The Michigan High School Athletics Association began allowing high school athletes to earn funds from a rule known as Personal Branding Activities — a slight adaptation from the Name, Image and Likeness policy in college athletics — starting Jan. 27. Michigan was the 47th state to allow high school athletes to collect money from endorsements.
Geoff Kimmerly, MHSAA’s director of communications, discussed what PBA allows for high school athletes in an interview with The Michigan Daily.
“NIL started at the college level and it was really about video games and jersey sales, but obviously things have changed a lot in the past 30 years,” Kimmerly said. “Younger people are building personal brands earlier and earlier, but what we are allowing now is anything from endorsements to merchandising to appearances — just kind of a broader list of activities.”
The new policy only allows for individual endorsement and prohibits group brand deals or activities. For personal branding activities, the MHSAA does not allow compensation for pay-for-play, meaning payment should not be contingent on performance or used as an incentive to attend or remain at a certain school.
Students are now also able to be compensated for social media endorsements, promotions, promotional events, teaching at camps and private lessons, merchandise sales and any use of their name, image or personal brand.
PBA applies to all students who play during high school, regardless of whether they play for their school or a club team. But for students who do play for their school, they cannot participate in deals on school grounds, during class time or game time. High schools are also not allowed to be involved in the process of a brand reaching out or conversing with the athlete and their family.
Kimmerly said the MHSAA began talks about expanding NIL into high school athletics about five years ago, noting a similar bill failed three years ago in the State Senate. Before any legislation could move forward, however, the Michigan High School Athletic Association had to change its rules first to allow for students to make deals to profit off of their name, image and likeness. The new policy requires that deals remain individual, cannot be tied to athletic performance and may not involve coaches and school staff members.
“About three years ago, there was a bill in the Michigan House to make the Personal Branding Activities legal,” Kimmerly said. “We worked with the bill sponsor with that quite a bit, and he really took our concerns and desires to heart in the way he wrote the bill, so it looks a lot like what our policy looks like right now: focusing things on individual opportunities for individual students.”
Kimmerly said allowing PBA will not diminish competitive equity in high school sports.
“All deals need to be disclosed and approved within seven days of the contract being signed or the opportunity being accepted,” Kimmerly said. “They need to disclose those to the MHSAA just so we can make sure that these are individual deals for students, and we also have pretty specific rules on not using school uniforms or other identifying information to the high school.”
In an interview with The Daily, Business junior Natalie Millman, women’s field hockey athlete and Harrow Sports brand ambassador, said while she believes high school athletes are too young to be collecting money from brands, she feels the decision makes sense as long as the MHSAA is placing fair regulations on it.
“I do think it is an area where people can get exploited,” Millman said. “With there being such an age gap — unless the athlete has their parents involved or some sort of agent — I feel like typically around that age, you’re not comfortable enough to negotiate fair prices.”
While Kimmerly told the Daily there is no evidence MHSAA’s policy will impact college recruitment, Millman speculated that colleges may now need to compete to offer attractive NIL packages to recruits that have already profited in high school.
“Since they were making a certain amount of money before they came to college, I’m sure they would want to continue making the same amount, if not more, when going to the school,” Millman said. “So it’s just another thing colleges will have to compete on as far as recruiting.”
Kimmerly said, at the time of the interview, the MHSAA had approved only 22 PBA deals.
Business junior Will Hoey, Michigan Sports Law Group vice president of finance, said the idea behind NIL affirms athletes’ rights to have brand deals and profit from them.
“There are many players who could have benefitted from this development before, because they could have had enough name recognition in their local area or state that brands could have sought them out for deals earlier than the beginning of college,” Hoey said. “There seems to be a collective sentiment across state legislatures that there’s something that should be done, it just makes sense and it’s pretty much the logical next step after it became legal for college.”
Daily News Reporter Reese Kizy can be reached at reesekiz@umich.edu.
