Trump calls for caps on college athlete pay

President Donald Trump believes there should be a limit to how much a college athlete can earn, in the interest of protecting the schools they play for.

Speaking with ESPN host Pat McAfee, Trump revealed that one of his concerns with paying collegiate athletes is the possibility of “lesser” sports getting axed to fund football teams.

Watch the full clip:

FULL VIDEO: President Trump appears on The Pat McAfee Show on Veteran’s Day pic.twitter.com/7Oo1s3dvr8

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“It is a very serious problem because even football, when they give quarterbacks $12 million, $13 million, $14 million — I read a couple of them — and all of a sudden you’re going to see it’s going to be out of control, and even rich colleges are going to go bust,” the president explained. “They had the old way. They gave scholarships, and they did lots of good things. But there could be some form of payments, but… look, the NFL, and all of you know, all teams, they have caps. You don’t really have that in college sports.”

“When the guard comes along that weighs 350 pounds and he’s phenomenal, and they say, ‘That’s going to make the difference between having a great team and a lousy team’, and they give him $10 million — that’s going to start happening pretty soon — all of a sudden you’re going to have NFL-type payrolls,” he added, noting that this is not a sustainable for even the most high-earning colleges and universities. “Colleges don’t make that much money, even the most successful, so they’re not going to be able to do this. Bad things are going to happen unless they figure this out. And frankly, the college football, it’s very big. But as big as it is, if they don’t do some very powerful caps, these colleges are all going to go out of business no matter how rich they are.”

He mentioned that retired University of Alabama coach Nick Saban could have a hand in potentially negotiating new salary caps that would protect colleges from overspending on their football programs. This would allow other sports to continue to exist, even though they may not be as popular or bring in as much viewership as football.

“I don’t want to use any particular sport, because it’s, you know, degrading. But they are really terminating a lot of sports… you would call them lesser sports, but big sports, good sports, and sports where they have tremendous interest, they’re getting rid of them. A lot of the lesser sports are being totally terminated. You know that? It’s a shame. It was almost like a training ground for the Olympics, and a lot of those training grounds are being lost,” Trump said.

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