High school student athletes in Michigan will now be allowed to earn money from personal branding opportunities under a new policy approved by the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
The MHSAA announced this week students can receive compensation for activities like endorsements, appearances, and social media promotions, but with strict rules on how they may do so.
We asked Our Lady of the Lake Catholic School Athletic Director and WSJM Sports contributor Phil McDonald for his thoughts. He says most states already allow the NIM deals for high schoolers, so the MHSAA announcement wasn’t exactly a surprise.
“I think everyone knew, unfortunately, it was going to happen sooner or later because there were several other states that already do it,” McDonald said. “But here with the MHSAA — I can’t speak of the other states — but the school can’t have anything to do with lining anything up for a student athlete to do an endorsement or make an appearance or sell anything. The school is totally out of it. It’s totally up to the student athlete, their parents, and any representative they have to set that up, and the school is not part of it.”
However, McDonald isn’t exactly welcoming the news announced this week. He says there are many who feel NIL agreements have ruined college sports because some athletes will just chase around the most money at different schools, rather than being loyal to their first choice. He’s concerned something like that could happen with Michigan high school sports.
“I remember years ago, there were some schools around the state that other schools were accusing them of illegally contacting student-athletes and encouraging them to transfer to their school to play athletics, and some schools were caught because of that, but in other instances, nobody was able to exactly prove that anything like that happened. The MHSAA says with this rule, you cannot use it to get a student to move from one school to another, but at least my fear is, who’s to say the owner of such and such business knows of some eighth grader who’s a star soccer player and would say, ‘I’d like to sign you up for this endorsement of my business. And, oh, by the way, this is where I graduated from, and I’d love to see you play soccer there.'”
McDonald notes under the new MHSAA rules, student athletes cannot use their school’s name, logo, mascot, or facilities in promotions, and cannot imply school or MHSAA endorsement. Compensation also cannot be tied to athletic performance or to attending or remaining at a specific school. However, he wonders how well all of those rules can be policed.
While he does believe some high school athletes in Southwest Michigan could benefit from NIL agreements, McDonald says only time will tell how much the MHSAA rule change really affects high school athletics around Michigan.
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody in schools that are going, oh, wow, this is going to be great. Some might, but I think a lot of people say, you know, it’s too bad it’s happening.”
