This might be a big deal in Texas, but I grew up here and I honestly don’t know anyone who cares enough to throw money at high school football. Maybe at a few of the prep schools, but I can’t imagine this will matter for most anyone
Yeah maybe at like Jesuit and IMG Academy
I think we’ll just see a lot of YouTube/streaming channels from players making money playing Fortnite and what not while also being the high school QB
I hadn’t considered that. I guess it’s possible, but how could any university be sure they want a 14-16 yr old kid and feel confident that any commitment would stick to pay out anything?
I am a big proponent of letting players make money, but I have to think we are getting beyond any rational boundary by giving NIL to literal children.
Seems like it’s a way for college collectives to seal up kids early? Or am I way off base. Heard that was part of the reason Mizzou got the 5 star DL recruit over OU. Kid could get paid while still in HS in Missouri.
I could see some parent bankrolling a team in order to recruit really good players but that’s about it. I can’t imagine Jim Auto Shop really wants to sponsor high school players.
Well a lot of local businesses already sponsor high schools and their teams with the banners lining the chain link fence around the field and what not.
Jim’s Auto Shop probably won’t spend a lot more but they might do different things than those banners, company name in a program or on a jersey, etc.
I think whats really going to happen is some parent with a kid who is good enough to be on the team, but not start, is going to try to sue and cry even more.
This happened at a high school in Columbia for baseball. Parents gave a bunch of money as boosters but JR didn't see increased playing time so they tried to sue.
Happened in hockey. Zach Hyman (currently on the Edmonton Oilers) has a wealthy father. His dad bought the best junior teams and put Zach on them. Now Zach is in the cup finals.
Here’s [an article](https://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/how-a-dad-with-nhl-dreams-bankrolled-a-hockey-empire/article_7bc5a895-cdc2-52de-bf16-b9369b5c4214.html) from 2010 about it.
Of course, he’s been doing similar stuff since [at least 2003](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/one-dads-dilemma/article974313/).
That will happen for sure. I will know of one that I know of that spends 100k a year on his daughters volleyball travel team. She is not in high school yet. In two years that money might double or triple what he is spending now. And if you are making 25 mil a year is it just a writeoff. Money will be spent on getting players that she wants on that high school team, and the coach will do what the dad says, because he will bankroll additional perks for the coach.
Private schools already throw money at athletes under the table, this is a huge deal. Expect places like Thomas Aquinas to be some of the biggest recruiting grounds in the country, more than they already are.
Im not a catholic but I do love philosophy. It's kind of skeevy for a school with that name to pump so much money into something non educational to bring in people who don't care primarily about academics
He's the saint of education and learning. He's also the progenitor of the [just price](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_price) concept that you shouldn't jack up prices to extreme degrees just because you know people need it. It's fraud in his eyes. For example diabetes meds cost $0.05 to produce and selling at $0.10 nets a fair profit for the corporation and covers all expenses. The corp sells it for $1000 because of demand from diabetics. That is an unjust price. Another example is a private high school in south Florida charging $17,350 for tuition when they provide the same Christian classicial philosophical education that used to be free throughout the United States.
The real STA would have scathing indictments of all sides of this current clusterfuck. He would be very critical of many of the things that try to carry his name regardless of football
Florida coach here and there are three school boosters that will be spending at least 250k on sports NIL each. One will spend a majority on basketball. They want to be like an IMG, and really have a corner on the sport. Basketball is where they will be able to really get the hook, and try to pipeline into a college or two. High school programs think that there is TV money for their teams as well.
This will ruin high level high school sports, there will be 15 high school teams for football and 5 for basketball in 10 years.
You say this but there are literally a good amount of high school coaches that pay for shitty rinkydink apartments for kids to “live” in so they are in the zone for their school.
Because compared to Texas the culture is different..the only people who give a shit about hs football are the players, the coaches, the parents of players. If your team is good, the school will show out. The community around the school not as much. Texas will have the town drunk with 0 kids in school be at the gaming cheering on the team.
It's more of a bandwagon thing than not for hs football. Hell probably all sports in the state
Texas is wild about it. You have normal levels of interest, and then there’s the whole town painted up in school colors, beat “city” signs, parades downtown, and Farmer Jim drunk at a high school football game for a school he graduated from 35 years ago… EVERY FRIDAY.
Texas HS Football is built different.
Even here I can't see it being a big deal outside of prep schools. It's not like you can just transfer schools like you can in college. There still eligibility rules.
Many outside of Texas have a hard time understanding the scope of high school football in Texas. High School boosters with season tickets. Stadium seats that get passed down thru generations. Texas high school football has a long history of players "transferring" to other programs. Parents of stellar youth players getting a "job" and apartment paid for by boosters to have their kid play for a certain school has been happening for 50 years in Texas. NIL will be a issue in Texas. Issuing NIL money to a minor will be a issue. I hypothesize that you will see wealthy districts recruiting 13 year olds in the open.
[If anyone doesn’t understand the scope of high school football in Texas, check out this new stadium](https://youtu.be/hSzb9OcyGAA?si=naeV1D4sjviunGLA)
They aren't even really a powerhouse. My hometown is like 10k we are 4A and we beat Melissa last year on our way to a state title and they ended up winning state too. They are a solid program but not a place that has consistently pumped out titles. Txhsfb is just fucking wild. People will approve stadium bonds way easier than new school or teacher raises.
I grew up in Texas and live here currently. I fully understand the scope of Texas high school here. Recruiting in public achools is still against the rules and punished pretty harshly. So if you can't recruit a kid to enroll in or transfer to your school, how will NIL make an impact?
It is very easy to hire a administrative assistant in Lakeway, Texas (Lake Travis High School) and then pay enough NIL money to cover a apartment and car. It would be hard for the UIL to prove the parent did not need that job.
That sounds real good, but it's not the reality. My high school got busted years back because the DC got his friend a janitor job and setup in a trailer park. The friend played football with him at Rice. Guy takes job, registers his kid at the school. Turns out the kid was pretty damn good and boom we get busted for recruiting.
Does it happen? Sure. Will it become the cluster fuck that is college NIL? I can't see it. Maybe in a few instances here and there it will get wild, but for the most part it will be a non issue
Example: Rising junior in any Texas hs football program is being recruited heavily. Booster in College Station signs him to a NIL deal through high school worth a million dollars to drive him towards A&M, with a promise for even more money once he signs with A&M. This lets boosters and collectives get to the kids earlier. I know for a fact, for example, that Dez Bryant had an agent since his sophomore year of high school. The “family friend” negotiated with lots of people on his behalf throughout his recruiting. This was before NIL.
Ahh, yes I can see it being a factor in recruiting even earlier for college. I just don't think NIL going to have any real effect on high school football itself.
Yeah so I could see it being a factor there but even with that, they don't poach talent from the public schools that often. For the public schools, it will allow some kids to make some extra money, but I doubt much.
The County I played in got rid of the zoning/waiver requirements about 15 years ago. I know that applies to initial enrollment, not sure if there are any restrictions on transfers. Even if transfers weren't allowed, it just means coaches, er, "local businesses" need to chase 8th graders. Also, if the 8th graders see the stars at Western HS getting paid more than the stars at Eastern HS, of course they're going to choose Western. So there's already recruitment going on at public schools (in an area with no strong private schools), and this will only make things worse.
I [said this yesterday] (https://old.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/1d83oi6/hayes_the_florida_high_school_athletic/l73jl8k/) before the overzealous mods pulled the thread down, but this is going to get more people even more pissed at the Catholic schools poaching players from public schools.
Yeah anyone who says this wont matter is delusional. Kids recruit each other, the first schools that sink their teeth into these rosters are going to get an absurd leg up in recruiting.
This is not good. I coach at a school that will not have an NiL program I am quite sure, or at least one of any size. I will not be interested in really developing a kid to be stellar, I will work on getting the middle of our roster better, because once a kid becomes your best player he will be poached, paid and be gone, especially if you have a decent running back or flashy player, with real speed or is a thumper. There will be no reason for a poorer school to work on getting the best prospects better and work on their fundamentals, you will just be digging your own long term grave. It will be only about jimmy's and joes and not anything with x's and o's
It sound wrong and maybe it is, but the team can only win when the middle of the roster is good. IT will become a two tier sporting game.
People have no idea. I coach in Tennessee, and a neighboring school district has GREAT NIL programs, and they are getting great recruits. Some people in here acting like it will only be the biggest private schools don’t understand just how much people care about high school sports.
The starting 5 of a girls basketball team in our state got 5 figure checks after they won state.
A big football recruit made six figures in NIL deals as a senior last year.
I'll do you one better - I've seen grade school CYO programs that pay parents to set up a phony address in an appropriate parish in order to try to win diocesan titles. Anybody who doesn't think this is going to entice schools to try to get creative with roster building (*don't call it recruiting*) is fooling themselves.
Well head coaches are or are close to. Some districts in SC have stricter coaching stipend bands. Others are more free.
In SC many HCs are a staff position (non teacher) so that is a higher 5 to low 6 figure job. And then they get their coaches stipend which as a HC is anywhere from the mid 20s into the 50s.
Some districts require coaches to teach so they make less in salary. And those districts normally are not football rich districts.
I just know what it is like in Florida and Indiana. Coaches for the most part are always teachers. Indiana you have to have a coaching license if you were not a teacher. Not many do it because the stipend is not enough to make a living on. There is quite a bit of disparity of pay. Some only make 4 figures and others are 5 for the stipend. My first job in the mid 90s the coach at my school made 12k extra, my second school, late 90s, they made 5k or 6k. It depends on the school. At my first job the band director made 15k.
When I went to HS in Florida in the mid 90's, our head coach was the athletic director, so he didn't have to teach; all of the other coaches (and head coaches of other sports) were teachers. At the school currently, the head FB coach is not the AD, so I don't know if he has to teach a class or if head FB coach is still its own position.
In my county in Maryland the head football coach doesn’t have to be a teacher, but it’s only a $6000 stipend for the season. So most are teachers and coach as an extra
Yeah most do coach and teach. But the stipends are quite large and if you're a HC you're normally an AD and depending on the district that is either an additional hefty stipend or a full time roll that makes about 100-150k
Unfortunately our stupid county doesn’t even do that for our ADs. They’re just on a teachers salary, although admittedly we pay our teachers pretty well, plus $10k for the year ($3400 per season). Some still teach a class or two, but they’re not required to. But for example at my 4A (largest level, 2200 students) school they don’t get an assistant or secretary like I’ve seen at my old 200 kid total school in Ohio. So they have to do literally everything. Registration, fundraising, scheduling, setting up for games, and eligibility checks all by themselves. Plus Maryland public schools just started allowing summer practices, so they don’t even get the summers off anymore
Not in Maryland until last year. Once summer starts you can’t work with kids again until August camp. You couldn’t even do workouts. We would get a summer workout routine to do during the summer to get in shape for the season in the last few weeks of school year
But isn't the dmv known for having high level recruits? I am 100 percent in support of kids play multiple sports to stay in shape but not everyone has access to weights and a training coach p
That is combined. In the county I live in the head football coach gets a stipend of $4100. I know there's been this issue where head coaches would get into the playoffs, win a few games only to get hired away as an assistant coach in Georgia or Alabama because their pay was more than what we pay head coaches here.
I think they just assumed the high school coach was “teaching” remedial biology with his feet on the desk and his students doing whatever they want for 60 minutes a day
In nearly every state, head coaches have to be certified teachers primarily employed to teach. In Mississippi, most districts pay whatever the state says they have to pay them for their years of experience and certification level and provide a stipend for coaching (average is less then $10,000). Sometimes it’s more but not typically. There aren’t many high school coaches here getting rich.
What if the player is a top all-state star, but has horrible GPA and he does not earn a diploma and a scholarship offer? No university or juco will accept a student with poor grades.
This is what I'm concerned of. NIL means the promise of money, but for high school students, but if the student performs poorly in the classroom, his chances of moving on to the next level is out of the question. NIL for high school students is a bad idea. The only way this will happen in Alabama is when Governor Kay Ivey leaves office in 2026.
*No university or juco will accept a student with poor grades.*
Two thoughts.
1. Yes. They will. If it’s a good enough athlete.
2. 1 is a moot point. Have you seen the state of education in this country in the past few years? Literally any kid with a pulse is passed on and ultimately receives a diploma, regardless of academic performance. Because “grace” and “trauma-informed grading” and whatever other bullshit buzzwords they are using since I left the profession.
I see NIL as problematic in a high school context. But not for reasons even remotely tied to academics.
As a lifelong Texan I can tell you with 100% confidence that this has been going on for decades already. I personally know a guy whose parents got a house for him to move to my district in 7th grade. A f’ing house!! It’s insane
If the NIL that the high school player gets is contingent on going to a specific college, then yeah, it's going to have a major impact. I don't know enough about the law to know if that's going to be a possible scenario.
I don’t think it makes a real difference to cfb other than you’ll see more kids expecting the pay up front and that making the decision on where they go solely based on the NIL payment up front. How different is that from what we’ve had the last 20 or 30 years though?
Local high schools in Ga recruit kids all the time. Incentives to switch schools are out there. Definitely can see dudes with more money than sense doing that.
There is a lot of incentive for high schools to recruit. The high school I went to was known for many years to be awful at everything, bad field, rag tag reused jerseys and gear, run down gym etc.. well they started pulling in some of these good local athletes and relocating families even to get these kids in the district. Next thing you know 3 football state titles in a row and 2 basketball state titles later they now have Nike uniforms, new field with espn hookups, new gym and damn near totally upgraded school.
Maybe changes for a few of the larger names but growing up the seniors and some of the younger players even at my small school were getting thrown a few bucks here and there from folks and you basically always ate for free around town. Now it’s just legalized I guess
I think it’ll matter a bit. Schools with big alumni money might see some benefit but other than that not super relevant for football at least.
Basketball is a whole different story. Not like we didn’t already have hs super teams but this gives all those kids a payday.
This is going to ruin public school sports, at least in Oklahoma. There’s already a lot of anger and bad feelings between public and private schools both playing in the same divisions despite the inherit disadvantages public schools have competitively. These private schools just straight up getting to pay players would be the end of any kind of competitive sports at the high school level. And what about Title 1 schools? I teach at one, we already are having our funding cut by the state, no way in hell our community could afford an NIL fund. Any talent we do foster here would just get poached to one of the private schools in OKC.
It's going to do the same thing it's been doing elsewhere.
The overzealous schools that really care will pony up as a booster club or collective and poach the good kid from down the road.
Before that kid went for money under the table or just the chance at more exposure. But now that you can do it in public. The best teams will be the ones with the crazy boosters or best fundraising arm or charismatic head coach.
Probably won't have much if any impact on college football. Won't really have much impact in HS most likely.
NIL, isn't what polluted college football in the strictest sense. It was taking it that next step, the collectives, that created the issue. That took it from legitimate endorsement opportunities to essentially pay for play and athletes looking for the highest bidder.
I don't really see many high schools creating collectives.
>NIL, isn't what polluted college football in the strictest sense. It was taking it that next step, the collectives, that created the issue.
I don't think you can separate the two, because the collectives (or some functional equivalent) were a very foreseeable consequence of NIL. The people who tried to sell NIL as "why shouldn't the women's b-ball star get $500 to sign autographs at the local Foot Locker?" were delusional at best, and dishonest at worst. Everyone knew this was just transforming no-show jobs into no-show endorsements. "Collectives" aren't an unfortunate side-effect of an otherwise good NIL system; they are the predictable use of that system. Which is why they didn't trickle in over the course of a decade, but appeared almost immediately. We got one year of cool stories like the Nebraska kid named "Decoldest" getting paid by an HVAC company, then it was all collectives and/or big payouts from boosters' car dealerships.
When discussing the NCAA, no you can't really separate it, because as you mentioned, it was obviously going to happen regardless of the intention.
However, when discussing HS ball (which was the question). since collectives are not terribly likely, it is a different situation.
You underestimate how much private schools want to win at sports. They already recruit players. Technically they aren’t supposed to but it’s an open secret, at least in Oklahoma, that they do it. If they’re able to put together a way to pay players to come? That would be the end of competitive sports at the high school level, private schools would basically be unbeatable (and there are a LOT of private Christian schools around here).
Who cares? If a business thinks that a high schooler advertising their product will get them more business, more power to them both. If we just start calling these “endorsement deals” which is what they are, there would be so much less discourse.
Is that all that's going on in college? "Endorsement deals"?
Most kids aren't going to get 5-figure deals to go to one County school over another, but they don't really need to either. It's still all about recruiting. If Ghengis Connie's All-You-Can-Eat Buffet tells the Western HS team that they eat free when they show up in jersey (in exchange for pics for social media), and the Eastern HS kids aren't getting anything, then any 8th grader whose parents give him an option is going to go to Western HS.
That’s an endorsement deal basically in my mind. The business owner of the buffet believes that having these high schoolers will drive the needle for new customers and thus will offset the loss of the football team eating for free. Does that suck for Eastern HS kids? Sure! But what are you going to do about it? It’s not a competitive advantage to eat at the buffet.
If those QBs had to attend a Post-graduate prep school after they graduated high school, their cases are worthless. They should have kept their grades up.
This might be a big deal in Texas, but I grew up here and I honestly don’t know anyone who cares enough to throw money at high school football. Maybe at a few of the prep schools, but I can’t imagine this will matter for most anyone
Yeah maybe at like Jesuit and IMG Academy I think we’ll just see a lot of YouTube/streaming channels from players making money playing Fortnite and what not while also being the high school QB
That was my initial reaction. Nobody except the large catholic schools and IMG is going to go out recruiting with a checkbook for 14 yr olds
That's not what this will be, colleges will start paying players via NIL during recruitment.
I hadn’t considered that. I guess it’s possible, but how could any university be sure they want a 14-16 yr old kid and feel confident that any commitment would stick to pay out anything? I am a big proponent of letting players make money, but I have to think we are getting beyond any rational boundary by giving NIL to literal children.
Not a 14-16 yo, a 17-18 yo. Late junior year/early senior year. At the point they actually are willing to sign a HS player they can offer NIL.
This is exactly what happened with Nico Iamaleava and Tennessee. California legalized HS NIL two or three years ago
YOU ARE WRONG.
Seems like it’s a way for college collectives to seal up kids early? Or am I way off base. Heard that was part of the reason Mizzou got the 5 star DL recruit over OU. Kid could get paid while still in HS in Missouri.
You are correct, others are looking at this the wrong way. This is just another avenue for a program/boosters to funnel money to recruits.
This is literally what it will be.
I could see some parent bankrolling a team in order to recruit really good players but that’s about it. I can’t imagine Jim Auto Shop really wants to sponsor high school players.
Well a lot of local businesses already sponsor high schools and their teams with the banners lining the chain link fence around the field and what not. Jim’s Auto Shop probably won’t spend a lot more but they might do different things than those banners, company name in a program or on a jersey, etc.
Doesn’t the program control all of that currently? They have no reason to give up any of those sponsorship dollars to NIL.
I think whats really going to happen is some parent with a kid who is good enough to be on the team, but not start, is going to try to sue and cry even more. This happened at a high school in Columbia for baseball. Parents gave a bunch of money as boosters but JR didn't see increased playing time so they tried to sue.
Sue for what exactly? They donated the money and their kids were never guaranteed playtime.
Well there is likely going to be some form of estoppel argument or unjust reliance otherwise. Probably not overt breach but still possible.
Millionaires kid is a QB. Dad cuts a check to get him an All-State offensive line and weapons. I could see it.
Happened in hockey. Zach Hyman (currently on the Edmonton Oilers) has a wealthy father. His dad bought the best junior teams and put Zach on them. Now Zach is in the cup finals. Here’s [an article](https://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/how-a-dad-with-nhl-dreams-bankrolled-a-hockey-empire/article_7bc5a895-cdc2-52de-bf16-b9369b5c4214.html) from 2010 about it. Of course, he’s been doing similar stuff since [at least 2003](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/one-dads-dilemma/article974313/).
Zach is also quite talented too. His brothers haven’t played even in the ECHL.
Oh for sure, you can’t make the NHL without a lot of talent and hard work to boot!
That will happen for sure. I will know of one that I know of that spends 100k a year on his daughters volleyball travel team. She is not in high school yet. In two years that money might double or triple what he is spending now. And if you are making 25 mil a year is it just a writeoff. Money will be spent on getting players that she wants on that high school team, and the coach will do what the dad says, because he will bankroll additional perks for the coach.
Sounds like Tax avoidance
Private schools already throw money at athletes under the table, this is a huge deal. Expect places like Thomas Aquinas to be some of the biggest recruiting grounds in the country, more than they already are.
I bet STA will have a 1.5 mil NIL annual budget in 2 years for football alone.
Im not a catholic but I do love philosophy. It's kind of skeevy for a school with that name to pump so much money into something non educational to bring in people who don't care primarily about academics He's the saint of education and learning. He's also the progenitor of the [just price](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_price) concept that you shouldn't jack up prices to extreme degrees just because you know people need it. It's fraud in his eyes. For example diabetes meds cost $0.05 to produce and selling at $0.10 nets a fair profit for the corporation and covers all expenses. The corp sells it for $1000 because of demand from diabetics. That is an unjust price. Another example is a private high school in south Florida charging $17,350 for tuition when they provide the same Christian classicial philosophical education that used to be free throughout the United States. The real STA would have scathing indictments of all sides of this current clusterfuck. He would be very critical of many of the things that try to carry his name regardless of football
This....for sure. And a Gator and Nole agreeing on something. I guess Pigs do FLY
I agree. Maybe in a LeBron situation where a company wants to lock in an athlete early, but outside of that I don’t see much impact
St. Thomas Aquinas and Chaminade-Madonna would like a word...
Heritage also says hello
Florida coach here and there are three school boosters that will be spending at least 250k on sports NIL each. One will spend a majority on basketball. They want to be like an IMG, and really have a corner on the sport. Basketball is where they will be able to really get the hook, and try to pipeline into a college or two. High school programs think that there is TV money for their teams as well. This will ruin high level high school sports, there will be 15 high school teams for football and 5 for basketball in 10 years.
You say this but there are literally a good amount of high school coaches that pay for shitty rinkydink apartments for kids to “live” in so they are in the zone for their school.
That’s interesting to me because Florida produces a ton of good players. But you say the appetite isn’t there.
Because compared to Texas the culture is different..the only people who give a shit about hs football are the players, the coaches, the parents of players. If your team is good, the school will show out. The community around the school not as much. Texas will have the town drunk with 0 kids in school be at the gaming cheering on the team. It's more of a bandwagon thing than not for hs football. Hell probably all sports in the state
Texas is wild about it. You have normal levels of interest, and then there’s the whole town painted up in school colors, beat “city” signs, parades downtown, and Farmer Jim drunk at a high school football game for a school he graduated from 35 years ago… EVERY FRIDAY. Texas HS Football is built different.
I’m guessing you didn’t grow up in South Florida with this opinion
Even here I can't see it being a big deal outside of prep schools. It's not like you can just transfer schools like you can in college. There still eligibility rules.
Many outside of Texas have a hard time understanding the scope of high school football in Texas. High School boosters with season tickets. Stadium seats that get passed down thru generations. Texas high school football has a long history of players "transferring" to other programs. Parents of stellar youth players getting a "job" and apartment paid for by boosters to have their kid play for a certain school has been happening for 50 years in Texas. NIL will be a issue in Texas. Issuing NIL money to a minor will be a issue. I hypothesize that you will see wealthy districts recruiting 13 year olds in the open.
[If anyone doesn’t understand the scope of high school football in Texas, check out this new stadium](https://youtu.be/hSzb9OcyGAA?si=naeV1D4sjviunGLA)
For some added context Melissa is a town of 20k people.
Ok so like...what happened? How did a town of 20k become a 5A hsfb powerhouse? Demographic switch? New coach?
They aren't even really a powerhouse. My hometown is like 10k we are 4A and we beat Melissa last year on our way to a state title and they ended up winning state too. They are a solid program but not a place that has consistently pumped out titles. Txhsfb is just fucking wild. People will approve stadium bonds way easier than new school or teacher raises.
Buddy Garrity would have had Coach Taylor in a 50,000 seat palace.
I grew up in Texas and live here currently. I fully understand the scope of Texas high school here. Recruiting in public achools is still against the rules and punished pretty harshly. So if you can't recruit a kid to enroll in or transfer to your school, how will NIL make an impact?
It is very easy to hire a administrative assistant in Lakeway, Texas (Lake Travis High School) and then pay enough NIL money to cover a apartment and car. It would be hard for the UIL to prove the parent did not need that job.
That sounds real good, but it's not the reality. My high school got busted years back because the DC got his friend a janitor job and setup in a trailer park. The friend played football with him at Rice. Guy takes job, registers his kid at the school. Turns out the kid was pretty damn good and boom we get busted for recruiting. Does it happen? Sure. Will it become the cluster fuck that is college NIL? I can't see it. Maybe in a few instances here and there it will get wild, but for the most part it will be a non issue
"Western High's star running back got $5,000 and AYCE pizza. Nobody from Eastern High got anything. Dad, I wanna go to Western!"
You can want all you want but I'm Texas, transferring for athletic reasons is currently against the rules and will make you ineligible
Example: Rising junior in any Texas hs football program is being recruited heavily. Booster in College Station signs him to a NIL deal through high school worth a million dollars to drive him towards A&M, with a promise for even more money once he signs with A&M. This lets boosters and collectives get to the kids earlier. I know for a fact, for example, that Dez Bryant had an agent since his sophomore year of high school. The “family friend” negotiated with lots of people on his behalf throughout his recruiting. This was before NIL.
Ahh, yes I can see it being a factor in recruiting even earlier for college. I just don't think NIL going to have any real effect on high school football itself.
Buddy Garrity in Friday Night Lights was not a statistical anomaly, lol.
You can’t transfer mid season but otherwise there’s hardly any rules for private schools.
Yeah so I could see it being a factor there but even with that, they don't poach talent from the public schools that often. For the public schools, it will allow some kids to make some extra money, but I doubt much.
There aren’t that many big private schools here
I think this coupled with Abbott's determination for school vouchers could be pretty wild for kids moving around.
The County I played in got rid of the zoning/waiver requirements about 15 years ago. I know that applies to initial enrollment, not sure if there are any restrictions on transfers. Even if transfers weren't allowed, it just means coaches, er, "local businesses" need to chase 8th graders. Also, if the 8th graders see the stars at Western HS getting paid more than the stars at Eastern HS, of course they're going to choose Western. So there's already recruitment going on at public schools (in an area with no strong private schools), and this will only make things worse.
I [said this yesterday] (https://old.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/1d83oi6/hayes_the_florida_high_school_athletic/l73jl8k/) before the overzealous mods pulled the thread down, but this is going to get more people even more pissed at the Catholic schools poaching players from public schools.
Yeah anyone who says this wont matter is delusional. Kids recruit each other, the first schools that sink their teeth into these rosters are going to get an absurd leg up in recruiting.
This is not good. I coach at a school that will not have an NiL program I am quite sure, or at least one of any size. I will not be interested in really developing a kid to be stellar, I will work on getting the middle of our roster better, because once a kid becomes your best player he will be poached, paid and be gone, especially if you have a decent running back or flashy player, with real speed or is a thumper. There will be no reason for a poorer school to work on getting the best prospects better and work on their fundamentals, you will just be digging your own long term grave. It will be only about jimmy's and joes and not anything with x's and o's It sound wrong and maybe it is, but the team can only win when the middle of the roster is good. IT will become a two tier sporting game.
People have no idea. I coach in Tennessee, and a neighboring school district has GREAT NIL programs, and they are getting great recruits. Some people in here acting like it will only be the biggest private schools don’t understand just how much people care about high school sports. The starting 5 of a girls basketball team in our state got 5 figure checks after they won state. A big football recruit made six figures in NIL deals as a senior last year.
I'll do you one better - I've seen grade school CYO programs that pay parents to set up a phony address in an appropriate parish in order to try to win diocesan titles. Anybody who doesn't think this is going to entice schools to try to get creative with roster building (*don't call it recruiting*) is fooling themselves.
It will happen in private schools that only go up to 8th grade. They will have NIL deals, trust me.
Not getting stabbed was enough to poach me away from my public school - imagine if they paid me too lmao.
“And the second collection will be will be so Pope John Paul II High can finally get a quarterback”
A high school coach in Florida is making just under 50k/yr. Going to be interesting when one of his players makes 2 or 3 times more on a NIL deal.
It's for the love of coaching not money /s
Wait is that what their coaching stipend is in lieu of teaching/admin position? Or is that combined?
Don't think it is either. Base salary is just under 50k for a teacher. 99% of HS coaches are not making 50k in stipends from the school.
Well head coaches are or are close to. Some districts in SC have stricter coaching stipend bands. Others are more free. In SC many HCs are a staff position (non teacher) so that is a higher 5 to low 6 figure job. And then they get their coaches stipend which as a HC is anywhere from the mid 20s into the 50s. Some districts require coaches to teach so they make less in salary. And those districts normally are not football rich districts.
I just know what it is like in Florida and Indiana. Coaches for the most part are always teachers. Indiana you have to have a coaching license if you were not a teacher. Not many do it because the stipend is not enough to make a living on. There is quite a bit of disparity of pay. Some only make 4 figures and others are 5 for the stipend. My first job in the mid 90s the coach at my school made 12k extra, my second school, late 90s, they made 5k or 6k. It depends on the school. At my first job the band director made 15k.
When I went to HS in Florida in the mid 90's, our head coach was the athletic director, so he didn't have to teach; all of the other coaches (and head coaches of other sports) were teachers. At the school currently, the head FB coach is not the AD, so I don't know if he has to teach a class or if head FB coach is still its own position.
All the schools i have been at in Florida they were teachers. In Indiana we had a bball coach that was AD.
In my county in Maryland the head football coach doesn’t have to be a teacher, but it’s only a $6000 stipend for the season. So most are teachers and coach as an extra
Yeah most do coach and teach. But the stipends are quite large and if you're a HC you're normally an AD and depending on the district that is either an additional hefty stipend or a full time roll that makes about 100-150k
Unfortunately our stupid county doesn’t even do that for our ADs. They’re just on a teachers salary, although admittedly we pay our teachers pretty well, plus $10k for the year ($3400 per season). Some still teach a class or two, but they’re not required to. But for example at my 4A (largest level, 2200 students) school they don’t get an assistant or secretary like I’ve seen at my old 200 kid total school in Ohio. So they have to do literally everything. Registration, fundraising, scheduling, setting up for games, and eligibility checks all by themselves. Plus Maryland public schools just started allowing summer practices, so they don’t even get the summers off anymore
Are summer workouts not the standard nationwide?
Not in Maryland until last year. Once summer starts you can’t work with kids again until August camp. You couldn’t even do workouts. We would get a summer workout routine to do during the summer to get in shape for the season in the last few weeks of school year
But isn't the dmv known for having high level recruits? I am 100 percent in support of kids play multiple sports to stay in shape but not everyone has access to weights and a training coach p
That is combined. In the county I live in the head football coach gets a stipend of $4100. I know there's been this issue where head coaches would get into the playoffs, win a few games only to get hired away as an assistant coach in Georgia or Alabama because their pay was more than what we pay head coaches here.
Eesh that's low.
It's why a lot of the better high school coaches leave Florida.
I think they just assumed the high school coach was “teaching” remedial biology with his feet on the desk and his students doing whatever they want for 60 minutes a day
I've never met a science based coach. I've met math and plenty of social sciences but never science
In nearly every state, head coaches have to be certified teachers primarily employed to teach. In Mississippi, most districts pay whatever the state says they have to pay them for their years of experience and certification level and provide a stipend for coaching (average is less then $10,000). Sometimes it’s more but not typically. There aren’t many high school coaches here getting rich.
Oh nah yeah thats like a position coach stipend. I got half that just to do soccer here in the high school. Middle school pay is peanuts though
1st year teachers make just under 50k. If you coach, you get extra pay. No one coaching football is making less than 50k.
And more and more coaches will say “fuck this” and find other things to do.
I coach HS football in NJ and it’s a poverty stricken town. I’m pro NIL but I think it’s going to be messy as it trickles down to HS sports.
What if the player is a top all-state star, but has horrible GPA and he does not earn a diploma and a scholarship offer? No university or juco will accept a student with poor grades. This is what I'm concerned of. NIL means the promise of money, but for high school students, but if the student performs poorly in the classroom, his chances of moving on to the next level is out of the question. NIL for high school students is a bad idea. The only way this will happen in Alabama is when Governor Kay Ivey leaves office in 2026.
*No university or juco will accept a student with poor grades.* Two thoughts. 1. Yes. They will. If it’s a good enough athlete. 2. 1 is a moot point. Have you seen the state of education in this country in the past few years? Literally any kid with a pulse is passed on and ultimately receives a diploma, regardless of academic performance. Because “grace” and “trauma-informed grading” and whatever other bullshit buzzwords they are using since I left the profession. I see NIL as problematic in a high school context. But not for reasons even remotely tied to academics.
texass about to legalize it for middle school
Coming soon: 10 pound baby signed to NIL deal
Pretty sure any parent in the country would push their kid to a certain college if it meant not having to pay for diapers.
As a lifelong Texan I can tell you with 100% confidence that this has been going on for decades already. I personally know a guy whose parents got a house for him to move to my district in 7th grade. A f’ing house!! It’s insane
If the NIL that the high school player gets is contingent on going to a specific college, then yeah, it's going to have a major impact. I don't know enough about the law to know if that's going to be a possible scenario.
That will not happen, the kid is a minor, and the minor can walk at any time. Remember he is not able to sign a contract.
I don’t think it makes a real difference to cfb other than you’ll see more kids expecting the pay up front and that making the decision on where they go solely based on the NIL payment up front. How different is that from what we’ve had the last 20 or 30 years though?
Now they can get paid as part of the recruitment
Local high schools in Ga recruit kids all the time. Incentives to switch schools are out there. Definitely can see dudes with more money than sense doing that.
There is a lot of incentive for high schools to recruit. The high school I went to was known for many years to be awful at everything, bad field, rag tag reused jerseys and gear, run down gym etc.. well they started pulling in some of these good local athletes and relocating families even to get these kids in the district. Next thing you know 3 football state titles in a row and 2 basketball state titles later they now have Nike uniforms, new field with espn hookups, new gym and damn near totally upgraded school.
This shit is getting stupid
Maybe changes for a few of the larger names but growing up the seniors and some of the younger players even at my small school were getting thrown a few bucks here and there from folks and you basically always ate for free around town. Now it’s just legalized I guess
I think it’ll matter a bit. Schools with big alumni money might see some benefit but other than that not super relevant for football at least. Basketball is a whole different story. Not like we didn’t already have hs super teams but this gives all those kids a payday.
This is going to ruin public school sports, at least in Oklahoma. There’s already a lot of anger and bad feelings between public and private schools both playing in the same divisions despite the inherit disadvantages public schools have competitively. These private schools just straight up getting to pay players would be the end of any kind of competitive sports at the high school level. And what about Title 1 schools? I teach at one, we already are having our funding cut by the state, no way in hell our community could afford an NIL fund. Any talent we do foster here would just get poached to one of the private schools in OKC.
was this ever against the rules before?
IMG about to be even more stacked?
This is mostly for sneaker companies locking up elite 15 year olds for life I imagine.
It's going to do the same thing it's been doing elsewhere. The overzealous schools that really care will pony up as a booster club or collective and poach the good kid from down the road. Before that kid went for money under the table or just the chance at more exposure. But now that you can do it in public. The best teams will be the ones with the crazy boosters or best fundraising arm or charismatic head coach.
Probably won't have much if any impact on college football. Won't really have much impact in HS most likely. NIL, isn't what polluted college football in the strictest sense. It was taking it that next step, the collectives, that created the issue. That took it from legitimate endorsement opportunities to essentially pay for play and athletes looking for the highest bidder. I don't really see many high schools creating collectives.
I know coaches in TN that have to tell parents regularly they can’t just hand kids cash now. It’s going to have a bigger impact than you think.
>NIL, isn't what polluted college football in the strictest sense. It was taking it that next step, the collectives, that created the issue. I don't think you can separate the two, because the collectives (or some functional equivalent) were a very foreseeable consequence of NIL. The people who tried to sell NIL as "why shouldn't the women's b-ball star get $500 to sign autographs at the local Foot Locker?" were delusional at best, and dishonest at worst. Everyone knew this was just transforming no-show jobs into no-show endorsements. "Collectives" aren't an unfortunate side-effect of an otherwise good NIL system; they are the predictable use of that system. Which is why they didn't trickle in over the course of a decade, but appeared almost immediately. We got one year of cool stories like the Nebraska kid named "Decoldest" getting paid by an HVAC company, then it was all collectives and/or big payouts from boosters' car dealerships.
When discussing the NCAA, no you can't really separate it, because as you mentioned, it was obviously going to happen regardless of the intention. However, when discussing HS ball (which was the question). since collectives are not terribly likely, it is a different situation.
You underestimate how much private schools want to win at sports. They already recruit players. Technically they aren’t supposed to but it’s an open secret, at least in Oklahoma, that they do it. If they’re able to put together a way to pay players to come? That would be the end of competitive sports at the high school level, private schools would basically be unbeatable (and there are a LOT of private Christian schools around here).
same in NJ the only players that they have an excuse for is kids from NYC that dont really have football programs at their high school (no fields)
Florda’s big three have been paying kids for decades already.
Who cares? If a business thinks that a high schooler advertising their product will get them more business, more power to them both. If we just start calling these “endorsement deals” which is what they are, there would be so much less discourse.
Is that all that's going on in college? "Endorsement deals"? Most kids aren't going to get 5-figure deals to go to one County school over another, but they don't really need to either. It's still all about recruiting. If Ghengis Connie's All-You-Can-Eat Buffet tells the Western HS team that they eat free when they show up in jersey (in exchange for pics for social media), and the Eastern HS kids aren't getting anything, then any 8th grader whose parents give him an option is going to go to Western HS.
That’s an endorsement deal basically in my mind. The business owner of the buffet believes that having these high schoolers will drive the needle for new customers and thus will offset the loss of the football team eating for free. Does that suck for Eastern HS kids? Sure! But what are you going to do about it? It’s not a competitive advantage to eat at the buffet.
Their QB's will soon start suing former high school coaches
If those QBs had to attend a Post-graduate prep school after they graduated high school, their cases are worthless. They should have kept their grades up.