(The Center Square) – High school athletes in Wisconsin will not be paid to play their sport, at least not yet.
The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletics Association, the group that manages high school sports in the state, on Wednesday voted down a name, image and likeness proposal.
Brent Jacobson, the WIAA’s legal counsel, said NIL is coming to high school sports and suggested allowing for some payments now could head off either a state law or a wave of lawsuits.
“Action is likely to deter litigation,” Anderson explained at the WIAA’s meeting Wednesday. “Attorneys throughout the country are going to be making their way to the high school level at some point. They have not yet but the states that are left with a complete prohibition may in fact see litigation.”
The plan the WIAA was offering to Wisconsin high schools would have allowed students to be paid for use of their name or image. It would have prevented students from any NIL deals with bars or casinos and would have prohibited any NIL deals to promote alcohol, marijuana and smoking.
The WIAA also said its rules would ban paying students to play and would create a system to stop local high school boosters from using NIL money to lure students to another school.
Local athletics directors said the proposal is complicated, full of potential pitfalls, and unfinished.
“I do not feel equipped as an athletics director to help my students my student athletes and my parents navigate this rule accurately,” St. Croix Falls Athletics Director Tara Rose said. “I’m not against [NIL], it’s just I don’t feel equipped at this point to say yes.”
Madison Metropolitan Schools Athletics Director Jeremy Schlitz said the NIL rules read, to him, like a choice between getting paid or playing high school sports.
“The current proposed policy is extremely difficult to find a circumstance where a student can access NIL,” Schlitz said. “And in the ones that allowed for the 1% that it might affect, accessing would likely impact 99% of the end as entities cannot support both general school programming and provide NIL contracts without eliminating eligibility for the student athletes to participate in those education-based athletics.”
The NIL proposal failed on a 219-170. Both WIAA officials and local school leaders said NIL is almost certainly coming to high school sports. And say they’re not sure how they will both handle it.
