Tuesday’s landmark vote by the Florida High School Athletic Association’s board of directors to permit high school athletes to profit off their Name, Image and Likeness has left some local coaches questioning the decision.
Pending approval by the state’s Board of Education, which is an expected formality, athletes will now be able to partner with local businesses just as those in college are able to do. That’s been prohibited in high school athletics in Florida up until now, but something that 35 states have allowed before the FHSAA’s vote Tuesday.
But unlike other states, which have strict transfer rules, Florida has become a “wild, wild west” of sorts with transfers running rampant due to the state’s Open Enrollment policy. There’s worry from some that NIL will only increase it.
“Obviously I think high school sports are on a smaller scale than college sports, but if you look at how the dynamic has changed in college sports over the last few years with not only NIL but also the transfer portal, if you wanted to compare Florida sports to the NCAA, what’s to prevent it from being the same way?” said Steve Faulkner, who is Columbia’s athletic director and boys basketball coach. “Kids are free in this state, according to state legislation, to essentially go wherever they want to go to school. Well now you throw in NIL, which we already know how transfers are going in this state, is this going to increase the transfers because of NIL?
“Open enrollment puts a big wrench into it in my mind because if you go across our border to Georgia, who has NIL but has very strict transfer rules so I think that helps govern the NIL a little bit more than if you’re like our state and you don’t have it.”
NIL is part of the new age of high school sports in Florida, something Suwannee football coach Kyler Hall says was inevitable. With transfers already being an issue in Florida due to open enrollment, something that will likely be exacerbated by NIL, Hall says the best you thing you can do is continue to run the program the best way you can and embrace the kids who want to be a part of it.
“It’s one of those things that is kind of out of your control from a coach’s standpoint,” Hall said. “You do what you can do to run the best program you can and treat your players the right way. Even before the NIL stuff, I think that had to be the same approach. You look at how players are up and leaving, making announcements, it’s the day and age we live in. You do the best you can. You may lose some, you may get some. But I like the era that we’re in.
“We’ve had players leave. We’ve had players come in. At the end of the day, and I’ve told our players very clearly, ‘If you want to be here, great. We want you to be here. We’re going to work. We’re going to do things the right way. But if you don’t want to be here, don’t be here.’ It’s as simple as that.”
A provision in the adopted rules forbids schools from using NIL as a recruiting tool to attract athletes to their programs and prohibits students from securing an NIL deal after an in-season transfer without a good cause exemption from the relevant school district. Students violating the NIL policies would result in a formal warning and the termination of the agreement, while a second offense would lead to a one-year suspension.
And unlike in college athletics, where collectives are set up for NIL deals, the FHSAA prohibits high schools from doing so. But there are still concerns that a middleman, such as a booster, will be able to hook up an athlete with a business with an NIL deal with a promise of going to a certain school without any way to trace it.
“I think you’re going to have these middlemen that were already middlemen — street agents — that are going to manipulate kids who are uniformed and unaware of what can get them in trouble and what can’t,” Columbia football coach Brian Allen said. “All they’re hearing is what social media is posting and what team they’re leaning towards. They don’t really know what’s going on.”
Allen stressed the importance of making sure the athletes in his program understand the state’s guidelines of what is and isn’t allowed. Students who violate the NIL policies once would receive a formal warning and the termination of their NIL agreement, while a second offense would lead to a one-year suspension.
“We’re going to try to do a good job of educating our guys so at least they’re informed on it,” he said.
With how low high school coaches’ pay is in Florida — 47th in the country according to ZipRecruiter — there’s also the potential of a highly-rated recruit making more money than a coach or even a teacher. Allen pointed that out as something that should’ve been addressed by the state legislature long before the FHSAA ever voted on NIL.
“I heard before it passed that Gov. (Ron) DeSantis was behind this and it was going to pass no matter what,” Allen said. “Where is Gov. DeSantis when it comes down to teachers’ pay? Don’t just say coaches but teachers’ pay across the state of Florida. With coaches pay there’s a disparity with all the other states that are around us. Why would you jump on this to give kids an opportunity to make a certain amount of money when you haven’t done anything to level the playing field with Florida coaches versus the ones right across the state line in Georgia and Alabama and those schools that have taken care of their coaches for years?”
Allen, Faulkner and Hall all agreed though that the issues are more likely to occur in bigger metro areas as opposed to smaller rural areas like Columbia and Suwannee counties.
“The one benefit I feel we have at Columbia High School is we’re not in one of these metro areas,” Faulkner said. “Even if you go 45 minutes south into Gainesville where you’ve got multiple schools and multiple transfers going on in that county already, it’s not going to affect us as much in my opinion. I could be wrong with NIL, but at this point when legislation came in to allow kids to pretty much go wherever they wanted to go that hasn’t really affected us much. So I don’t see it affecting us much anymore, but again, you’re throwing NIL in.”
Hall is remaining cautious about NIL, echoing Faulkner’s sentiments about metro vs. rural areas.
“Bigger cities, more populated areas with a lot of schools, I think you may see it there,” Hall said. “I don’t think, and I could be completely wrong, but I don’t think you’ll see as big of an impact in more rural areas like we’re in. And that will probably make a lot of people happy.”
— News Editor Jamie Wachter contributed to this story