Trump’s college football commission led by Nick Saban could be funny — in a sad way

I have always been curious to see what it would look like if a group of adults tried to push an entire handful of toothpaste back into the tube.

Accordingly, I found myself getting excited last week when I came across the following report from Yahoo! Sports:

“President Donald Trump is making plans to create a presidential commission on college athletics, the first step in what could be a months-long endeavor for solutions to the issues ailing the ecosystem.”

First of all, citing Yahoo! as a source is objectively funny. This is especially true when you include the exclamation point.

Second, I do not believe there has ever been a problem so large that our government can not succeed in making it bigger. This should not be taken as a critique of the current president nor his administration, but rather an observation about the efficacy of our country’s politicians in general. There’s nothing quite like a commission to generate a bunch of noise while accomplishing very little of substance.

But mostly, I found myself giggling at the image of a bunch of politicians forming a little club—which former Alabama coach Nick Saban will reportedly co-chair—so they can try and unring the bell that allowed college athletes to start getting some of the money their performances generate.

Good luck with that.

Over the past two years, the entire landscape of intercollegiate sports has been altered so that two conferences — the Big Ten and the SEC — could wring as much money as possible from two television networks: FOX and ESPN. Yet when told that some of this loot must be shared with the players, the entire industry that is college sports threw up its collective hands when it came to creating any type of mechanism for equitably doing this.

Utter chaos has ensued with outright bidding wars and rampant transfers while the institutions who are supposed to govern the sport have waited for the government to step in.

I suppose I should be sad about this. After all, college football is my favorite sport. If I’m being honest, it was a significant part of the reason I chose to attend the University of Washington in 1993, which is a tad pathetic given that I didn’t play football. I just liked watching it.

I still do, but over the past two years I stopped searching for any logic or morals in the way the sport is structured and/or governed. I’m not sure exactly when I made this decision. I just know it was after my school left the Pac-12, but before Kalen DeBoer left Washington. The first of those incidents broke my heart; the second struck me as indicative of the self-interest that has become the guiding light for anyone and everyone involved in college football.

Now, I look for things that I think are funny, and by funny I mean utterly ludicrous or absolutely absurd.

For instance, it is funny that Washington is in a Midwestern conference that includes Maryland while West Virginia is in Southwestern conference that includes Utah. The basic principles of geography have been abandoned to form an assembly of Frankenconferences destined to erase any regional spice and flavoring.

It’s also funny so many big-name college football coaches are so bent out of shape about the freedom that players now have to request more money or transfer. It used to be that only the coaches were allowed to practice that sort of ruthless self-interest, and apparently, it is no fun when the rabbit gets the gun.

Above all, I find it funny that college conferences have behaved as the most cutthroat of capitalists over the past 10 years, knifing rivals with no warning if it will earn them an extra $5 from a TV network, only to turn around and argue that the amateur sports they govern would be inalterably corrupted if the athletes were to be recognized as workers. Please.

I used to think it was important to iron out this contradiction. I believed coming up with a good answer was the only way to save what has been my favorite sport.

I’m no longer so naïve. I believe that the people who run college sports have simply been hoping that they’ll find someone or something that is powerful enough to re-establish some semblance of order within the sport.

Maybe a presidential commission is the path to accomplishing all of this. Perhaps that will provide the structure that has been missing.

More likely, it’s going to be one more opportunity for coaches, the schools they work for and the conferences they belong to tell the players, “You should do as we say, not as we do.”

That would be really funny. Not in a humorous way, though. But rather a pathetic one that is bound to result in a significant mess because—spoiler alert—you’re not getting the toothpaste back into the tube. I am looking forward to watching you try, though.

Danny O’Neil was born in Oregon, the son of a logger, but had the good sense to attend college in Washington. He’s covered Seattle sports for 20 years, writing for two newspapers, one glossy magazine and hosting a daily radio show for eight years on KIRO 710 AM. You can subscribe to his free newsletter and find his other work at dannyoneil.com.

This story was originally published May 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.