President Donald Trump will attend Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship Game between Indiana and Miami at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, a White House official confirmed on Friday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will also attend Monday’s contest, the White House said, confirming a report by Axios. Rubio is an alumnus of Miami’s law school.
Trump has long been a fan of college football, having attended several College Football Playoff games while in and out of office. In December, he attended the Army-Navy game at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. The president has attended two previous national championship games, including the 2019 title bout between LSU and Clemson.
He has also attended a number of other high-profile sporting events in his second term, including UFC fights, the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, the U.S. Open men’s final in September and the NCAA Wrestling Championship in Philadelphia in March. In February, he became the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. Trump also attended a regular-season NFL game between the Washington Commanders and Detroit Lions, where he appeared on the FOX broadcast for a brief interview.
Trump has taken a particular interest in collegiate sports during his time as president. In July, he signed an executive order aimed at “saving college sports.” The order recommended guardrails for name, image and likeness revenue to prevent revenue-generating sports from threatening the continued existence of non-revenue-generating sports.
The order also banned “pay-for-play” to athletes by schools, but did try to carve out exceptions for endorsement and sponsorship deals with third-party businesses. It also called for the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify the employment status of student-athletes, which would likely decrease the chances athletes would have the right to organize as a collective unit.
Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne praised the executive order. Trump also met with former Alabama coach Nick Saban to discuss the changes in collegiate football prior to signing the executive order.
“The executive order provides a huge step in providing the educational model that has always been what we’ve sort of tried to promote to create opportunities for players, male and female alike, revenue and non-revenue, so that they can have development as people, students and develop careers and develop professionally if that’s what they choose to do,” Saban said in an interview on Fox and Friends.
In July, Trump spoke to reporters about the challenges facing college sports.
“The fans are upset about it,” Trump said. “And players are being taken from team after team and being traded around like playing cards. And a lot of money’s passing and nobody knows what’s happening. So these people behind me are going to be very much involved in figuring that whole thing out and working on it and trying to bring some sanity to that incredible — not only the football — college sports.”