COLUMBUS — Name, Image and Likeness is going exactly as expected in Ohio high school sports.
After an emergency vote among Ohio High School Athletic Association member schools passed in late 2025, Ohio high school athletes became eligible to sign NIL deals.
Ohio became the 45th state to allow NIL deals.
“We are right where the other 44 are,” OHSAA Executive Director Doug Ute said to a gathering of Ohio Prep Sports Media members during their annual meeting on May 5. “Less than 1% of our athletes are getting anything and the ones who are, are getting very little.”
Currently, there are 45 NIL deals reported to the OHSAA. One is very significant, according to Ute, another is “really nice” and the other 43 are one a much, much smaller scale.
“Those are the ones where an athlete makes a social media post and says I get my donuts at the local bakery shop and they give them $150 and a donut. We are not really seeing anything different than anyone else.”
The OHSAA issued an emergency ballot when Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Jaiza Page issued an order that would allow students who are part of the 818 OHSAA member schools to sign NIL deals. The ruling came after a lawsuit was filed by Jasmine Brown, the mother of Jamier Brown, who recently transferred to Big Walnut for his senior football season, and is the top wide receiver in the class of 2027.
Brown has verbally committed to Ohio State University and Brown’s mother and attorneys have claimed he has missed out on more than $100,000 in potential NIL deals.
OHSAA member schools approved an NIL referendum during the emergency vote.
“We shared with our membership that this could go one of three ways,” Ute said. “The lawmakers are going to make it a law, a court is going to say we have to do it or we are going to do it. If a court does it, welcome to the NCAA.”
The benefit of the OHSAA getting ahead of NIL is the ability to put up, what Ute referred them to as, guardrails. The OHSAA has NIL procedures in place well before the lawsuit when member schools votes the referendum down previously and took that language and refined it to help protect schools.
“You can’t have collectives and you cannot use it as a recruiting tool,” Ute said. “Do we catch everyone? No, but if we do catch you, you have seen that we will penalize people for it. You also cannot do anything in your school uniform or on school grounds.”
A star student athlete cannot use an athletic contest to promote an NIL deal. Your team also cannot profit from a single athlete’s NIL deal.
“Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what would have happened when LeBron (James) was 17 again?” Ute said. “I don’t know if you could dream of a number he could have gotten and how much Nike gear would be all over the gym when he was in school. But it is nice to have those guardrails to protect us.”
Ute admitted he is a pro-NIL guy.
“I don’t know how you can tell a student athlete that cannot make money away from their school events and on their own,” Ute said. “There is a child sitting beside that athlete in math class that is making money. What is the difference between someone who has a skill to shoot and dunk a basketball or someone who raises a hog for a county fair? There is an art to that. You take the hog to the show and someone hands you $8,000. What is the difference?
“I do worry about what happens when a 17-year-old comes into a lot of money and all of the people who will try to take advantage.”
The worry is NIL will heighten transfers across the state. On Monday, May 4, shockwaves were sent through the high school football world when Archbishop Hoban High School stars Brayton and Brydon Feister, two of the state’s most recruited players, transferred to Massillon, an already all-star-filled football program.
“We have to go through the process of the 12 exceptions of our transfer rule,” Ute said. “We will get the paperwork and see if an exception is met. If it isn’t you sit the second half of the year. Then you ask, did the move compel the transfer? Is it a bonified move into the district?”
Usually, transfers are looked at on a case-by-case basis, but when it come to a point where several highly-regarded athletes are transferring in groups, it raises a red flag to outsiders and begins the conversation of recruiting in high school sports.
“There is recruiting and there is attraction,” Ute said. “I can go back to when I played and back to my time as a superintendent in Newark, was it recruiting or attraction? Does someone want their child to be around that coach and that program bad enough to make a bonified move? I won’t say it raises any red flags, but we definitely check to see if there is evidence of recruiting.”
In the past 12 months, the OHSAA has received more than 1,400 notices of transfers.
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This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: High school sports NIL in Ohio trending similarly with other states
Reporting by Jake Furr, Mansfield News Journal / Mansfield News Journal
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