Indiana High School NIL Debate: IHSAA Weighs Rules as Student Athlete Pay Becomes Inevitable

This is one of those ones where I have a personal opinion on it, but I know given the track record of court cases what the likely outcome is, and so I factor that into what I’m talking about. I go back and forth. By the way, the story I’m using comes from a whole bunch of media outlets in the city and across the state that have covered it. This relates to the IHSAA, they’re going to vote on Monday, the Indiana High School Athletic Association, whether to allow high school athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, NIL. And there’s part of me that is like the traditionalist that says this is the most ridiculous thing ever, we’re reaching a point of no return, there’s no way we should be allowing this to happen. And then there’s the part of me that says I can read court cases, and whether I like it or not I can see how judges have ruled in cases, what they have allowed to happen, and if I know something’s going to be allowed to happen, I would like a governing body to put as many restrictions on it as they can and will be allowed to do by a court of law and prevent the Wild West ridiculousness that has happened in the NCAA. Look, there’s an old saying, if a train’s coming down the track you can stand in front of it and get run over or you can get on the train and try to drive it. The NCAA got run over. They had for years with ridiculous rules and restrictions and regulations, and now it’s the Wild West. And it’s ridiculous. And now they’re trying to put the genie back in the bottle and they’re having a hard time with it. It appears the IHSAA has seen this, seen what happened and said hey courts tend to be more on your side if you give in a little bit but you put restrictions around things, so we’re going to explore doing that. Again, doesn’t mean it’s the way I want it, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be best for these kids, it means it’s the reality of the world we live in. So here’s what the restrictions look like. If you’re a high school student you can sell yourself however you want, if a car dealer wants to give you money to appear at their event or promote their product they can do that, but what the IHSAA is going to crack down on and not allow is anything that relates to the school. The schools can’t broker the deals, the schools can’t pay you, you can’t use their facilities, you can’t use their uniform, so you can’t use anything related to the school. And I hear that and then I go okay how many high school athletes, especially if you take away the school support, the jersey, the facilities, how many people know any high school athlete in their community other than like a very tippy, tippy top guy. Look, you’ve got some guys mostly in the basketball orbit that are known from the time they’re in eighth grade, they’re that good, that person may be able to get a deal with Best Buy or McDonald’s, a national deal. But in your community, I can’t tell you one kid on the Brownsburg High School basketball team. I used to be able to tell you every kid when we actually gave a damn about high school basketball in our state. I used to be able to tell you every player, all of them every year. Now I couldn’t tell you one kid on the team, can you on yours. I can tell you one or two guys on the Brownsburg High School football team because they won back to back state championships, the quarterback and like one other player, most people can’t either. So that brings us to the second part of this, which is how many deals are there actually going to be. If you’re Mendoza at IU and you’ve won the Heisman and the national championship, you’re going to get a ton of deals because people know you, they see your face every week, you’re a national figure. High school kids, nobody knows who they are, especially if they play football, they wear helmets. Which brings me to the second part of what business is actually going to give them any sort of substantial amount of money. Unless you have a nationally known star, who’s going to go to a business to meet a high school kid. In the days of Damon Bailey that would have happened. Lots of people would have gone to meet Damon Bailey. You know how many Damon Bailey’s there are, one. So I’m not as concerned about this because I don’t think you’re going to have a flood other than the tippy, tippy top guys getting any sort of money. Look, when I was in high school I had a job, I had multiple jobs, I worked places, people paid me, it was labor. If you’re a high school athlete anymore in many ways, especially if you’re good, that kind of is your job. And if I was able to make seven bucks an hour, which was a lot of money back then, if somebody can make a couple hundred bucks appearing somewhere, okay. Here’s what Paul Neidig said, and I thought this there was some reason to this. And again I’m not saying I’m in support of this, I’m not. I just know what the court rulings have been, I know how the courts have punished the NCAA because they wouldn’t allow anything within reason, so they said we will take it all away from you, we’re going to just let the Wild West happen since you wouldn’t get in front of it. That’s why Trump’s trying to solve the issue now, and the NCAA appears is about to enact some new restrictions, but it’ll get challenged in court. Paul Neidig said, "You can’t sell, in our opinion, what you don’t own. Students own their name, we’ve already established that, that’s the court cases, but you don’t own the school’s name, you don’t own the uniform, they don’t own the facility, so to be able to monetize off of that we think that shouldn’t be done."