education, Health and Human Services and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission — to develop a plan to provide antitrust protections for the NCAA and its conferences so it can properly create and enforce rules governing the future of collegiate athletics.

An executive order streamlines some of the top items on the NCAA’s wishlist. The order “requires the preservation and, where possible, expansion of opportunities for scholarships and collegiate athletic competition in women’s and non-revenue sports.”

“The NCAA is making positive changes for student-athletes and confronting many challenges facing college sports by mandating health and wellness benefits and guaranteeing scholarships, but there are some threats to college sports that federal legislation can effectively address and the Association is advocating with student-athletes and their schools for a bipartisan solution with Congress and the Administration,” NCAA president Charlie Baker said in a statement.

“The Association appreciates the Trump Administration’s focus on the life-changing opportunities college sports provides millions of young people and we look forward to working with student-athletes, a bipartisan coalition in Congress and the Trump Administration to enhance college sports for years to come.”

— On3’s Pete Nakos contributed to this report.