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It’s been less than half a decade since Ed Orgeron was last on the football bench, but the sport has had a generational shift 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 best college football teams of all time. But the landscape has changed so much that even President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “Save College Sports.”
What remains of Trump’s executive order is a mystery, but Orgeron wants Trump to be “more involved.”
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Ed Orgeron wants President Trump to be “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 get more involved. Something has to happen. Our sport is being killed, man,” Orgeron said in a recent interview with Pak Gazette Digital.
“I love that players get paid. I think it’s fair. But I think there should be a limit, and the transfer portal has to have rules about it. It’s like the Wild West. I talk to the coaches and tell them, ‘Hey, we’re working 24/7, 12 months a year. It’s crazy when guys come and when they leave.’ But you know what? It has to be a give and take. The players should get a lot, but the schools should get some guarantee in exchange…
“I think the president loves football, he’s a friend of mine, the more he can intervene and stop what’s going on in college football, the better it will be.”
Trump recently ripped off 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. Colleges are cutting back on a lot of their sports, you’d call them ‘minor’ sports, and they’re losing them like in numbers that no one can believe. They really were training camps, beautiful training camps, wonderful, hard-working young people. They were training camps for the Olympics,” Trump said in the Oval Office last 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, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
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“And a lot of these sports that they trained so well would win gold medals because of that. Those sports don’t exist, because they’re investing all their money in football. And, by the way, they’re investing too much money in it, in football.”
Orgeron has teamed up with player agent Tzvi Grossman to take advantage of the new NIL era and has learned a lot as he tries to find his next stop in college football. But despite all the money being passed 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 moms, the champions, all that to have a championship football team, and then the (key) word develop,” Orgeron said. “Just because you’re paying guys, I think all of our players should be paid, I agree with that, but the money they’re getting now is not the money that Joe Burrow is making. It’s not the money that Ja’Marr Chase is making, or Derek Stingley. In other words, developing at the school you’re going to is still important.”
