DELAWARE-Â The landscape of high school athletics is poised for a potential shift in Delaware as discussions brew over the adoption of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) regulations for high school athletes.
NIL is already embraced by 33 other states and Washington D.C., and allows high school athletes to make money through their personal brands, endorsements and sponsorships.
NIL rules, which have revolutionized college athletics in recent years, aim to empower student athletes to profit from their own identities, separate from their team affiliations. Rather than receiving direct compensation for playing, athletes can now leverage their popularity and influence for financial gain.
However, with the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association considering this move, executive director David Baylor says the DIAA board wants to make sure they handle it the right way.Â
"There are some concerns because of the age of our student athletes. We want to make sure there's definitely some supervisory parental involvement in this," he said. "There are some minefields that we have to be concerned about. But, if everybody's willing to work together, I think we can navigate those minefields effectively."
Baylor says there are two ways for this motion to become the new rule- either the DIAA board approves it, or the Delaware General Assembly steps in to pass it as a bill.
Baylor continued to say that he does not expect students to make excessive amounts of money through these proposed rules. Either way, the potential has already begun to impact sports in Delaware, with annual elite basketball tournament Slam Dunk to the Beach recently announcing a hiatus due to the changing landscape of high school basketball.
CoastTV did ask Baylor if it would be possible for these rules to unfairly benefit private schools over public schools, and Baylor did admit it was a possibility. However, he said that the goal of the current draft is to make sure all the rules benefit everyone fairly.
"We'd be naïve not to think that might not play into this," he said. "It (the current draft) keeps the schools out of it, meaning that you can't have a booster funneling money to a student athlete. The school itself cannot create its own clubs and therefore generate money to pass on to student athletes through the regulation."
Interestingly, the current draft resembles the high school NIL rules in Oklahoma, according to Baylor.
As discussions progress, the DIAA invites public input through an online survey, open until April 1. With the board set to review survey results in the near future, the deliberation over NIL regulations for high school athletes in Delaware remains in its early stages.