Athletic directors to vote on NIL rules for Wisconsin

STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAW) - High school athletes in Wisconsin may soon have the opportunity to profit off their name, image and likeness. WIAA member athletic directors will vote on the issue on April 24 on whether athletes in Wisconsin can profit from NIL.

“The overall concept is that student-athletes would be able to monetize off of their successes, utilizing their name, their image, and their likeness, for anything that’s not associated with their school program,” said WIAA Associate Director Mel Dow.

Athletes would have the opportunity to profit off of NIL, however with very specific rules, different than other states or the NCAA. One big difference, the athletes will not be allowed to have any association with the school they play for when profiting.

“It’s when they wear their school uniform or say, ‘Hey, I’m a SPASH Panther, please come to my store for...’ those are the things that are not allowed to happen,” said Dow.

Athletes would be able to make money solely based on their name, image and likeness, not for the team they play for. They’d be able to represent themselves in things such as commercials or advertisements.

“This is not a payment for athletic performance,” said Dow. “The rules are very specific to that. This is just simply being able to endorse, advertise, and so forth and so on, for kids, you know, commercial.”

Something else of note is collectives would not be allowed under these rules, something that’s been very common in college currently.

“These organizations (collectives) get together, to gather their funds to be able to provide these images or these name, image and likeness opportunities to student-athletes,” said Dow. “Our language does not allow that. It prohibits anybody who is a coach, former coach, somebody from that as a booster donor, so forth and so on. Anybody that’s already contributing to some facet of the school program, they’re not allowed to be able to provide name, image and likeness opportunities for the student-athletes, or would render the student-athlete ineligible.”

Another concern is the potential administrative burden. Dow says the WIAA will be as helpful as possible to help athletic directors navigate the new waters.

“All rules of eligibility are applied at the high school level, where the local athletic director is the one that’s responsible for ensuring the eligibility of the student-athletes, that goes from residence transfers, code of conduct, years in school, so forth and so on,” said Dow. “What we’re going to continue to do is, if this is passed, we’re going to continue to help them navigate those waters.”

Dow said when initially talked about three years ago, close to 70% of the membership was opposed to the concept. However, most recent polling has flipped that where now close to 70% are in favor of having conversations around NIL. Currently, 31 states offer NIL of some kind at the high school level, while nine other states are in the process of proposing new rules.

Dow says if the rules pass next week, the new rules could be enacted sooner rather than later.

“Whenever the amendments take place at the annual meeting, they go into effect at the time the posting of our next bulletin,” said Dow, “Our next bulletin is scheduled to go out the week of May 20 so they would go in effect about that time.”