Trump Orders Networks Not to Compete with Army–Navy Game

Speaking of ridiculous Executive priorities, as he sends American troops to pointless deaths on Iranian soil, Donald Trump has ordered television networks not to broadcast any other college football games during the Army–Navy Game on the second Saturday in December.

Funny—when I saw Executive Order 14396 titled “Preserving America’s Game”, I thought it was referring to baseball. But no: EO 13496 refers to one football contest between two usually unranked and losing teams. The order says keeping other games off the air during the Army–Navy Game is about preventing the expansion of the college football playoffs from “weaken[ing] the national focus on our Military Service Academies and detract[ing] from a morale-building event of vital interest” to the Department of Defense.

Don’t be fooled: this order is really about propping up ratings for Trump’s crony network CBS, which holds broadcast rights to the Army–Navy Game through 2038, and putting more likely illegal pressure on other TV networks to do Trump’s bidding:

President Donald Trump is escalating his battle with TV networks by laying the groundwork to pull their broadcast licenses if they air college football games that compete with the annual Army-Navy game.

Trump signed an executive order on Friday directing Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to review whether the “public interest” requirements that TV licensees agree to uphold should include preserving an exclusive programming time slot for the historic rivalry game between West Point cadets and midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy.

…Trump appeared to acknowledge the limits to which the order could be enforced to protect the game, which he’s regularly attended in person as president.

“Of course, we’ll probably get sued at some point,” Trump said at the White House on Friday [Aaron Pellish, “Trump Leverages Army-Navy Game to Ramp Up Pressure on Broadcasters,” Politico, 2026.03.20].

Yeah, you’ll get sued all right. This executive overreach into the free market has no legal basis and violates the First Amendment and basic principles of the free market (in other words, in perfect alignment with everything else Trump does):

One legal argument would likely focus on the lack of statutory authority to prevent a network from airing a competing football game. There is no law that Trump can cite to support a declaration that excludes competition in college football broadcasting.

There is a sports TV law, the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, but the SBA doesn’t contemplate one network being able to broadcast a college football game without the competition of another college football game broadcast. The SBA restricts the airing of pro football games during certain hours on Fridays and Saturdays from September into December, but that doesn’t lend statutory support to forbid a college football broadcast.

A legal attack on Trump’s Army-Navy order could also assert it runs afoul of First Amendment protections and core antitrust principles.

A network blocked from airing a broadcast could argue such a move undermines the First Amendment. Networks have used First Amendment arguments to defeat restrictions on broadcasting. In Comcast of Maine/New Hampshire v. Janet Mills (2021), Comcast, Disney, Fox and other companies successfully challenged a Maine law that required the sale of individual channels. Sponsors who are denied the chance to air commercials could raise a similar speech-related argument. A football player, meanwhile, might get legally creative and assert that the loss of a national TV slot diminishes their publicity rights and harms their NIL and revenue-share opportunities.

From a consumer standpoint, the denial of being able to watch preferred games on account of college football broadcast exclusivity undermines fan interests. It’s worth recalling that in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma (1984) the U.S. Supreme Court held the NCAA violated antitrust law when it restricted the number of times schools could appear on national TV. In Board of Regents, the Court critiqued the NCAA for pursuing a plan that was “unresponsive to consumer preference.” Until the SBA, federal courts had found NFL teams agreeing to not broadcast games in other teams’ geographic regions to violate antitrust law since it prevented some fans from having a choice of games to watch on TV [Michael McCann, “Trump’s Army–Navy TV Executive Order Could Face Legal Challenge,” Sportico, 2026.03.23].

Boy, if West Point and Annapolis can’t handle a little friendly competition from civilian college football teams on TV, how can we expect their graduates to face drawn-out armed competition from foreign troops on real battlefields?