By TODD HORNE, VICE PRESIDENT & EXECUTIVE EDITOR
| Trump’s college-sports executive order, Charlie Baker’s response, and Louisiana’s HB 608 all expose the same truth: major college athletics now operates like a professional business while public universities still resist the transparency that public status requires. |
Let’s stop dancing around the real issue.
LSU is using public money to pay athletes directly. Under Louisiana law, records concerning the payment of money by a public body are public records unless a specific exemption applies. That is not some novel theory invented for this fight. That is the basic structure of Louisiana public-records law.
And that is exactly why House Bill 608 matters.
HB 608 is not some harmless modernization bill. It is a direct attempt to create a new confidentiality shield for documents related to an intercollegiate athletics revenue-sharing program. That alone tells you what is really happening.
If LSU already had a clear, comfortable exemption under existing law, it would not need the Legislature to create a new one. If the old exceptions LSU has cited were enough, lawmakers would not be moving a bill tailored to these records right now. The push for a new law is the admission. LSU and its allies do not want to win this fight under existing law. They want a new law because the current one points too strongly toward disclosure.
That is the starting point. But it is not the biggest point.
The bigger point is that LSU athletics is trying to live in two worlds at once.
On one hand, major college sports now operates like a professional business. The White House itself said in Executive Order 14322, signed July 24, 2025, that recent litigation eliminated limits on compensation, pay-for-play inducements and transfers, creating an out-of-control, rudderless system of bidding wars and player movement. That is not an amateur model. That is a market.
And now the federal government is treating it like one.
On April 3, 2026, the White House published a new executive order, Urgent National Action to Save College Sports. You do not get presidential action, DOJ involvement, FTC involvement, Title IX review, and federal pressure on college athletics unless the system has plainly become a national governance problem. The federal government is not talking about college sports like an extracurricular campus hobby anymore. It is talking about it like a destabilized commercial sector.
Then came NCAA president Charlie Baker’s statement, and it only sharpened the point. Baker praised the executive order for reinforcing protections like guaranteed health care coverage, mental health services, and scholarship protections. But in the same breath, he said college athletics still needs a permanent, bipartisan federal legislative solution. That is an admission, whether Baker intended it that way or not. The NCAA is no longer speaking the language of an amateur pastime. It is speaking the language of system management, regulatory stability, and federal legal architecture.
That matters because Baker is trying to claim progress without claiming control. He wants credit for modernization and athlete protections, but he also wants Congress to rescue the NCAA from a system it can no longer govern cleanly on its own. That is not the posture of an organization presiding over a healthy amateur model. That is the posture of an industry asking Washington to stabilize a market.
But LSU is still a public university.
That matters legally, institutionally, and economically. LSU athletics is not carrying the burdens of a truly private franchise. It operates inside the shelter of the state’s flagship public university. It benefits from public institutional infrastructure, university-controlled facilities and land, and the legal and financial advantages that come with public status. Then, when somebody asks how public money is being spent, LSU suddenly wants to act like a private business guarding proprietary payroll strategy.
It should not get to have it both ways.
And what makes that even more absurd is this: even private professional sports are often more honest about compensation structure than college sports.
The NFL does not pretend compensation is some sacred mystery. The rules are standardized. The financial structure is openly discussed. Everybody understands it is a business. College sports, by contrast, wants the money, the roster management, the transfer market, the compensation logic, and the bidding wars of professional sports while still hiding behind an outdated identity whenever accountability comes knocking.
That is the contradiction.
And market history is not on the side of secrecy.
In practice, structured transparency almost always produces better outcomes than opacity. When prices, terms, and rules are visible enough to compare, market participants can test fairness, identify distortions, and make rational decisions. When compensation systems operate in the dark, insiders gain power. Administrators gain discretion. Favored actors gain leverage. Outsiders lose the ability to tell whether money is being allocated fairly, efficiently, or honestly.
That is not theory. That is case history.
Opaque markets do not eliminate manipulation. They protect it. Hidden systems are where favoritism thrives and where the people with the most information hold the most power. If college sports is now serious enough to justify federal concern, then it is serious enough to justify public scrutiny, especially at a public university.
And that is where Trump’s executive order and Charlie Baker’s statement actually strengthen the broader case for transparency rather than weakening it.
The White House says college sports needs order, guardrails, and national stabilization because the current compensation market is out of control. Baker says the NCAA needs a permanent federal legislative solution. Fine. But once you admit that, you are also admitting that this is a real compensation system with real institutional consequences. And once a public university is using public money in a real compensation system, the idea that those records should be hidden becomes even harder to defend.
The more formalized the business becomes, the stronger the case for disclosure becomes.
Not weaker.
That is why the fallback argument from LSU’s side does not hold up: that Louisiana’s old public-records laws were not designed for this model.
Of course they were not designed for this model. This model did not exist.
They were designed for public bodies.
That is the point.
Louisiana’s public-records law was not written to predict every twist in the economics of college athletics. It was written to make sure public institutions cannot spend public money and then hide the records. That principle did not become obsolete because college football and basketball turned into a bigger business. If anything, the more professional the business becomes, the stronger the case for scrutiny becomes.
More money means more reason for oversight.
More strategic allocation means more reason for oversight.
More discretion means more reason for oversight.
More pressure to win means more reason for oversight.
That is not unfair to LSU. That is the price of being public.
I am not writing about this from a distance. I am one of the plaintiffs challenging LSU’s refusal to turn over records tied to these payments. So I am not speculating about the conflict. I am in it. And the Legislature’s response is revealing. Instead of pointing to a clear statute that already shields these records, lawmakers are trying to pass a new one.
That is not clarification.
That is not housekeeping.
That is an effort to change the rules because the current rules are not strong enough for the secrecy LSU wants.
And that is why Trump’s executive order, Charlie Baker’s statement, and HB 608 belong in the same conversation.
They are different responses to the same underlying truth.
Everybody in power now understands college sports is no longer functioning like an amateur sideline to education. The White House understands it. Congress understands it. State lawmakers understand it. University officials understand it. The NCAA understands it. LSU understands it.
What they do not all agree on is what honesty requires once that truth is admitted.
My answer is simple.
If major college sports is going to operate like a professional business, then it is time for it to become one openly. Form its own private professional league. Create uniform rules. Build a real governing structure. Establish a compensation system that matches reality. Stop forcing public universities to act like pro franchises while pretending they are still just sponsoring an amateur campus activity.
Because this halfway system is dishonest.
The federal government now wants to regulate a market everyone still pretends is not a market. The NCAA wants a permanent federal fix for a system it can no longer stabilize on its own. LSU wants the competitive instincts of a pro franchise without the disclosure duties of a public university. Louisiana lawmakers want to create a new shield because the current law points too strongly toward transparency.
That cannot hold.
Not legally. Not structurally. Not morally.
If this is a professional business, then build a professional system and be honest about it.
But do not ask the public to accept professional-sports secrecy wrapped inside the shell of a public university and call it college athletics.
Be the first to comment