Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

High school athletic directors across Michigan are assessing the MHSAA's recent expansion of NIL opportunities for student-athletes. It means high schoolers can now cash in on their own name, image and likeness, such as commercials or merchandise sales.

"This is an opportunity for an individual to go out and potentially, depending on their abilities on the marketplace, to reap some potential income based on personal branding activities," says John Thompson, athletic director for Brighton Area Schools.

"This isn't a situation like college athletics at all. Collectives are not allowed. School employees, coaches, people associated with programs, whether that's dad's clubs or booster groups, those activities are not allowed. That's clearly stated."

Thompson said the MHSAA previously allowed some limited "Personal Branding Activities," but those have now been expanded to include social media endorsements and promotions, personal appearances, photo sessions or autograph signings; modeling, advertising, merchandise, sports cards or apparel sales; and the use of a student’s name, image or likeness in marketing materials, according to MHSAA.

"A commercial shoot. You can't do that on Brighton Area Schools property, or any school's property, public or private," Thompson said. "The use of school logos, trademarks, mascots and those type of things are what you might call obvious identifiers of a school, those are not allowed."

All PBA activities must be disclosed to the MHSAA within seven days of an opportunity or contract for disclosure and approval. Schools may choose to have stricter rules regarding PBA if they choose to do so.

"Alcohol, tobacco, those types of things are not going to be acceptable," Thompson added.

He says if a kid's brand is big enough to have 500,000 followers and they can generate revenue out of that, "so be it." But he believes less than one percent of kids really have that ability to leverage personal branding activities throughout the state of Michigan.

"Look at (Bryce) Underwood from out of Belleville, who's now at Michigan. Emoni Bates back in the day when he was a high school player, he was pretty prominent on the national scene. You may see a few of those type of individuals have some good opportunities through their personal branding, to generate income. I don't think you're going to see thousands of high school students out there all of a sudden cashing big checks."

According to MHSAA, schools, including coaches and other employees, are not allowed to solicit, arrange, negotiate or promote PBA activities on behalf of their student-athletes. Doing so may put that school’s MHSAA membership in jeopardy, in addition to rendering that student-athlete ineligible for MHSAA athletics.

The MHSAA's expanded police is linked below.

Photo courtesy of godogs.org.