Staff Reports
The U.S. Education Department has taken a decisive step away from the Biden administration’s misguided attempts to regulate college athletics with an absurd policy that reigned over athletes’ opportunities to profit from their own name, image, and likeness (NIL). In a refreshing move, officials under Donald Trump are ending a mandate that had no legal grounding under Title IX, the 1972 law designed to prohibit gender discrimination in education. It seems a sense of common sense has returned to the Department, much to the relief of colleges and universities across the nation.
This so-called guidance from the Biden administration, hurriedly pieced together in the twilight of its tenure, was nothing short of a bureaucratic nightmare. Anyone witnessing the mess could only shake their heads; it was burdensome, unfair, and a classic case of government overreach. Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, described this last-minute attempt to reorder collegiate athletics as misguided at best. Considering how easy it is to trip over the many regulations tossed into the mix, colleges were frankly breathing a sigh of relief as the weight was lifted off their administrative shoulders.
Under Biden’s directive, colleges found themselves scrambling to comply with impossible guidelines, particularly regarding NIL payments. The administration’s memo stipulated that these payments must be aligned with athletic financial aid and that NCAA programs had to ensure equal distribution between male and female athletes. Given that football and men’s basketball dominate the revenue landscape, this approach risked leaving many schools in a financial tailspin. Colleges did not sign up for the NCAA only to throw on a Title IX straightjacket—thankfully, they won’t have to.
Education Department rescinds Biden memo that threatened to upend college NIL paymentshttps://t.co/cc7OvDhoDL pic.twitter.com/8JzZxNVrHS
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) February 12, 2025
Legal analysts have been split on whether this policy ended up complicating the anticipated approval of guidelines around NIL payments, which are crucial for the future of college athletics and the players involved. What’s clear is that the Biden administration seemed to confuse Title IX’s purpose with a misguided attempt to rewrite the rules of sports as we know them. Trainor firmly pointed out that back when Title IX was instituted, it had absolutely nothing to say about the world of revenue-generating sports and how compensation should be handled. It would seem the current administration took the liberty to misunderstand the law in the most extreme way possible.
In a time when the Biden administration seems to invent more rules than they can keep track of, Trump’s education officials are rescuing the credibility of the nation’s colleges and universities from a legislative circus. The reversal of this policy not only respects the integrity of college sports but also gives student-athletes the chance to earn money for their hard work—a concept as American as apple pie. As colleges look to a future free from bureaucratic nonsense, it seems the rightful return of common sense has put things back in their proper order.
