President Donald Trump is set to invite Charlie Ward and some of the most recognizable names in sports to Washington next Friday for a roundtable discussion about how to fix college sports, according to a report from Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger.
Dignitaries from professional and college sports have been invited, per the report. That not only includes Ward, who serves as the men’s basketball coach at Florida A&M, but also former coaches Urban Meyer and Mack Brown, Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, NBA commissioner Adam Silver, pro golfer Tiger Woods, and many others.
Yahoo! Sports reported it could be as many as 40 people. It’s being called the “Saving College Sports Roundtable.”
Trump is serving as chair of the roundtable, with vice chairs Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Randy Levine, the president of the New York Yankees.
Among the topics to be discussed are how to pay college athletes, NIL, the transfer portal, federal antitrust protection, and amending the Sports Broadcasting Act to allow conferences to pool their media rights.
“Absent guardrails to stop the madness and ensure a reasonable, balanced use of resources across collegiate athletic programs that preserves their educational and developmental benefits, many college sports will soon cease to exist,” the White House said in a statement.
“A national solution is urgently needed to prevent this situation from deteriorating beyond repair and to protect non-revenue sports, including many women’s sports, that comprise the backbone of intercollegiate athletics, drive American superiority at the Olympics and other international competitions, and catalyze hundreds of thousands of student-athletes to fuel American success in myriad ways.”
