Senator Richard Blumenthal jumped on a Zoom call with fellow Democrats last October and said exactly what he planned to do to college sports reform.
"I can pretty well guarantee the SCORE Act ain't going to make it through the United States Senate," Blumenthal said.
And now Trump just showed every college football fan in America exactly what he plans to do about Blumenthal.
The Fix That Democrats Strangled
College football is broken – and Washington, D.C. did the breaking.
Courts gutted the NCAA's authority over athlete pay starting in 2021, leaving a vacuum where 30-plus states rushed to pass their own contradictory NIL laws, and booster bidding wars exploded with no rules and no ceiling.
The SCORE Act was the fix – a bipartisan bill that would have created national standards, protected women's sports, and given the NCAA the legal footing to actually enforce rules again.
Trump backed it.
The White House backed it.
The NCAA backed it.
Democrats killed it.
Blumenthal, Chris Murphy, and Maria Cantwell united in October to publicly torpedo the bill, calling it a gift to the NCAA instead of athletes – even as a single college football program was paying its roster $35 to $40 million – and no law in existence could stop it.
The House pulled the vote in December rather than watch it die on the floor.
What Trump Did Next
Trump didn't wait.
He's hosting the Saving College Sports Roundtable at the White House on March 6 with a guest list that reads like the Mount Rushmore of college sports authority.
DeSantis and New York Yankees President Randy Levine serve as vice chairs.
The invite list includes SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti, Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua, Heisman winners Tim Tebow and Charlie Ward, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, former coaches Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, and Mack Brown, and Tiger Woods.
This meeting was born at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump hosted DeSantis, Saban, Meyer, and Brown for a golf outing on February 15 – and the roundtable reportedly came out of that room.
That matters because DeSantis isn't a spectator on this issue.
The Man Who Already Did This Once
In June 2020, when the NCAA was paralyzed and every other governor was waiting to see what happened, DeSantis signed Florida's NIL bill into law.
Florida was only the second state in the country to do it.
That signature changed everything.
Within months, two dozen states were racing to pass their own NIL laws, the NCAA's amateur model was collapsing under the pressure, and the organization that had protected its business model for decades was forced to act.
DeSantis didn't ask permission.
He didn't wait for a Senate committee hearing.
He signed the bill and forced the country to follow.
Charlie Ward – Heisman winner, Florida State legend, now coaching at Florida A&M – confirmed he's attending the roundtable and said he wants to be the voice of "balance for both the students and institutions while keeping the original reason we go to college in the mix of the business model of sports."
That's who's in the room on March 6.
Why This Time Is Different
Blumenthal and his colleagues can block a Senate vote.
They can't block the White House.
Trump already signed an executive order in July targeting pay-for-play booster deals, protecting women's and non-revenue sports scholarships, and directing the Labor Department and NLRB to confirm that college athletes are not employees.
The March 6 roundtable is the next move – building the political coalition and the public pressure that makes passing legislation harder to stop.
Congress has held hearings on college sports for years, accomplished nothing, and gone home.
Meanwhile, Nick Saban watched the sport he built get bought out from under him in his final seasons, and Tim Tebow's Heisman from 2007 came from a world that no longer legally exists.
Senate Democrats blocked the fix because they want athletes classified as employees and unionized – which would blow up college sports as anyone over 50 has ever known it.
Trump and DeSantis are trying to save what's left before there's nothing left to save.
Sources:
- Brandon Marcello, "President Donald Trump to host White House roundtable on future of college athletics," CBS Sports, February 27, 2026.
- James Call, "Trump, DeSantis to tackle college sports' NIL issues," USA Today Network – Florida, February 27, 2026.
- "I can pretty well guarantee the SCORE Act ain't going to make it through the United States Senate," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, CBS Sports, October 22, 2025.
- "Senate Democrats Push Back on Proposed SCORE Act," CBS Sports, October 22, 2025.
- "House GOP Punts on SCORE Act Vote," Whiteboard Advisors, December 2025.
- White House Fact Sheet, "President Donald J. Trump Saves College Sports," whitehouse.gov, July 24, 2025.
- "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs bill allowing college athletes to be paid for name, image and likeness," CBS Sports, June 12, 2020.
