WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Ohio high school student athletes may soon be able to take advantage of name, image and likeness deals.

What You Need To Know

  • The OHSAA has proposed rule changes to its name, image and likeness policy

  • Leadership met with school administrators to answer questions about the changes

  • Some administrators have concerns they say will go into deciding if they vote for the rule or not

  • The vote will happen between May 1 and May 16

On Monday, the Ohio High School Athletic Association hosted about 100 administrators from various schools across the state.

Kristin Ronai, director of compliance for the OHSAA, hoped to help administrators better understand how it would change Ohio interscholastic athletics.

“With the Supreme Court case, with the NCAA vs. Alston case, as well as some legislative intervention that’s occurred throughout the state and even here in Ohio with the collegiate level, we just felt like we wanted our member schools to have a say and what they wanted the rules to look like and that’s why we felt really important to get this out there during this referendum cycle so that they could have a say,” said Ronai. 

If an athlete entered an endorsement deal, they would have to follow rules, including:

  • No NIL endorsement activity during official team activities
  • No displaying of the sponsors product during those same activities
  • No using a school’s name, logo, mascot or trademarks during endorsement activities
  • No endorsing products or companies that go against the OHSAA’s mission of education-based athletics such as casinos, alcohol, drugs or tobacco
  • The student athlete must disclose the agreement to the school.

School leaders, including Jason Singleton, had several questions.

Singleton is a former basketball player at Ohio State University and also worked in the athletic department. Singleton, the current athletic director at Columbus Academy, said many colleges have compliance officers to help athletes follow the rules.

High schools, though, don’t always have those tools.

“With the colleges, they have the resources and things to monitor it, they have the resources to help the kids, to educate the kids,” said Singleton. “There’s more kids playing sports in high school than in college, so the sheer number for some school districts, we have some school districts that have thousands of kids and only one person in the athletic department.

“So our athletic departments are going to have to manage all of this and they’re going to have to monitor, they’re going to have to educate and I think that’s something that we needed to make sure we think about and make sure we’re prepared for before we jump into that deep end.”

Singleton said he’s on the fence with his decision to vote for the rule change.

In order for it to pass, the OHSAA said member principals will have to vote on the proposal. The vote will happen between May 1 and May 16. If approved, the rules change immediately. ​