High Schoolers Can Now Make Money Like College Athletes, Kind of

An unprecedented era is now here.

High school student-athletes, like NCAA competitors and professional athletes, can now make money off of their “Name, Image and Likeness” in Wisconsin. By an overwhelming 293-108 vote, the WIAA (the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association) approved this tectonic upheaval Friday, April 25

This new reality was unthinkable even a decade ago.

Back before profiting off NIL became legal for college athletes between 2019 and 2021, the NCAA’s rules were pretty draconian. The NCAA banned student-athletes from receiving any money or other compensation from schools or boosters. This was so stringently interpreted that, for many years, when schools provided bagels and other breakfast nibbles to their teams, they couldn’t even provide cream cheese or peanut butter. Now, NFL-bound stars like Shadeur Sanders are paid millions from boosters and advertisers.

The NCAA clutched its pearls so zealously about ensuring its 18-23 year old competitors remained amateur (all while leading the multi-billion-dollar business of college sports) that the courts and California’s legislature forced the floodgates open with no guardrails when NIL became the reality.

Every sports talk radio segment talking about the new NIL landscape uses the phrase “Wild, Wild West” at least once. In college, now, there are virtually no rules regarding how student-athletes can make money. Schools aren’t technically allowed to pay recruits – at least for the time being – but they are involved in funneling payments from boosters to recruits so it’s basically the same thing. This is in addition to the potential of earnings through branding and advertising deals.

‘Just the beginning’

With this WIAA ruling, Wisconsin, like the majority of other states so far, is preventing the courts or lawmakers from forcing NIL on its “amateur” athletics ecosystem. In short, these states getting out ahead, aiming to prevent a replay of what’s happening at the college level.

The new rules for high schoolers in Wisconsin are now much more restrictive and planned out.

“We are paving the way for student-athletes in Wisconsin to not only seize the opportunity NIL now offers – but to do so safely, compliantly, and successfully,” Stephanie Grady said in a statement. Grady is a former TV news anchor who now leads Influential Athlete, an NIL-focused coaching firm that consulted with the WIAA through the six months leading up to the Friday’s vote. “This is just the beginning.”

TO BE CLEAR: The WIAA is not actually governmental organization. But it does function like one. It’s a nonprofit, but has an effective monopoly on the policing of organized high school athletics across Wisconsin, overseeing around 90,000 student-athletes every year.

Here are six of the primary rules the WIAA now has in place surrounding NIL. Each, generally speaking, intends to protect schools’ athletics departments from becoming over-encumbered while also protecting the student-athletes from being exploited.

1. Athletes cannot wear their team uniform or apparel representing an athletic conference in relation to marketing opportunities.

2. Students cannot hire agents.

Notably, these first two rules are the opposite of those governing college athletes, who are routinely hiring agents and appearing in school gear via NIL deals.

3. Schools cannot facilitate deals on behalf of students.

4. Students still cannot “promote activities nor products associated with the following: gaming/gambling; alcoholic beverages, tobacco, cannabis, or related products; banned or illegal substances; adult entertainment products or services; (or) weapons.”

5. Payment cannot be contingent on athletic performance. For example, a student-athlete cannot agree to a contract that includes a bonus if their team wins or loses the state championship.

6. Participation in “NIL opportunities” must not interfere with the student-athlete’s academic or athletic obligations. As such, an excuse of “I can’t go to practice today and I have to skip fourth period because I have to go film a commercial” would go against the new bylaws.

A student could lose their ability to participate in school athletics altogether if the rules are broken.

The state of play

While this new beginning is a seismic shift in policy, it should not drastically change things for most every teenaged athlete immediately. In states with legalized NIL for high schoolers, only the most-elite teen athletes have landed any substantive deals. It’s the goal of Grady’s Influential Athlete to work with not only those with their eyes set on the pros, but also to work with any student-athlete who want to make some extra money by connecting with local businesses before college, developing essential life skills along the way.

Grady told MilMag in an interview before NIL’s official passage in Wisconsin, “We (at Influential Athlete) say that ‘NIL isn’t something that happens to you. It is something you now have the opportunity to take advantage of.’”