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If you’ve had the chance to attend a high school sporting event, you likely have been met by athletes working hard with the shared goal of victory in their sport.
What you cannot see in Ohio is them using their athletic talent or persona off the field to make money.
This is because of NIL, or name, image, and likeness. It grants college, and in some other states high school, athletes the right to profit from their personal brand.
It wasn’t until July of 2021 that the NCAA altered its rules to allow college students to profit from NILdeals, yet this decision had a grand and almost immediate impact across the nation.
Soon after, one by one, different states began changing their rules, allowing high school athletes to benefit from their NIL as well.
What does NIL mean for high school athletes?
Shawn Williams Jr. is the head coach of the Centennial High School boys basketball team, and the head coach of the All-Ohio Red boys 16U AAU basketball team. He says that even he is noticing that NIL is gradually becoming more prevalent and impactful in the high school scene.
To his point, 44 states permit high school athletes the monetization of their NIL, according to NCSA Sports. Ohio is not one of these states.
In May 2022, an NIL proposal was put forth by the Ohio High School Athletic Association, but it failed by a margin of 538 to 254 in a vote by member schools.
This proposal would have allowed student athletes to sign endorsement agreements as long as their teams, schools and the OHSAA logo were not used, the endorsements did not happen on school property or in school uniform and provided there were no endorsements with companies that do not support the mission of education-based athletics, such as casinos, gambling, alcohol, drugs, and tobacco.
“Every year, the referendum voting process shows that our member schools have a voice in this democratic process,” said OHSAA Executive Director Doug Ute. “If NIL is going to enter the Ohio interscholastic landscape, we want the schools to be the ones to make that determination.”
Will NIL ever be approved for Ohio high school students?
Although it is not in Ohio, Williams believes that the existence of NIL in itself is not an issue. He believes that social media’s significance in NIL and sports culture as a whole, however, is a “double edged sword.”
Williams feels that while social media helps with outreach and shines light on the overlooked or undermined characteristics in an athlete such as hard work, dedication, passion, and immersion into their sport, with the prominence of social media in the lives of children and adults alike, athletes have become aware of the capabilities of social media and have been taking advantage of them.
Such has been shown through the gradual upsurge in instances of televised unsportsmanlike conduct in the form of athletes embarrassing one another and ultimately straying from the fundamental and core components of their sports, hungry for media attention.
Despite this, Williams is supportive of the opportunity NIL can create for high school athletes.
With so much momentum pushing toward NIL benefits being integrated into high school and college athletics, there is a possibility of it passing in the state of Ohio sooner rather than later. However, this decision will ultimately come down to the member schools.
“Whatever we do moving forward, it will include discussion on this issue with our school administrators, Board of Directors, staff and leaders of other state high school athletic associations,” Ute said.
Because the proposal was rejected, Ohio’s student-athletes remain unable to sign endorsement deals without losing their amateur status.
Ryan Holmes is a student at Centennial High School. This piece was written for Columbus Journalists in Training, a program sponsored by the Columbus Dispatch and Society of Professional Journalists Central Ohio Pro-Chapter and Columbus Association of Black Journalists for Columbus City Schools students. Ryan was a member of team Writer's Block.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Student project: Will Ohio HS athletes be allowed to sign sponsor deals?
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