JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Florida High School Athletic Association’s first foray into the murky waters of the name, image and likeness debate got underway Monday with more questions and concerns about high school athletes being able to profit much like those in college.
“It’s the reality of where we’re at,” one FHSAA board member said.
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That reality is coming sooner rather than later, something that the FHSAA board of directors admitted Monday. Its hope is to do quite a bit more fact finding and research before the state legislature takes a long look at the topic and imposes its own set of rules. The FHSAA’s next board meeting is April 21-22. The board voted unanimously to hold an NIL workshop the morning of April 21 to gain more clarity on the topic. Monday’s meeting was only scheduled to be a discussion on the FHSAA’s first draft of the topic and no vote on NIL was planned.
In some ways, it’s a race against the calendar for the FHSAA to address one of the most polarizing topics in amateur athletics. Executive director Craig Damon and other members of the board have no shortage of questions — deep, legal questions — on a number of NIL fronts that won’t be answered without insight from counsel on what is still a new and developing front.
At the other end of the spectrum is the potential for lawsuits by athletes and their families to allow them to be compensated. Those lawsuits have popped up across the country and also in Florida. There’s also the possibility of state interference on the topic, something brought up Monday by the board.
Politicians have chipped and chopped away at the FHSAA over the past decade on a number of fronts, including the introduction of controlled open enrollment in 2016. That law paved the way for school choice and helped create a rampant transfer situation in Florida akin to the transfer portal in college. NIL is an even grayer area.
Board member Ricky Bell said that it’s imperative that the FHSAA needs to address NIL before state legislators do.
“The first thing I think we need to address though is we need to decide as the board is what NIL looks like and define it, very specifically. Because NIL in college is not name, image and likeness. It’s just giving money to kids just because they’re on the roster. We don’t need to get in a situation where we’re dealing with that,” he said.
The FHSAA went through the first draft of NIL at its board of directors meeting, delving into what is expected to be a landmark decision for athletes in Florida in the coming months and years. Thirty states and the District of Columbia have put laws in place that allow, all by differing measures, high school athletes to be compensated for use of their NIL.
Since it was allowed in college after a June 2021 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that forbid the NCAA from blocking athletes from profiting off their NIL, the cash has flowed and the rules and regulations have struggled to catch up.
Collectives have emerged on the college level as a way of compensating college athletes. The regulation and oversight over collectives are shaky at the very best. One board member spoke against any sort of collective being able to pay high school athletes as an inducement to sign a letter of intent to sign with their college.
“We need to make sure collectives aren’t involved,” Bell said. “We need to make sure agents aren’t involved. We need to make sure if the kid does sign an NIL deal that there’s a legitimate business they’re producing something for. …There’s some kind of product that have produced to get this money, not just ‘I’m a great athlete.’”