Wisconsin could allow high school athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness

Over the next two months, the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association and high school athletic directors will decide if student athletes should profit from their name, image and likeness. 

It’s a question many athletic directors and educators haven’t wanted to face. 

But with 40 states including Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa allowing high school athletes to participate in NIL deals, it seems inevitable, said Craig Lieder athletic director at Oshkosh North High School. 

The policies allow high school athletes to sign endorsement deals or make money from promoting products.

“It can happen one of two ways, either the state forces it on us, or we, as athletic directors and schools, get to help be a part of it and form it in a way that will make it easy to understand and applicable for the entire state,” Lieder said. 

WIAA rejected a much deliberated NIL proposal  219-170 in April 2024.

That proposal would have allowed student-athletes to “engage in promotion and revenue opportunities and activities not associated or identified with their school team, school, conference or the WIAA, which included a number of prohibited NIL activities.”

Next week, another constitutional amendment will be brought forward to the membership for a final vote at the annual meeting on April 25, said WIAA spokesperson Todd Clark. 

Clark would not comment further. 

NIL deals for high school and college students are a relatively new development. 

In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston that the NCAA can’t prohibit student athletes from profiting from education-related payments. 

That same year, Jaden Rashada, an 18-year-old football player from Pittsburg, California, signed what is believed to be the first NIL deal for a high school football player. 

Since then, more and more states have allowed their high school players to sign NIL deals, either through school policy changes, state laws or lawsuits brought by parents.

When WIAA membership voted last year, about 30 states were allowing athletes to participate in NIL deals, now the number is 40. 

In November, WIAA partnered with Influential Athlete, a Milwaukee-based company focused on educating high school athletes on how to best use their name, image and likeness in both high school and beyond. 

At the time, WIAA Executive Director Stephanie Hauser said Influential Athlete could help the organization navigate the NIL landscape. 

“This collaboration underscores our commitment to equipping school leaders and athletic directors with the resources they need to support student-athletes during this transformative time,” Hauser said in a statement. 

Hauser was not made available to WPR for further comments. 

Stephanie Grady and her husband, Joe, started Influential Athlete in October 2024. 

Grady, a former television anchor, was a medal-winning figure skater until injury forced her to retire from the sport at 17. She says injury or age can end a sports career quicky, but NIL deals can provide another avenue for athletes.

Over the last several months, Grady has held seven meetings with high school athletic directors, superintendents and principals across the state ahead of the WIAA membership vote on NIL. 

After the vote failed last April, WIAA sent out a survey to members and found out there wasn’t a clear reason for the failure or a clear understanding of what allowing high school athletes to participate in NIL deals would actually mean, Grady said. 

Grady said Wisconsin legislators are already preparing to introduce a bill to allow NIL deals for high school students if the proposal fails at the annual meeting in April. 

“So the WIAA membership would lose control as to how that language is crafted,” Grady said. “The guardrails they’ve put in place in order to protect students, the athlete integrity, the school integrity, the ability to restrict undue influence, would be gone.”

Grady believes WIAA will pass an amendment on April 25 allowing high school athletes to participate in NIL deals. 

“There are certain things that they care about, and if they pass this language, and they decide to tweak the language, then they have full control to do that,” Grady said. “If passing it happens at the legislative level, they lose all that control.” 

Personally, Oshkosh’s athletic director, Lieder, said he’s vehemently opposed to paying student athletes. 

“Then again, I’m old school,” he said. “But that’s the way things are trending. So, it’s either you get on board or you get left in the dust, right?”

Lieder is coaching one of Wisconsin’s top 10 athletes: basketball sensation Xzavion Mitchell, who has already signed to play with Iowa State next year. 

“I feel bad that he’s not going to be able to benefit from the passing of this at the high school level,” Lieder said. “The good news is, we all know college has it, so he’ll be able to reap the benefits of it.”