More than 40 states allow “name, image and likeness” deals in high school athletics
By Shaun Chornorbroff
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s governing body for high school sports altered its bylaws this week to ensure it can keep functioning amid legislators’ efforts to ban “name, image and likeness” deals for pre-college student athletes.
The approved new wording in the South Carolina High School League’s bylaws says students “may not earn compensation” for their sport.
The bylaws previously said students “may earn compensation” as long as it’s not tied to their athletic performance and does not involve school or league logos, to include an incentive to enroll at a certain school.
It wasn’t meant to be a policy for or against NIL, and the slight shift in wording doesn’t change that, said league Commissioner Jerome Singleton.
Rather, the phrase is part of the rule that students must maintain amateur status, meaning they can’t be paid for playing a sport. The previous wording reflects the league’s inability to control anything beyond sports, he said.
It still can’t. But the league wanted to make clear it was not condoning NIL deals after the Legislature inserted a clause in the state budget banning public school districts from joining any athletic association that permitted, allowed or authorized such compensation.
State Sen. Sean Bennett, who authored the budget clause, said it was absolutely directed at the High School League, an independent, dues-paying organization that sets and oversees the competition rules for participating middle and high schools.
“I hope everybody involved with high school athletics realizes they are extracurricular activities, and they are no place for the ugliness or business activities ruining college athletics,” Bennett, R-Summerville, told the S.C. Daily Gazette.
The league’s executive committee unanimously approved the wording Tuesday, two weeks from the ban taking effect with the July 1 start of the fiscal year. The overwhelming majority of the league’s more than 400 members are public schools that potentially faced not being able to participate in league-organized athletics in the coming school year.
Singleton said the altered wording changes nothing in terms of the rule’s intent.
If a student uses school or league logos or clothing as part of an endorsement deal, or receives money for their participation, they are still violating the league’s amateur policy, he said.
Punishment on a first offense is a warning. The second time it’s a one-year suspension from High School League competition. Each additional violation would result in at least another one-year suspension, with the exact period of ineligibility “based on the nature of the violations.”
“From the very beginning … the league does not support NIL for athletic purposes. That’s the only authority we have the right to reject,” Singleton said. “You can change the wording, but you can’t change the intent.”
In total, more than 40 states allow NIL deals for high schoolers, according to Opendorse, an athlete marketing firm.
NIL is only one example of how changes in college sports, where it’s become routine for players to transfer to another school and receive large paydays, have seeped into high school athletics.
In March, the league changed its longstanding transfer policy to allow student-athletes one penalty-free transfer.
When the NCAA first permitted personal branding and sponsorship deals in 2021, it provided few guidelines, leaving lawmakers around the country grappling with how to handle them.
South Carolina legislators initially responded by simply suspending state law prohibiting the deals. Then last year, the head coaches of Clemson and South Carolina’s football programs asked legislators for clarity with a bill allowing them to represent student athletes. After getting briefly held up by a gun debate, the bill became law in May 2024.
It was approved as a way to help students navigate contracts and not get swindled. But legislators still didn’t like the idea of NIL deals. Senators who complain the transfers and million-dollar payouts have ruined college sports include Bennett.
The avid Gamecocks fan vowed to keep it out of high school sports.
The league’s prior wording wasn’t strong enough: Giving NIL “a wink or a nod certainly invites it,” he said.
Recent examples of high-dollar influence in college include an $8 million offer for South Carolina quarterback LaNorris Sellers to leave the Gamecocks, according to an article published Monday by the Athletic. The offer depended on him playing for two more years for the unnamed school, his father told the publication. Sellers, however, declined. He’s staying in Columbia.
Scott Earley, president of the South Carolina Coaches Association, said he’s against high school athletes getting paid, though he says it is happening.
The league is doing all it can to control the influence of money in high school sports in South Carolina, he said.
Singleton said the league can’t legally do anything more.
During an interview with the S.C. Daily Gazette, he used the example of a musical prodigy who happened to be a high school softball player.
If somebody wants to offer that athlete a contract to play the violin, the High School League has no right to stop it, he said.
“If you aren’t using the intellectual property of the school, which is the name, the mascot or the logo, why can’t you be an accomplished violinist who is playing on a team?” Singleton asked rhetorically.
Bill Carter, the head of Student-Athlete Insights, an NIL consulting firm that has worked with many high schools, colleges and high school athletic associations, called the proviso “pretty extreme.”
“The other states don’t get into very aggressive language of what they are going to fund,” he said.
Carter said it could also lead to a legal challenge.
Should that happen, recent examples signal courts will side with the youth.
“It’s the playbook that’s been run from the NCAA on down,” Carter said. “What we’ve learned is that the courts are never going to accept there’s an impediment to a young person’s ability … to earn income by way of their name, image and likeness.”
In 2021, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that said the NCAA’s restrictions on providing non-monetary compensation for academics, like free laptops or paid post-grad internships, violated antitrust laws. That decision paved the way for NIL.
Earlier this month a judge approved a settlement that ended three separate antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA, allowing schools to spread $20.5 million, a figure that will grow annually, to its athletes.
And last year in North Carolina, a judge sided with a star quarterback when his mother sued the state Board of Education on his behalf, making it so high schoolers in the Tar Heel State could profit from NIL.
“The court says, ‘You are overreaching your authorization or jurisdiction that would allow their young person’s right to earn income,’” Carter said.
Rep. Jackie “Coach” Hayes, a member of the House budget-writing committee, led his teams to seven state championships during his nearly 30 years as the Dillon Wildcats’ football coach.
Prior to coaching, he played high school football, as well as baseball and running track. He’s among the contingent against NIL in high school sports.
“If you pay them in high school, they are going to worry about how many times they run the ball, how many catches they get or how many touchdown passes,” Hayes told the S.C. Daily Gazette. “We got enough ‘me’ in this world. We need to get everybody working together for a common cause.”
As for the league’s wording change, Bennett said Friday he hasn’t had a chance to review it yet.
However, “as long as the High School League is acknowledging we shouldn’t be participating in this mess,” he’s satisfied that it’s meeting the intention of the budget clause he proposed.
And the possibility of a lawsuit doesn’t surprise him: “Anything done from a regulatory standpoint invites a legal challenge.”
But he said that can’t deter lawmakers from making policy in the best interest of the state and children. “Sometimes you just have to take a stand,” he said.
Shaun Chornobroff covers the state legislature for the S.C. Daily Gazette.
