Florida latest state to allow NIL for high school athletes

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Florida becomes latest state to allow NIL for high school athletes

Published: Jun. 04, 2024, 11:35 a.m.

4–5 minutes

The Florida High School Athletic Association will allow high school athletes to profit from NIL under certain circumstances this fall. Dennis Victory

Florida officially has joined the growing list of states now allowing access for high school athletes to profit on their name, image and likeness.

The Florida High School Athletic Association voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a policy allowing high school athletes to profit from NIL in certain circumstances. It’s the 36th state to allow NIL in high school athletics in some form or fashion.

Alabama is among the major states that has not voted to allow it yet. Texas and Mississippi also have not allowed NIL to this point. Florida joins Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana and North Carolina among Southern states in voting to allow NIL on the high school level.

Florida’s new bylaw states that athletes and their parents must conduct NIL discussions separate from the school and the FHSAA, and they cannot use school logos or other products in public.

There are a couple of major NIL exceptions to the new Florida bylaws, according to On3. First, a student who transfers in season will not be allowed to secure an NIL deal for that season unless granted a special exemption. Second, boosters or high schools can’t offer deals to try to recruit athletes away from other schools.

Though NIL has been allowed in Alabama on the college level since 2021, a law that was revised in 2022, Alabama High School Athletic Association rules continue to prohibit pay-for-play on that level – a rule that has been in place since 1929.

“Remember, to be an amateur, you can’t take any kind of funds that has anything to do with you playing in a contest,” retiring AHSAA executive director Alvin Briggs said in response to a question in a roundtable discussion during AHSAA Media Day last summer.

State Rep. Jeremy Gray (D-Opelika) sponsored legislation this past session, HB25, designed to allow NIL on the high school level in the state as long as athletes did not use school logos, names or mascots or a trademarked logo or acronym of an athletic association.

Gray’s bill, in summary, said that no student athletes in the state “shall be prevented from receiving compensation for the use of his or her name, image, or likeness.”

However, HB25 did not make it out of committee before the session ended last month.

Briggs announced his retirement from the AHSAA earlier this spring, effective Sept. 2. The AHSAA’s Central Board is likely to name a new executive director later this week.

Certainly, the NIL discussion will be on the new boss’ plate.

When Georgia passed its NIL bylaw last October, former AHSAA executive director Steve Savarese said it was a “significant” ruling.

“It will completely do away with the amateur rule,” he said. “There is no way to govern or regulate it. We study history to predict what will happen in the future. What’s happened with NIL in college? It’s out of control. When high school athletes start making more than the principal and the superintendent, you’ve got a real problem.”

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