There is a long history of US Presidents’ involvement with sports. A curmudgeon would say that interest/involvement was politically motivated to curry favor with the electorate; a kinder and gentler interpretation might be that – – like many Americans – – US Presidents have been sports fans in addition to whatever their public personas may have been. Let me hit a few of the high notes here:
- Woodrow Wilson: A big baseball fan and a collegiate player, he attended a World Series game in 1915 and threw out the first pitch. He was the first sitting President to attend a World Series game.
- Calvin Coolidge: He attended Game 1 of the 1924 World Series
- FDR: He threw out the first pitch on Opening Day 8 times in his tenure in the White House. Also, he famously gave MLB the “green light” to continue to play in the spring of 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
- Dwight Eisenhower: He made golf a much bigger thing that it was due to his interest in playing the game
- Richard Nixon: He once drew up an offensive football play for George Allen – – then coach of the Washington Redskins. Allen actually ran the play and it lost yardage; he never tried again. Amazingly, it never caught on with other NFL teams either.
- Gerald Ford: He played varsity football at Michigan as a linebacker and offensive lineman. LBJ once denigrated ford saying that Ford had played too many games without a helmet.
- George H. W. Bush: He played varsity baseball at Yale.
- George W, Bush: He threw out the first pitch when MLB returned after the 9/11 attacks.
- Barack Obama: He “released” his personal bracket picks for March Madness every year.
- Donald Trump: He owned a franchise in the USFL. He tried to buy the Buffalo Bills in the NFL. He had a prominent role in a storyline for pro ‘rassling. He is an avid golfer.
That listing merely skims the surface; nothing there would attract the attention of anyone associated with the American Historical Association. Moreover, if the interests and exploits of President Trump ended with the notations above, I doubt that the entire listing would ever have appeared here or anywhere else. Such is not the case and as Cher once sang:
“And the beat goes on …”
There are three sports issues into which President Trump has inserted himself. Please do not ask me to explain why this is the case; I do not read minds and if I were ever to achieve such a capability, let me be sure to say now that the last folks I would use my newfound skills on would be the current senior members of the Executive Branch and/or any member of the US Congress. And yet, here we go:
- Transgender athletes: I happen to agree with President Trump on this one; I think it is unfair competition for a post-pubescent male to compete against women in sports where strength, speed and endurance are critical elements for success. Proving that to be the case is the creation of women’s sports in the first place; if the playing field were level, women could participate in Varsity Sports and there would not have ever been a need to put a gender label on women’s sports in the first place.
- Staging a UFC event on the White House Lawn: That is a bad idea no matter when you put on the spectacle but to do it on July 4th, 2026 – – the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – – takes the cheesiness of the idea to stratospheric levels. Yes, I remember JFK playing touch football on the White House Lawn and yes, I remember Ike had a putting green installed on the White House lawn and two par-3 holes introduced to Camp David. Nevertheless, a UFC fight card with a large number of well-oiled hooligans-in-waiting on the White House lawn is clearly different.
- Signing an Executive Order to “clarify” college athletes’ employment status: Look, the “Transgender Issue” is a real one and it falls in President’ Trump’s wheelhouse; even if you do not agree with his position, you must admit that his involvement there makes a bit of sense. The UFC fight on White House property achieves an exponential level of cheesiness, but maybe you can attribute that to his proclivity to hob-knob with successful billionaire bros. But this one is a social tar baby [Hat Tip to Joel Chandler Harris and the Uncle Remus Tales]
I make no claim to be an attorney nor a political scientist or political guru. And I really don’t think that the rest of my days on this planet are going to be affected materially by whatever the final shakeout might be regarding paying college athletes and their employment status. So, my fundamentally uninformed and only marginally interested perspective on the Executive Order is here:
- The NCAA student-athlete who competes only for the love of the sport on his way to a degree became sufficiently threadbare that the NCAA had to approve NIL payments. That set up a suit by college athletes who toiled in the years before the NCAA’s altered posture claiming that they missed out on earnings potential. That suit settled for $2.8B. Those are facts; so, what does the Executive Order need to do here?
- The Order directs the Secretary of Labor and the NLRB to “clarify the employment status of student athletes.” Are they employees of the schools or conferences? Are they independent contractors? Can they unionize? Maybe I need to go back and review my notes from civics class in high school, but those questions seem to me to be in the purview of the Congress and not the President.
- The Order directs the Attorney General and the Chairman of the FTC to direct the NCAA into ways that the NCAA can regain its rule-making authority regarding intercollegiate athletics. I’m sorry; I don’t understand how they might do that or why that might be a giant leap forward. The NCAA hardly brings a long history of meaningful rulemaking to the party.
- The so-called “Olympic sports” and most women’s sports get protection from the Order which calls for set-asides for scholarships in those sports.
Look, I don’t know nearly enough to say here that the Executive Order should have said this or that something that it did say was patently counterproductive or even unconstitutional. But I think I know enough to believe that the President of the United States and his White House team of advisors and supporters all have much more important things to do than to worry about college athletes getting paid for their efforts. Hey, even starting the planning to protect the White House and the grounds from being trashed by the UFC crowd on July 4, 2026, is a bigger deal than that.
Finally, this comment from comedian Hugh Dennis seems appropriate today:
“I’m constantly looking for humour in the news. The funniest things are in the minutiae.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………