The juxtaposition underscored an unusual moment in presidential priority-setting: with active hostilities underway abroad, Trump devoted the bulk of a public Friday afternoon to the governance of college football, ultimately threatening an executive order on sports if Congress failed to act.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that questions about the ongoing war in Iran were “easy” compared to his efforts to regulate college sports and rein in athlete salaries — an extraordinary remark he appeared to soften only moments later.
Trump spent more than an hour at a White House roundtable with college sports figures, pressing Congress to overhaul NCAA rules even as U.S. and Israeli forces continued military operations against Iran that began a week earlier.
At the close of the event, a reporter started to ask about Iran when Trump interrupted. “That’s an easy problem compared to what we’re doing here,” he said.
Later, asked why he was focused on college sports with so much else happening, Trump appeared to reconsider. “I saw what was happening with college sports. And it doesn’t sound very important compared to what’s happening in Iran and other places,” he said. “But it is very important to me. And if I can get it done, I’ll get it done.”
He did eventually address Iran briefly, rating U.S. military actions “a 12 to 15” on a scale of 1 to 10.
The roundtable came after Trump had spent hours with senior officials behind closed doors — likely on Iran and other pressing matters, according to the Associated Press — and after he announced he had met with defense contractors who agreed to increase weapons production.
Flanking Trump at the sports event were Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. The gathering also included House Speaker Mike Johnson, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, New York Yankees president Randy Levine and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who once served on the College Football Playoff Selection Committee. Former Alabama coach Nick Saban opened by telling Trump, “I’m just a football coach.” No current college athletes participated.
The event unfolded one day after Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. When a reporter raised that decision, Trump groused, “Ugh,” and said, “Is it possible to stay on this subject, just for once?”
Trump implored members of Congress to pass the SCORE Act, a bill designed to impose new rules on college sports that opponents have criticized as a giveaway to the NCAA and its most powerful schools. Told the measure almost certainly would not clear Congress, Trump said he would draft an executive order on college sports himself.
“If this doesn’t work, colleges are going to be destroyed,” he said.
The president argued that the NCAA’s name, image and likeness era — which allows athletes to profit from their personal brands — has harmed college athletics by enriching star players while squeezing out smaller sports and women’s programs, and that some universities have begun paying athletes so much it is driving them toward insolvency. At one point he asked directly: “Is there any way we could go back to the old system, which I thought was fantastic?”
Trump suggested athletes could be paid “some compensation, more minimal, but a lot” under a simpler scholarships model.