A day after Ohio became the 45th state to allow high school athletes to strike name, image and likeness deals, a Republican state lawmaker said he’s working on a bill to ban that practice.
The members of the Ohio High School Athletic Association voted to allow NIL deals Monday. The bill Rep. Adam Bird (R-New Richmond) is hoping to introduce would prohibit NIL payments to high school athletes.
"When you see the impact that NIL has had on college sports, it's not been to the benefit of of what college sports should be all about," Bird said in an interview. "And I think that that we are very much in danger of going down a similar path that is not good for high school students in Ohio by allowing this to go forward."
Bird hasn't introduced a bill yet but is talking to other lawmakers about it.
Bird cited a study of college athletes that showed rates of death by suicide doubled over a 20-year period, and is now the second-leading cause of death in that population.
"There's a lot of pressure for young people today and I think when you start giving them money because of their talent you're adding to the pressure," Bird said. "We should not be creating a system that has more pressure on these kids. They should be enjoying and learning and growing in a holistic way because of the experience that we give them in team sports and this is not going down the right path."
Bird added that public dollars spent on high school sports is intended to help all students: “All of the investment that we make in these facilities and to make these things happen it's not so that the student can make money. That's not what it's about. That's not why we do sports in Ohio.”
And Bird said it's his impression most schools don't want their students to enter into NIL deals. Of the 815 members of the OHSAA, 55% voted for the bylaw change to allow NIL contracts. The rest voted against it or didn’t vote.
"The Ohio High School Athletic Association didn't really want to do this," Bird said. "This has all been generated because a temporary restraining order from a single Franklin County judge...has forced OHSAA to go down a path that it didn't want to go."
A vote on NIL deals was likely to happen in May, but a lawsuit filed by star wide receiver Jamier Brown of Wayne High School in Dayton pushed it up. Last month Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page had ordered a 45-day pause on the OHSAA ban on NIL deals and set a hearing for December. Brown's lawyer said the family is dropping the lawsuit.
"I think the majority of our schools are not crazy about the idea of NIL at the high school level," said Tim Stried with the OHSAA. "Neither is the OHSAA, but as we all know, the courts have spoken many times. We cannot prevent a person from earning money on their name, image and likeness."
Stired said the OHSAA had expected to be sued by a different athlete earlier this summer, so the organization was ready for the vote. And he said when college athletes were allowed to do NIL deals starting in 2019, that set the stage for what's happening now.
"A student can get paid for a lot of things that they do well. But athletics was not one of those, and now it is," Stried said.
