Stevens: Anti-NIL policy leaves NC public school athletes behind
Sport

Stevens: Anti-NIL policy leaves NC public school athletes behind

Posted on by Matthew Reynolds

When the State Board of Education adopted an amateurism policy that included an outright ban on name, image, and likeness activities for high school athletes at North Carolina public schools, it accomplished one thing: leaving those kids behind most of the country and their private school counterparts in this state.

You may be completely against NIL, and that’s fine. But if you want to see high school sports in North Carolina continue to grow and thrive, if you want to see the elite players play at their community high schools — particularly in the sports that garner the most viewership and attention, if you want kids in North Carolina to have the same opportunities kids in other states have, this isn’t a difficult topic.

There doesn’t need to be a lot of extra research done. We don’t need committees to study NIL. At least 31 states already allow NIL in high school sports, and others are moving that direction. That means North Carolina high school athletes have already been left behind.

Are you worried that a high school athlete might make “too much” money? Worried that overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated high school coaches will have to deal with players making more money than they do?

Let me try to relieve some of those worries.

In 2023, before the NCHSAA passed its short-lived NIL policy, it’s NIL Committee conducted research into how NIL worked in other states that had already adopted policies. The NCHSAA found the average NIL deal for high school athletes in other states was between $60-$120.

That doesn’t mean every high school athlete was making between $60-$120. It means the athletes who were fortunate enough to get deals made that much.

For most people, that isn’t a life-changing amount of money. That money will go towards gas, or lunch, or camps, or equipment, or prom, or clothes. However, there are some kids, probably more than we would like to think, whose families need every dollar they can get to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, so I won’t diminish the importance of any amount of money, but we’re not talking about thousands or millions of dollars in high school sports.

I often hear about NIL in high school widening the gap between the schools that already have a lot and the schools that don’t have much. But isn’t the state board policy doing exactly that? Private school athletes can make money from NIL, public school athletes cannot.

When people hear “NIL” they think about the NIL policies of the NCAA, which lack any guardrails or any real enforcement mechanisms. There are college athletes making large amounts of money, there are collectives at schools organizing opportunities for their athletes. Soon, schools will begin paying their athletes directly.

This is not how NIL works in high school sports elsewhere in the country, and it’s not the policy the NCHSAA tried to implement.

Let’s be clear: high school NIL is not pay to play. You do not make money simply because you’re on a high school team.

The NCHSAA policy had very specific guidelines for what types of NIL activities were and were not allowed. Kids could earn NIL money for promoting the local burger restaurant down the road from their school that stays open late after Friday night football games, but they couldn’t promote products like alcohol or tobacco. Athletes could be paid to post something on their social media accounts, but they couldn’t use their school’s name or logo, or appear in their school uniform as part of an NIL deal.

The NCHSAA policy had reporting mechanisms, it banned schools from setting up NIL opportunities for their athletes or organizing collectives, and it had education requirements for those involved. The policy aimed to provide kids the opportunity to participate in NIL activities, it gave parents the option to decide if it was right for their child, and it aimed to protect them from people who may seek to take advantage of the situation. It was a much more structured policy than what you’ve seen play out at the collegiate level.

Now, if your child is an athlete at a public school in North Carolina, they have fewer rights than their peers who play sports at many private schools in this state. You have fewer rights as a parent simply because your child attends a public school.

Earlier this year, the N.C. Independent Schools Athletic Association, which governs high school sports at nearly 100 private schools in North Carolina, adopted a NIL policy that will go into effect this summer. Adding insult to injury for the public school athletes, the policy was very similar to the policy the NCHSAA, which governs high school sports at over 400 public schools in North Carolina, adopted last spring. However, the state legislature got involved in a matter of hours.

For most, NIL for high school athletes isn’t even a political issue, something that is hard to say about much of anything these days. States with political leanings left, right, and center have all adopted NIL policies for high school sports — big states and little states, wealthy states and poorer states, states in the northeast, states in the south, states in the Midwest, and states on the west coast.

In fact, NIL in high school sports is legal in Virginia and Tennessee, a policy was approved by Georgia last fall, and South Carolina has at least considered proposals. North Carolina could one day be on an island by itself preventing high school athletes from taking part in NIL opportunities.

So what’s next? I doubt this story is over. NIL may not be coming to North Carolina high schools this year, but I expect it will arrive eventually. Perhaps it happens through a court case at some point, like we’ve seen so many examples of at the college level. Or, perhaps politicians will step in.

When the NCHSAA passed its NIL policy, Sen. Vickie Sawyer (R-Iredell) was one of the state legislators who put forth an amendment to Senate Bill 636 that stripped the NCHSAA of its ability to enact such policies and placed it with the State Board of Education. At the time, she tweeted: “The @NCHSAA continues to overreach their authority and infringe on the rights of parents & students. They have no right to tell my family who owns my child’s image & likeness.”

She’s correct that the NCHSAA should not have the ability to tell families who can control a child’s name, image, and likeness. Which is why the NCHSAA was correct in passing a NIL policy that allowed kids and their families to determine whether or not they participate in NIL activities. SB 636 took that away and now the State Board of Education, not the NCHSAA, is telling families that it decides who owns a child’s name, image, and likeness.

And quite frankly, the state board’s new policy is largely unenforceable. Let’s play a hypothetical game. Nick Stevens of HighSchoolOT pays a high school basketball player to share all HighSchoolOT coverage of this player’s team. That player doesn’t have to report that to anyone, which would have been required under the NCHSAA’s NIL policy. And as far as anyone else knows, the player is just sharing content about their team that HighSchoolOT is providing. There’s no need for the player – or for HighSchoolOT – to disclose the NIL relationship.

Now, of course, we would never do this at HighSchoolOT, but you see the problem. These rules are not always easily enforceable.

If the state legislature wants to give parents the right to manage their own child’s name, image, and likeness, or if the legislature wants to ensure NIL deals are documented and kids are protected from being taken advantage of, it could vote on a bill to change this policy immediately. Other legislatures – controlled by both Democrats and Republicans – in other states have done this exact thing.

What path will North Carolina take to high school NIL? I don’t know. But eventually, one way or another, North Carolina will join most other states in the country in allowing it.

Source: highschoolot.com