High School kids might be able to make NIL money?

We are moving into a new era, possibly, with high school athletes and name, image, and likeness. Nick Stevens, Managing Editor, High School OT, joins us on the Adam Gold Show.

Alright, sir. So explain to me how this is going to work and what the steps are before we get to, you know, some high school football player being able to earn some money, being a high school football player from a third party. Yeah, well, first, it's going to pass the NCHSA Board of Directors, and that vote is probably going to happen tomorrow. There may be some discussion on that this afternoon, which we'll have live for you on High School OT, but the vote will happen tomorrow. If it passes, this policy will go into effect on July 1st of this year, and basically what they're doing is they're putting in guidance and guardrails for high school athletes because, I mean, Adam, I don't know if you agree with this, but I've been saying this for a while now.

This is a matter of when this comes here. So you get out in front of it, you put some guidelines in place. They're going to have to, all the athletes and coaches and administrators are going to have to go through annual education about NIL through the NFHS. They're going to have to report any NIL deals to the school.

The school's going to have to report that to the NCHSAA, and there's restrictions on what type of products they can be involved in. So things that you wouldn't see kids generally promoting, or want to see kids generally promoting, they're not going to be allowed to be involved in those products. So it's just putting some guidance in place that allows kids to profit off their name, image, and likeness if that's something that they're able to do, which is an open question, and hopefully protect them and provide some guardrails.

The whole guardrail thing is just, it blows my mind because we probably don't need guardrails. But all the products, all of these things, I mean, we're talking about adult sites and alcohol and vaping and all of these things that, honestly, the kids are not going to get caught up in because most people in this area have some sense. But I understand why they put them in just in case, you know, like a gambling site wants to get involved with a 16-year-old kid. But ultimately what we're dealing with here, is my guess, is these kids being able to make a, you know, if you're a big, if you're a high school star you can make an appearance at a local, I don't know, pet store and, you know, sign puppies and they can give you like 500 bucks or whatever it is to do that. Or be a counselor at a camp, which they wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Of course, high school kids are allowed to hold summer jobs, no?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, they can work during the season. You know, the example I give all the time is what you're probably going to see a lot of is small town North Carolina. The starting quarterback or something is going to go have a meal at a small town restaurant that's owned by, you know, a mom and pop shop in small town here in North Carolina. And they're going to get a free meal in exchange for posting that on Instagram or something. You know, it's not, you're not going to see, you know, guaranteed $25,000 from the NIL collective in high school sports. Like it's not going to happen.

Oh man. And another very common misconception that we're seeing on Twitter ever since we broke this news yesterday is, where is all this money coming from? We can't even pay our coaches and our schools.

The schools are not paying any of this money. Of course not. And I think people have that misunderstood. If a kid makes any money, and again, that is a big open question, whether or not there's even any demand for this in the marketplace.

That's coming from the third party business or whoever that is going to make something off of the players name, image and likeness. So, you know, there are some common misconceptions out there right now. And I think a lot of that's just how it was rolled out at the college level overnight.

Yeah, we're, everybody's so like jumpy over what this is going to look like. Nick Stevens, managing editor, high school OT is joining us here. I did see, you know, one of the graphs in your story about this, that it can't be used as a recruiting induce, but you're not allowed to recruit, right? In high school, even the schools like Gibbons, which has been kind of accused in the past of recruiting air quotes, you're not allowed to do that.

So, of course, you wouldn't be allowed to use this as an inducement anyway. Let me just say, you know, we're going through the board of directors stuff right now. And this is just one topic that the board is addressing this week. But in here, they have incident reports and, you know, violations and stuff. There is a school in North Carolina that their coach has been suspended 365 days for promoting enrollment at their school.

So when stuff like that happens, and that's happening without NIL, by the way, but when stuff like that happens, there are penalties in place that are used. So, you know, if I also kind of object to the whole premise that there's going to be a bunch of boosters and local community supporters that are going to be paying a bunch of kids because they just really want to win that high school baseball game so bad. But, you know, maybe. I don't know. I don't know what it's like to have that much money.

So I just I don't think that we're going to see all of these doomsday things happen. And by the way, we're actually in the minority nationally when it comes to this. Twenty seven of the 51 state associations have already approved NIL for high school athletes.

Yeah. They all still have functioning high school associations and functioning sports. They should. They absolutely should. I mean, look, let's just say there's a batting cage out there that you want to, you know, pay like five ball players who have some name recognition, maybe the five best ball players in the area to come on out and give 10 year old kids a clinic on how to hit.

Why can't you do that? You'd have parents coming out for hundreds of parents bringing their kids out. It's great for business. It's good for these kids.

It's good for the little kids, too. And I can tell you, I've already heard from one professional athlete from the state who's like, hey, I want to pay some of the top players to come work at my youth camp. They come back into town and host these youth camps all the time. And now they can bring in the current high school players and pay them. And, you know, that gives them access to a professional athlete that can help them through these processes.

Remember when Chris Archer used to have his camp out in Clayton? Yeah, I mean, there's there's several in many different sports all over the place. All right. Let me ask you one more thing. This has nothing to do with NIL. But I know they're talking about a final four in the basketball tournament, like getting the final four together in one site.

Is that was that what I'm supposed to understand? That is something that they're going to discuss. It's not expected that there's many voting on that at this meeting.

We've had issues in the past where there's not enough seats for the number of people who want to come to the particularly regional final games, which are state semifinals. And so one of the things that they're going to talk about this week, and this may happen later today, actually, is whether or not going to a final four format would work better. And they've compared how they do things here to some other states. There are states that do that format in the southeast. And so that's one thing they'll discuss is having them all in one location. That's going to get a lot harder in a few years when we move to, you know, at least seven classifications.

But at least for the next couple of years, that that would work if they want to move to that. So that's an interesting conversation. Yesterday was the first I had heard about it.

So I like it. By the way, any any question as to whether or not the NIL thing will pass? I think that there's a question, you know, there it's an issue that people have mixed reactions to. I would certainly not say it's a done deal. Just reading how this has been proposed, though. And they've already put together guidance to issue to schools and amending their amateur rule and all that stuff. If I had to guess, I would guess this has a decent shot at passing this week.

But I wouldn't say it's a done deal by any means. Nick Stevens, managing editor, high school OT. Nick, I appreciate your time, my friend.

I'll talk to you soon. Yes, sir. Thanks, Adam. You got it.

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