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It’s been less than half a decade since Ed Orgeron was last on the football sideline, but the sport has had a generational change in the NIL era.
Coach O won a national championship at LSU with, in his words, “the best transfer ever” in Joe Burrow on a team he said is “up there” among the greatest college football teams of all time. But the landscape has changed so much that even President Donald Trump signed an executive order “Saving College Sports.”
What remains of Trump’s executive order is a bit of a mystery, but Orgeron wants Trump to be “more involved.”
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Ed Orgeron wants President Trump “more involved” in NIL regulation after the president called college sports a “disaster.” (Rebecca Warren/Imagn Images, Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“I think he should be more involved. Something has to happen. Our sport is being killed, man,” Orgeron said in a recent interview with Pakinomist Digital.
“I love players who get paid. I think it’s fair. But I think there should be a cap and the transfer portal, there should be rules for that. It’s a bit like the wild west. I talk to coaches, it’s like, “Hey man, we work 24/7, 12 months a year. It’s going to be crazy when those guys are on the road.” But you know what? It’s got to be give and take. Players are going to get a lot, but schools are going to get some guarantee in return…
“I think the president, he loves football, he’s a friend of mine, the more he can step in and stop what’s going on in college football, the better.”
Trump recently ripped the supposed “disaster” that is NIL.
“I think it’s a disaster for college sports. I think it’s a disaster for the Olympics because, you know, we’re losing a lot of teams. The colleges are cutting a lot of their — they’d call them kind of ‘minor’ sports, and they’re losing them in numbers that nobody can believe. They were really training grounds, they were beautiful training grounds for Trump, they were wonderful training grounds, they were wonderful training grounds for Trump,” said in the Oval Office in on Thursday.
President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd before the start of the NFL Super Bowl LIX football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
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“And a lot of these sports that trained so well would win gold medals because of that. Those sports don’t exist because they put all their money into football. And by the way, they put too much money into it, into football.”
Orgeron has teamed up with player agent Tzvi Grossman to enter the new NIL era and has learned quite a bit as he tries to find his next stop in college football. But despite all the money being thrown around, Orgeron still believes one aspect of recruiting trumps all.
LSU Tigers head coach Ed Orgeron during a game between the Texas A&M Aggies and the LSU Tigers at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Nov. 27, 2021. (John Korduner/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“You still have to recruit, you still have to evaluate, you still have to get the mamas, the champions, all that to have a championship football team, and then the (key) word is evolving,” Orgeron said. “Just because you’re paying the guys — I mean all of our players have to be paid, I’m in — but the money they’re getting right now is not the money that Joe Burrow is making. It’s not the money that Ja’Marr Chase is making, Derek Stingley is making. So in other words, developing at the school you’re going to go to is still important.”
