MORGANTOWN — In its purest sense, Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) — where it pertains to college athletics — could have been a pretty cool thing.
The reason it’s not and became the wild, wild West is because, quite simply, those in charge refused to say no.
In its purest form, NIL, was meant to be an entity that was only very loosely affiliated with the universities.
It was meant to be about marketing, as in if there was a popular athlete at School A, that athlete should be given the right to use his popularity to make some money without losing college eligibility.
That’s what NIL was originally designed for.
The star quarterback or point guard doing a commercial for the local car dealership.
The offensive line doing a billboard promoting the local ribs joint.
Or, if the athlete was popular enough nationally, then maybe Nike or adidas would come calling.
That’s how NIL started. It quickly turned into something else, as in the majority of high school recruits and transfer portal prospects asking, “How much money can I make if I choose to go to your school?”
They were rarely, if ever, told “nothing,” for fear of losing that recruit to School B, which is how we got to the point of schools and teams now searching for NIL opportunities for their athletes, even the ones most fans would consider have very little market value to begin with.
This is where Wayne Ryan comes into the conversation.
The state of West Virginia is now one of 43 states in this country that allows NIL opportunities for high school and middle school athletes.
As the executive director of the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission (SSAC), Ryan is the fortunate one to oversee the state’s NIL policy.
And he, like the rest of us, has witnessed the massive conglomeration of financial abuse that NIL has become in college athletics.
“The issue at the college level is the NIL policies went into place without much oversight,” Ryan said. “It became the wild, wild West, because there weren’t many rules and regulations in place.”
Ryan said West Virginia’s prep NIL policy was drawn up with the idea of keeping it from becoming the wild, wild West.
“This is not a pay-for-play. This is not a recruitment tool in any way,” he said. “We set out with the intention of allowing the athlete to own their Name, Image and Likeness, because that truly belongs to them.
“At the same time, our policy protects the schools from violations, because in no way can a school, it’s name, mascot or logo be tied to the athlete for the purpose of NIL.”
In short, the school, any properties or employees of the school can’t be associated with the athletes’ NIL opportunities.
Basically, a Ma and Pa grocery store can pay the local high school quarterback $200 to show up on a Saturday to meet and greet the customers, as long as there is no mention of the school he plays for and he’s not wearing his jersey or a T-shirt with the school’s logo or name.
Where it gets hairy is, honestly, where it’s always been a gray area in high school athletics.
We’re talking about illegal recruiting.
The policy clearly prohibits it, “No one associated with or acting at the direction of a member school, such as booster clubs, alumni or collectives, may use the promise of NIL opportunities to entice student athletes to transfer or attend their school,” it states.
Now, how do you enforce it? You can’t. Or at least it’s very difficult.
Short of the athlete or someone in the athlete’s family admitting they were paid for their kid changing schools, the SSAC is very limited in truly enforcing that rule.
But guess what, it was the same way before anyone had ever heard of NIL.
“That’s true,” Ryan admits.
Here’s the thing, someone in the community paying an athlete in the next county under the table to transfer is not NIL.
That’s just plain sick.
Now, enticing that same athlete to transfer and then getting a local business to agree to give him some money for the right to his image to put on a billboard is, technically, NIL.
That’s also, in theory, a little easier to investigate if the transfer were to ever come into question.
It can be argued that opening up NIL opportunities to state prep athletes is only going to create a real headline once every 10 years or so, or whenever the next Randy Moss, Renee Montgomery or O.J. Mayo comes along.
Or it becomes the state’s high school version of the wild, wild West.
If it’s the latter, good luck Mr. Ryan.
“Well, we haven’t had anything like that come up yet,” he said. “That is a bridge we’ll have to cross when we come to it.”
