Dealing With Iran War Is ‘Easy,’ Trump Says. College Athlete Pay? Not So Much. | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump mentioned Friday that questions concerning the battle in Iran had been “easy” in comparison with efforts to higher regulate faculty sports activities and rein in excessive salaries for soccer gamers — a rare suggestion that even he himself appeared to assume higher of a short while later.

Trump convened a roundtable of specialists that included former Alabama soccer coach Nick Saban, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Pete Bevacqua, Notre Dame’s athletic director. He and others then spent over an hour arguing that large paydays for star athletes — in addition to different comparatively latest modifications to NCAA sports activities just like the switch portal — have wrecked faculty athletics.

Presidents are routinely known as upon to sort out a number of points directly, lots of them terribly advanced. But the timing of this prolonged dialogue was particularly putting, provided that the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran per week in the past. At the top of the occasion, a reporter began to ask about Iran and the president interrupted, “That’s an easy problem compared to what we’re doing here.”

When a second query happened Trump’s Thursday choice to fireside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the president groused, “Ugh,” earlier than including, “Is it possible to stay on this subject, just for once?”

Later, the president appeared to get a bit extra reflective when requested why he was centered on this subject with a lot else happening on this planet.

“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 mentioned. “But it is very important to me. And if I can get it done, I’ll get it done.”

Trump additionally ultimately commented briefly on Iran, saying that on a scale of 1 to 10, he’d rank U.S. navy actions “a 12 to 15.”

College sports activities — notably soccer — is wildly fashionable and its governance is with out query an enormous and regularly thorny situation. Trump has additionally for months complained that athletes securing larger and better salaries as a part of the NCAA’s title, picture and likeness period has modified issues for the more serious.

He maintains that big-revenue sports activities like soccer are squeezing out smaller sports activities and girls’s athletics, and even says that some universities have begun paying athletes a lot that it’s driving the establishments towards insolvency.

The roundtable got here after Trump spent hours with high officers behind closed doorways, doubtless discussing Iran and different main points. The president introduced that he’d met with protection contractors who had agreed to extend weapons manufacturing.

Still, it was shocking that Trump — flanked by his Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of employees Susie Wiles — discovered a lot time to dedicate to the problem of faculty sports activities.

The president listened as Saban joked, “I’m just a football coach.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others took turns expressing their love for school soccer and their fears for its future. Ex-Ohio State coach Urban Meyer provided his ideas, as did Randy Levine, president of Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees. No present faculty athletes participated.

“I’m here as long as you need me,” Trump assured these assembled, who included former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who as soon as served on the College Football Playoff Selection Committee.

The occasion boiled right down to Trump imploring members of Congress to move the SCORE Act, or laws based mostly on it. The invoice is designed to impose new guidelines on faculty sports activities, however has been criticized by opponents as a giveaway to the NCAA and its strongest faculties.

Told that the measure virtually definitely wouldn’t move Congress, Trump mentioned he’d draft an government order himself on faculty sports activities.

“If this doesn’t work, colleges are going to be destroyed,” he mentioned.

It wasn’t clear how that will differ from one Trump signed in July mandating that federal authorities make clear whether or not faculty athletes might be thought-about workers of the faculties. Instead, Trump spent extra time pining for the times earlier than title, picture and likeness.

“Is there any way we could go back to the old system, which I thought was fantastic?” Trump requested at one level, advocating for returning to a easy scholarships mannequin for school athletes whereas additionally suggesting that they might be paid “some compensation, more minimal, but a lot.”