Make Amateurism Great Again? An Attack on U.S. Capitalism by a Republican Administration

As a former Division I basketball player, a practicing attorney, and an unapologetic believer in American capitalism, I bring a uniquely principled perspective to this issue. I’ve lived both the physical grind and the regulatory complexity of college athletics. I know what it means to stretch a scholarship into opportunity—to rise before dawn for workouts, sit through hours of law school lectures, and navigate a system that extracted elite-level performance while denying me the right to earn from my own name or have an agent. I am a product of that paradox. I’ve lived its costs and now work on the legal frontlines of its reform. On July 24, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued an Executive Order entitled “Saving College Sports,” casting it as a federal response to the disruption wrought by athlete compensation litigation, the proliferation of NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals, and what he calls the growing professionalization of amateur sports. The Order activates a broad coalition of federal agencies—from the DOJ to the Department of Education—to “restore guardrails” in the name of fairness and educational integrity. But behind the carefully crafted rhetoric lies something far more troubling: a reactionary effort to reinstate centralized control, cap market forces, and entrench the institutional advantages of college sports’ old guard. This Executive Order, far from advancing American values, runs directly counter to them. It betrays the entrepreneurial spirit, market freedom, and individual rights that conservative leadership claims to uphold.