SPEAKER_00 0:04

You're listening to the Hanging with the AD podcast, where we break down hot topics in athletic administration and lessons learned through leadership. Now, here are your hosts, Josh Matthews and Don Baker.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Welcome to a special edition of the Hanging with AD Podcast. In our intro, you hear the line Hot Topics in Athletic Administration. And today we're going to be discussing arguably one of the hottest topics right now with one of the best resources on the topic as we sit down with Dr. Scott Grant to talk NIL and its place in the high school space. Scott, thanks for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Hey, thanks so much. I appreciate any opportunity to chat about this hot topic, as everyone calls it.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Now, Scott, give our listeners who may not may not have heard you speak before, maybe a little background about yourself, how you landed on the topic of NIL, and specifically why you've got an interest in educating about NIL at the high school level.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yeah, long story short, so I was actually a former high school coach, teacher, uh did that for about five years, worked at an assistant AD. Then I became a high school athletic director for about three. Went back and did my doctorate in leadership and policy studies. And everything that I've done from a research perspective has always been around high school athletics. My dad was a high school teacher and coach. My mom was a high school teacher. It's been my life forever. So uh I went back and did that, did my doctorate. I taught in the college space and business for about six years, where I started a company called Triple Threat Leadership. And I did a lot of social media personal branding before anyone ever wanted to talk about that, right? And then NIL happens now. Everybody wants to talk about it. But um did that for six years. And then my family and I moved to the University of North Carolina. I took a job there as the director of ops outreach and leadership development in their athletic department, right when NIL was becoming very heavy in the college space. And honestly, it was a mess. No one really knew what to do. Education was all over the place. So another kid later, and the opportunity to move back home to Ohio. And I now teach at the University of Finlay in the College of Education. And when I was at UNC, I just felt this massive pull to help high school ADs figure out NIL and the education around it because I I feel like they're always the ones that are the lost people, right? Everybody builds things for the students and they build things for the parents, but then they don't they don't really figure out how to help the ADs. And you know, I had buddies who were in the AD space and they're like, Scott, what do we do? And it's like, okay, I'm gonna go help. So I never intended to be in NIL, um, but uh it's it's pretty much turned into a passion point of serving the high schools and the ADs and their stakeholders from an educational standpoint. So long story short, that's that's kind of how I arrived at this weird juncture.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

I'd say what they say timing's everything. You roll into to North Carolina at like the time, right? We're literally building the plane as we fly, and here you come, you know, on board.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah, and and that was great. And and honestly, part of what I did at North Carolina, and even before NIL was was there, was I was there to help student athletes figure out personal branding, social media core values and in leadership development. As that transitioned in, I feel like everybody was going sideways. It's like, no, God, we're still here, we're still social media, personal branding, leadership development. It's just now it's just the root of all these other things that people want to do. And it's so hard for high school administrators and and because everything you got going on. So it's been a blessing to really serve in that space. And I I tell people all the time, I don't want to be in the college space from NIL, it's it's a lot and it's messy. Um, my passion is just about high school, and that's just where I want to be.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Now, maybe we need to start with the question what is NIL? I know that that you have stressed the importance of knowing exactly what it is, and and talking with others about NIL, the same theme seems to keep coming up. So maybe could you define what we are talking about when we say NIL?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Yeah, so NIL just stands for name, image, and likeness. And it's no, it's it's a legal concept, right? Those three things make up a person's right of publicity. So so my name, my image, and the likeness surrounding uh my image in those certain ways. So when when it moves into name, image, and likeness and sponsorship and getting paid, it's it's just when your name, image, and likeness is used for some type of promotional purposes, right? And that can come in a lot of different ways, and that's why it's really important to understand the the background in the fight has always been how can you tell a person that they can't monetize their own legal right of their name, their image, and their likeness, and that's where it gets a little bit sticky. So it's important to realize that is something every person owns, right? I I have my name, my image, my likeness. Those those are my rights, and that's where the whole basis of this really starts as you move forward.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

So, Scott, we've uh seen NIL at the college space. You mentioned that a little bit, and you don't want to be in that space, and we hear stories of athletes with the potential to receive millions of dollars. Uh saw some earlier uh this this month in January, where some people were uh lost their opportunity to make millions of dollars, right? What exactly does NIL look like at the high school level based on what you've seen? What do these deals typically look like? Do they have the potential to model what we've seen there at the college level?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah, so the unique part about NIL is it's always in transition, right? So when it first comes in, it and I'll give you a little background. When it first came into play at the college level, you started seeing a lot of brands really jump into the mix, right? People signing, like so like Dr. Pepper signing a quarterback, etc. And then as it moved forward and you're about a year in, then you started seeing donors get really, really engaged, right? Donors were starting to, and donors who have businesses, and then you start seeing these collectives pop up, and they're starting to almost integrate more into the local community of student athletes and really focused on the school. So as high school kind of came in, you started seeing a similar type of piece, right? The elite 2% student athletes, like the the Jada Williams from from California who signs the spaulting basketball deal, or um, there's another young man out of California who signed with Crocs, right? Some of those larger brands, but then you're starting to shift and see things like um kids who are getting paid for personal appearances, right? Maybe there's a there's a kid in a town that the local car dealership wants him to come on a Saturday morning because you know what? Every kid in town loves that person, or maybe it's a pizza shop and they pay the student athlete to come and spend a couple hours. You can get paid. A lot of kids try to monetize through private coaching, not necessarily as much at the high school level as college, because there are often regulations on a kid can't use facilities of their high school and things like that. So you've got those. You've got kids selling merchandise. There's a couple basketball players out of New York City, a sophomore and a junior who have unique names and brands, and they have merchandise apparel, right? And they've signed as ambassadors with uh a company called, I think it's Spreadshop, and they get paid for social media promotions. A lot of what you're seeing is ambassadorship type elements where you're getting paid to be a spokesperson for a certain brand. And oftentimes that's connected to kids' social media accounts, social media followings, and that's where a lot of that is moving at the high school level.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Now, would you say that that is more like product-based, or I'm gonna promote a clothing brand, for example? Like my NIL deal is not necessarily money, it is I've got a new wardrobe as a result of this.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Yeah, it could be it could be gift in kind, it could be no no actual receiving of financial dollars, but it could be, hey, uh, I use this protein and I'm now gonna be an ambassador for that protein, and I get 30% off my orders and an affiliate link, right? Or or things to that nature. It's you're not seeing as much, and partially because uh that's hard, right? Like it's there's not as much money being dumped into high school student athletes because you you don't know the return on investment, right? If you sign a uh high school quarterback for a million dollars, like what are you gonna get back on a return on investment, right? Now, if a brand signs Armando Baycott from the University of North Carolina two million dollars, they know he's gonna be on TV and getting all these other additional type of appearance elements. So I think there's a little bit of question around what that looks like, but I always tell people the thing about NIL is it it's transitioned into this very hyper-local type piece, right? So in Chapel Hill, where we lived, Chapel Hill, you know, you have uh some athletes who probably aren't as well known anywhere else, but in Chapel Hill, they could really be impactful in the NIL space at the high school level. That's all it is, right? You got your boosters and your donors and your parents and those community businesses all being super hyper local together and supporting some of those student athletes, I think is going to continue to develop in different ways.

SPEAKER_03 9:04

Yeah, I know we're talking about high school NIL, but Don brings up a great point. These kids who maybe get new wardrobes or whatever. You think I get an NIL deal from a seven-year-old who's going through jeans and shoes like every six months? I know he's wearing me out with getting a new wardrobe. So I need somebody to uh help out a seven-year-old. I don't care about when he's 17.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

I'll tell you, I I tried, I got twins who are eight, and when they were born, I branded them the Twin Towers, right? And you remember they were like five, I was shooting things with their Nike gear on, but no luck. No luck, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:36

Yeah, we need that we need that new wardrobe for these kids, these uh growing kids, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Let me ask you this the when I when I think about it at the high school space, and one of a can a concern that I have, and to your point, what you were just talking about with the the the narrowing of the the shrinking of the bubble, right? Uh and when you talk about a high school, most high schools they are pulling when they fundraise the i I in a perfect world, I wish the athletic department could fully fund everybody, right? But we all know this is just not a reality.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

And there's only so many businesses, right, in a community, especially the smaller the community, there's even fewer. And if if the the business, ultimately they're a business. And so they want to look at where they're going to get the most money for their buck. And if they they normally give $5,000 to the football program, but they've got a big high-priced recruit. Well, maybe they split that. And now the football programs only get $2,500 and $2,500 goes to the kid. I mean, is that something that is a legitimate concern, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Absolutely. And and that was the biggest concern at the college level, right? When this was going into play, is the the marketing dollars. You you have finite marketing dollars, right? So if I have $25,000 that's going to the athletic department, but I'm going to pull 10 of that and now focus on two student athletes that I think are extremely impactful in the community and can meet my marketing goals. I'm not just going to come up with another $10,000 to give the athletic department to make up for that, right? So there was always that concern of is money going to be pulled. And that's why a lot of times when I talk to ADs and they're like, oh, I live in a very rural community, it's not going to matter to me. I grew up in a really small town, right? If there was a kid in my town that was an elite athlete, probably going to play basketball at Ohio State, chances are every business in town probably wants a little piece of that kid. And I'm not saying it has to be $10,000, but it could be $500 for him to come and be part of a birthday party that a local organization hosts host for a kid. That $500 meant a lot to our high school because we're a small school, we didn't have very big budgets. So it can impact in a lot of different ways. And that's one thing that I don't think people often consider enough because, unlike the college level, most of your boosters and your donors and your organizations in a high school environment are across the street or five minutes apart, right? Like donors and things at the college level are potentially across the country. So if I walk across the street and I want to help, I want to work with another organization in town to do an NIL deal for a couple high school kids, that's not a lot of legwork on the front end to figure that out. Because then I walk down the street to local lawyer to draft the the policy or the contract. In regards to high school NIL and potential movement forward.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Now, speaking of it affecting those boots on the ground and what it looks like with more and more states allowing some form of NIL at the high school level, I keep asking people, and we talked about this before we got on the call, I keep asking people what the role of local high school ADs is going to be in this. And it seems that everyone keeps telling me that they're not going to have a role at all. And I just don't believe that. I'll just be frank. As those boots on the ground, what should ADs plan for when their state presses play on NIL? Because they're going to at some point.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah, no, absolutely. So the unique thing about high school NILs, there is no national high school governing body, right? We have the NFHS, but they do they do sport regulations, okay? So it's not like the NCAA where, hey, here are the regulations that everybody has to abide by. You technically have potentially if all the states approve it, 50 different policies. And I always tell ADs to think about a couple of things. Number one, you got to look at the policy and say, what am I expected to do from a state association level? So in that policy, um, for example, let's say Pennsylvania. I think Pennsylvania's policy requires a student to submit an NIL deal to their athletic administrators within 48 hours. Okay. So in my head, if I'm a high school A D, number one, I'm questioning, okay, why? And two, what what do I have to do with that policy when he submits it or they submit it? Right. And then three, what then, I mean, what what comes next? Right. So always ask, what am I being expected to do? In Ohio, we were one of the only states that actually voted down NIL when they when it went out for approval. And one of the key concerns was in the new policy by the OHSA, it was going to require students to submit to an AD a potential NIL policy. The AD was gonna have to go through the policy and look at it to say whether or not it violated the the amateur regulations by the OHSA. Yeah, no thank you. Yeah, exactly. And that's why I said, well, so in technically, you're creating a compliance office at the high school level, right? And there is not a single AD that has time to do that, nor has the ability to read through some of these contracts and say, you know what? Right, you're gonna be legal. This is okay by amateur status. But in Ohio, it said you weren't allowed to tell them whether or not this was a bad deal. You were specifically just as a checkpoint, and it's like, come on. I mean, when you do that, I think this is what happens a kid walks in with an NIL deal, and you're like, get out of my office, get out of my office, because I I don't want to be the reason why something happens. And and my other concern with that is just the pure amount of time that it would take, because you're gonna have to build a process, right? Like a kid comes to you on Friday and says, Hey, I got this potential NIL deal. Well, he wants a response from you by Friday, right? Well, I don't got time to go through this and look at this and make sure everything's up to par and all that call the state association because they're not gonna answer, you know, all those things. So now you gotta have a procedural agreement like document of saying you gotta submit by this date, get a response by this date, and then I always tell people, so what happens, right? So, what happens if a kid doesn't submit an NIL policy to the AD 48 hours later or within 48 hours in the state of Pennsylvania? You know how many infractions there have been at the NCAA level?

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Zero last time I checked.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah, zero, zero. There's not a single person that wants to nail a high school kid against the wall on this stuff, right? But like if you're gonna say you got rules, you gotta enforce the rules. If you don't enforce the rules, you don't have rules, right?

SPEAKER_03 15:51

So it's like I love that saying every time I hear you say it, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. A lot of people honestly, when they talk about NIL, they say, hey, they just took the money underneath the table, they put it on the table, and then when they made rules, they put it back underneath the table. I don't want that to happen at the high school level, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Yeah, well, and that's it that you you mentioned something just a second ago where that the kid comes in hypothetically, the kid comes in, and I've talked with with Josh about this and and and a lot of other uh ADs up in the the greater Atlanta area. This idea that, okay, kid comes in, he puts it on my desk, and let's say hypothetically I am supposed to check it for quote unquote compliance, right? Then uh we've got a fight in the cafeteria, kid throws up in a classroom, I've got traffic duty, oh, I'm I'm issuing lockers, we're doing textbooks, or we're selling homecoming tickets. Next thing you know, my day's shot, right? And then you run into a situation where you know my concern is a district AD where one of my guys is looking at it, they just kind of skim it, they give it to the kid, the kid ends up doing something that's a violation, and then we come back, and next thing you know, we're having to get legal involved, right? Because their representation shows up and wants to talk about it. You're talking about people having to vet these things, and they are not qualified to do so.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Absolutely not. Yeah, absolutely not. And I mean, I've read a lot of contracts, I've read a lot of policies, and I feel like I'm pretty educated. I mean, there's a lot of stuff I I don't know what is even saying. And I mean, there's there's all kinds of different clauses, right? I just read about a zip code clause at the college level, like they'll put zip code clauses where like a kid has to live in a certain zip code to get the NIL deal, right? Like I mean, and then it's like, okay, well, that's that's not really requiring a kid to go to that institution. Well, okay, well, maybe not, but at the same time, you're requiring to live in a certain zip cloak. I wouldn't know what that means, you know what I mean? So it's yeah, there's so many little pieces to this, and and again, I don't think a lot of schools have a lawyer on staff that's at their beck and call all the time. Most of them have to outsource, and that's that's expensive. That's a whole nother additional cost. That now, if you're gonna bring them into the fold, state associations have to understand that hey, there are some things that we're not gonna be able to do that you're asking us to do, so we need some help.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Hey, Scott, let's uh let's kind of take a different road here. We talked about athletic directors getting educated or being a part of it. Obviously, I agree with Don. It's gonna fall to us. And as I mentioned earlier, we had a we had a young man just this week ask about it for Georgia. It's coming to us. And if if it's just simply saying yes, we have it or no, we don't, we're still gonna have to ask those questions or answer those questions. But from a parent-kid standpoint, um, when looking to better educate them, what should we look out for with this new space? I'm sure there'll be some folks looking to profit on it uh rather than truly help. So, what are some of the red flags that AD should keep an eye out for that we can provide as resources to our communities?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah, so it's it's extremely hard because there's a lot of information, there's a lot of bad information. Now, there's a lot of good people in the space, but this is why I always try to focus specifically on high school because I think a lot of people try to have their their legs like over the fence. It's like college, high school. High school is very different because you're dealing with minors, you know, you're you're dealing with with kids that are going to probably play college athletics, and there's a whole nother realm of NIL when they move into that standard. So I always tell ADs and just parents there's a couple things that that you gotta think about, right? Number one, if a kid gets offered an NIL deal, like there has they can't be paid for something that they don't do, right? The the no quid pro quo. So, like if a kid's being asked to do something, like, hey, there's uh on which you show up on Saturday uh and we'll pay you for this this appearance, they they gotta do it to get paid, otherwise, that that's a violation, right? There's no pay for performance activities. So, like NIL deals cannot be tied to athletic performance. Now, a lot of people always say, Well, how do how does that work? The kid's the best player on the team. I'm not saying he can't, like, you can't choose to do an NIL deal with the best player on the team, but you can't say, Hey, I'm the local dairy queen and I'm gonna sign this kid to an NIL deal and he's gonna get free milkshakes for every touchdown that he scores, right? That's that's illegal, or you can't give him a bonus for earning all conference, that's illegal. And then there's no enrollment inducement. So if if someone comes to you and says, Hey, here's an NIL deal, but you have to go to this school to get it, like technically that is that is illegal, right? At all levels. So those are some key things. The other piece, too, if you're if you're a parent and your child is thinking about this and you get presented with a contract, there unfortunately there are businesses that are that are taking advantage of individuals and they're putting in you know perpetuity and exclusivity clauses, right? Where anything that's created is owned by the business entity forever. Well, a 17-year-old kid doesn't know what forever looks like, they don't know what their their future uh jobs are gonna look like, right? So you got to get really clear on on whatever you're being asked to do. Does it align with what you think your future might become? And and you have you have certain things like I've seen morality clauses. So kids, you know, if they're there, it's kind of like the conduct on becoming that's always the last little right exclamation point on on whatever. So there's so many things that can be integrated into these contracts. I think a lot of times parents and student athletes they just say, Oh, they want to pay me a thousand dollars. Okay, but what are they asking you to do, right? Is it going to take time away from your academics? Is it going to take time away from your sport? Does this really fit with what you're thinking about doing? And and that can those are good, those can be some hard questions. The other piece, too, and I think for ADs to think about from education with those people, you'd be amazed at how many parents, businesses in states that don't have it think they do, and in states that do have it, right, have have no idea that they do, right? And it and a lot of times you'll see contracts. That are completely awful, but it's because they don't even know what's legal at the state level, right? Like for businesses, they're probably going to ask you as the AD, like, well, hey, I want to sign this kid with an NIL deal. Like, what does that even mean? And you've got a little bit of leeway to really even say anything before you would be saying, Oh, yeah, I'm helping solicit for my kids' NIL deals, right? So the education piece is so important because it's all over the map on people getting people sideways without even knowing that they're getting people sideways. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

So on that perpetuity and exclusivity side, if you are a high school parent, which you will be here uh before long, the the first three things I think you mentioned are are huge red flags. Right. I'm gonna give you $500 and you don't have to do anything for it, you know, just because you wear number 35. That's a red flag, right? But the the the that last piece where it could affect your future? Yeah, have you seen contracts or have you seen examples where maybe parents are saying we want to draw in something? High school doesn't last forever, right? We don't know what our major in college, we don't know what our career is going to be. So are high school parents able to draw in and maybe draw out that exclusivity forever and maybe put a timeline on that?

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Yeah, I mean, I would I would never sign a contract that has perpetuity or exclusivity in it, right? Especially because of that reason. If you're a senior in high school and you're signing an NIL deal, let's say with a local restaurant and it's um there, it's kind of think about it like categories, right? So like the food and beverage category. Right. If I'm a local restaurant, I don't want you signing with other restaurants, right? So if a kid from Georgia, let's say he goes to Chapel Hill, I want to kind of lock him up in the in the food and beverage category. So making sure that it's not a multi-year deal, right? Making sure that it's not something that could potentially negatively impact the future piece. And absolutely, I would always, I was always suggest parents, especially before they would sign, because if their kids under 18, they're gonna have to sign the contract, getting a lawyer to look through those terms in that contract to ensure that they're not giving away any rights or assets that is not good at that time. You'd be amazed at how many college students, especially when NIL first came into play and colleges weren't allowed to really help, sign deals that had perpetuity and exclusivity clauses in it. I mean, big deals, big deals. Yeah, crazy.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Now, do you do you find you mentioned something a minute ago? I just kind of wanted to ask that if I'm in a I'm in a state where I am aware that the college athletes in that state are they're getting NIL deals, right? And or maybe I'm even in a home where I've got a uh one kid that is in college profiting from that, but we're in a state that the high school association doesn't allow it. Do you see like it's very easy to cross streams there, right? Where absolutely where I'm we're in a state where kids can benefit from it. Well, no, you're not really, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Right. Yep, and and each state when you get to that next level. I mean, states can have their own NIL laws that can impact at the college level, right? So, like we would always do kind of you know the triple tests for college athletes, right? You think about um the NCAA, you think about the school, because like a school can have its own NIL policy, right? The University of Kansas NIL policy can be different than Ohio State University's NIL policy, technically. The state law can be different in those states. So if I live in Tennessee and I go to Ohio for college, that could be extremely different. And then also one thing that sometimes people don't think about is is the the sport governing body, right? So, like let's say for golf, golfers that has the USGA can create its own NIL regulations. Like they said, that golfers weren't allowed to give lessons because that would be classified. That's what professional golfers do, right? That would take money away from PGA members. So that would technically be about it, but you think about it, it's it's legal by the state, it's legal by the school, it's legal by some other pieces, but that sport governing body they couldn't do that, so it can get really convoluted to even try to understand. Holy smokes, everybody's got rules and regulations. Like, how do I how do I figure out what's right? And then let's face it, they just call you and they expect you. Well, how do you not know this? It's like, come on, man, for all the reasons that you listed earlier. I got a kid puking, I got traffic duty, and I got a fight in the cafeteria.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Yes, we do. All right, so so you uh teed it up perfect for me. I was gonna go to the next group of people that this is gonna affect, and that's the coach. You know, there's some coaches already thinking about it, there's some coaches already dealing with circumstances around NIL in their arena, thinking about kids who might mispractice for commercials. I know that's crazy, but I mean, you know, the a kid won't wants to make his money and they they're gonna they're gonna have to balance that. They may be pressured for more playing time uh because a kid got a deal. You mentioned golf, the the golf governing body, the USGA has their own set of rules. Hundreds of other questions, probably. What advice do you have, coaches, and please don't say go talk to your AD because I don't want to go. It's an easy question, I guess. Now that I read the question, what advice uh do you have for coaches who see this coming or are already experiencing it and how they best manage their team while trying to create team chemistry and a team first culture?

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah, man. There's a lot, there's a lot in there. Um, you know, and I always start with everybody with with any school employee, is you gotta know the state policy, right? Some some state policies are really clear on that school employees cannot be part of any facilitation of deal, uh, any sponsorship of deal. So they clearly spell it out. They're like, hey, coaches, you can't be involved in any of this. Additionally, you've got to start working with your kids just from an overview of helping them understand. Here are some, especially if you're at a school that has student athletes that you think may enter into this space. How are you helping them deal with with training around like when someone comes up and says, Hey, I want to be your agent, right? Like some states allow kids to sign agents. Well, I mean, there are some agents that don't care, right? And they sign, they they will write up nasty contracts for percentages that are that are crazy, right? The other fear, which you mentioned, is empowering kids to understand that this isn't their livelihood, right? This isn't their last means of of anything. Where if a kid quarterback signs an NIL deal and he he has a terrible game on Friday and they've signed with an agent, like understand that agent might be texting them and be like, hey, we just signed a million-dollar deal, man. Like, we doing throwing so now you have this mental health, like all of these yes, pushes on top of these kids, where it's really just I I go back to the to the thing, we're always teaching student athletes, right? You're pulling out pieces of NIL and trying to figure out ways in which you can engage with them. The importance of positive social media, not around, not around like building creating deals, but around like using social media for a positive benefit. You're gonna have to learn how to do that when you get a job, right? Figuring that out, figuring out how to be a good teammate, just in general, right? Like if this kid and going through scenarios, and you're gonna have to talk about this because unfortunately or fortunately, high school kids are enamored with NIL, right? Because all they do, they turn on TV and it's everywhere on Saturdays with college football and basketball. And I mean, I saw yesterday Nate E, the the kid from Purdue, has a hockey jersey from Purdue, right? Everybody's loving it. My kids were at my kids are eight and they're asking about it, right? So it's gotta have open communication about that. But some states make it really clear like you can't do anything. So, as coaches, you've got to know what that is, and then the other piece, too, is really being clear with your staff on how you're gonna handle that. I'm not saying this happens, but I could see it, right? You've got a rogue junior high coach that coaches a bunch of AAU teams in the summer, and they start talking about NIL and they're not school employees. So there's just a lot to all of that where as a coach, most of them are gonna say, I don't want to deal with this, but you just like anything, you're developing kids for whatever level they choose to go to. NIL can be an avenue to discuss many of those positive things.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

Yeah, I'm thinking about our preseason coaches meeting when we have all our coaches there and we say NIL, we put that slide up there, NIL, and Georgia doesn't have it. You you gotta say more than that now. And especially when we get it, there's gonna have to be multiple slides to say, hey, we have it, but and as you said, you're a community coach, you can't help with this, you can't be involved. So you got to keep your mouth shut. You know, you got to act like one of the teacher coaches, and same thing for our teacher coaches, and man, a lot of different tentacles there for sure.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Yep, and uh, and and one thing too, to to piggyback a little bit, right? If you're a coach and you coach a sport that you have a lot of student athletes that are going to the next level often, right? NIL most likely is going to become a conversation of the recruiting environment and equipping your student athletes to understand about NIL in general, if they don't have much, especially if if a kid, you know, hey, I'm going to Georgia, there's going to be a conversation about NIL, right? And and unfortunately, some people lead with that. And I just read an article the other day uh by the quarterback of Alabama, his dad you know was saying, in hindsight, he he's telling people in high school, like, don't do it, right? And and unless you're super clear on trying to figure out all of these pieces, find coaches and where you can grow and build a name for yourself, and then everything else will fall. But I think NIL makes us kind of do it backwards, right? And that's going to be a lot of conversations with kids, even at like division two levels, right? You're starting to see collectives and NIL deals because some of those elite division two schools recruit division one athletes, right? So it's all the time. How do we get part of this game? So all of that comes down to educating, getting people to understand what this is holistically, and then how do we equip our students with understanding a little bit further?

SPEAKER_03 32:54

Yeah, something I just thought about, you know, we our coaches know who the best players are, right? They know who the college players are, especially. But if you're a high school athletic director, which you used to be, how much would you advise our coaches? Because you mentioned the social media aspect earlier, and it's a lot of it surrounds that the number of followers and the number of likes and and and just the the content and interactions there. How much would you advise your coaches when you get these athletes and it doesn't even have to be your best athletes? You need to go check their Instagram or their Twitter or whatever you can get to to see how many followers they have.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Oh, 100% of the time, and not just about how many followers do they have, but triple threat leadership. My business I started was I started it to do presentations on social media in high schools. I've given about four to 500 presentations at high schools all over the country, and most of them are not student athlete specific because I don't talk about sports, right? It's 100% about understanding 98% of employees look at look at social media during the hiring process, right? I guarantee you guys don't hire a coach unless you go through their social media to to figure out and make sure that what you're getting in person is exactly what you're kind of seeing online, right? Like it's not like you're looking for dirt, you're just saying, hey, am I getting this? Every single kid has been using social media now, I feel like since fifth, sixth grade. When I was at North Carolina, like when you talk about recruits, you're looking at social media, you're looking at how they're engaging with people, if nothing else. And even without NIL, every school for all of their students should be teaching positive social media use and personal brand education, because that is just a life skill that every kid has to have. I just, it's interesting because now everybody says, Oh, I'm gonna teach you social media and personal branding because of NIL. Like, okay, let's talk about it now, right? We've been talking about this for a long time, but hey, yes, if this is gonna make you talk about it, let's talk about it. So every coach, every athletic department, every school, go to your principal and say, Hey, we need to figure out where we're teaching social media and personal branding. Because if a kid enters into NIL, it's gonna help them. If they don't, it's gonna help everybody, right?

SPEAKER_03 35:04

That's good. Yeah, that's that's a great question for us to uh contemplate as we further our departments for sure. Hey, any other possible pitfalls the athletic leaders should keep an eye out for regarding the students who are our number one commodity uh in regards to NIL.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

Yeah, I'm I'm gonna think the other thing too is sometimes we think NIL is just for the elite student athletes, right? You you all may have kids that are very entrepreneurial. Um, you know, I just I just saw the other day there's there's a girl in in our hometown where we live, she's a big dirt bike racer, right? And she's junior high style, and she just signed with a with a company to sponsor her dirt bike racing, et cetera. And she's a great athlete. And I'm just thinking in my head, like when she gets into high school, it doesn't necessarily have to be around the sport that they're engaged with, right? Or a lot of these kids are entrepreneurial in the fact of hey, I'm not good at basketball. I sit on the end of the bench, but man, I I'm extremely entrepreneurial. I build an incredible social media following, and I'm gonna do some really, really cool stuff. So sometimes we come at this like, oh, this is terrible, it's gonna be awful, it's gonna be bad, because we think about that elite quarterback and all the things that are going with that. But you forget about the kids that there's a Caitlin Hannah, the the girl's golfer, she was from Nebraska, she signed a deal with the local supermarket, and you know, in return, part of what she got was business mentorship for a business she had started. That's a great thing, right? So there's like that catch 22 of coaches saying, I hate this compared to, hey, that's that's a really that's a really cool use of figuring out how to grow your life, right? You'd also be amazed at how many kids I have in the college classes. I say, how many of you want to own your own business? That is increasing every single year. And kids are now trying to figure out how to do that earlier. And I think NIL can can give them a little bit of a gauge and saying, as a coach, like tell them to go talk to their business teacher, right? Tell them to go talk to the to the the business law professor if you have one in your school, right? Or or figuring out ways to support them without saying, oh yeah, you should go after this NIL deal, right? Or no, you shouldn't do that. What we do is educational-based athletics, right? This is the coolest part about NIL that I think, and I don't ever take a stance, whether it's good or bad, but athletics can can literally drive the education around so many of these life skills that we've always been trying to teach, but now we have this captive audience with our student athletes that we can maximize unbelievably well.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Yeah, I think that not every single one of these cases is a bad thing. I think there was a a case I want to say it was out of Wisconsin, that the who's a brother and he was able to forgive his his sister's student loans.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

Oh, that was the basketball player in Indiana.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Indiana, okay, Indiana, yep. I mean, like that that is a life-changing thing, right? I mean, like that that is a I mean, it takes people dying and leaving inheritance so that people can pay off their student loans. Like he he he literally changed her life by doing that. And I think that you know, there's a an organization, Positive Athlete, uh, that that recognizes kids like this, that that, you know, you go to a positive athlete banquet and you will realize you're a complete failure because this this girl's like in she's like in the tenth grade, you know, and she's got a nonprofit, she sends books to isolated communities all over. I mean, it's but a kid like that can really capitalize. And that kid may not be an all-American kid. In a lot of cases, they're not, right? Um, but but just using that platform.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

And I think too, I think sometimes, right, and that's part of why a lot of states are are often pushing this, is sometimes student athletes get lumped into this space that they don't necessarily want to be in, right? Like it's it doesn't have they just because they're entrepreneurial or like that girl you talked about, right? She wants to do this this world engagement global mission focus, but technically because it might violate this amateurism status, like, come on, right? So there are a lot of those pieces, and and that's why it's so unique, and you really got to have conversations around it to figure out how you best serve your student athletes.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

Now, before we let you go, how can people find you? Uh, speak for a minute, not only about NILeducation.com, but also triple threat leadership uh that you've mentioned and how they can use it to improve their programs through the resources that you provide.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Yeah, absolutely. So um I have a website, www.triplethleadership.com. Triple threat's been around for a long time. Uh I started it and and really provides a lot of leadership development, social media education, things like that. Uh, I was giving a keynote at the Ohio AD conference a couple years ago, and I had an AD raise his hand and said, Scott, where can I find information about NIL um just for high school ADs? And I was like, you know what? That's a great question. There aren't any. So I went to my hotel room, I bought NIL-education.com and I started the website that night. So I run NIL-education.com. Um, I I write a weekly newsletter called Dox Dose of Nil. I mean, you gotta brand it, right? Yeah, yeah, you gotta do it.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

It's it's good, it's good too, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

I appreciate that. And and really, it's it's my goal is to try to help educate and provide resources to schools and stakeholders with the ADs to help them feel empowered and equipped to really figure out what this looks like, right? I've I've been traveling to conferences about the last year in March. I think I'm in three different states in a week, just because I I love helping people prepare and build educational programming. I've worked with a lot of schools um doing NIL, I call it NIL 101, which is like an intro to NIL for their staff and their students and their parents. I'll do an NIL 102, which is deeper dive with their administrators on hey, here are the life skills that you have to consider, and then how are we implementing those within our curriculum already? Because you probably are, and then starting to identify what's our educational plan for NIL moving forward, because I've read almost every policy in the 26 states that allow it. The only thing that most schools can really do is educate, right? And and that's you build your educational plan. And it doesn't have to be this massively big thing, it's really just figuring out how do we best serve our district's unique needs and support them. And and I do a lot of that. So uh I always tell people whatever I can do to help in this space. Um, you know, I have more respect for athletic directors than than anyone because I've been there, I felt like I prepared for five years and I still got my doors blown off. So I know every day what what they're all dealing with. I still coach high school basketball, so I feel I feel it every day. Um, but yeah, so you can go to the triple threat leadership.com, NIL dash education.com. I'm on all the social medias, always up for a conversation and more than willing to help any schools or districts or people.

SPEAKER_03 41:53

Speaking of getting your doors blown off, yeah. We we heard you in NADC in Nashville. I know uh Don's talked to you a couple times because he's plugged in a couple different areas. I mean, I've got I got two pages of notes from Nashville. I just took another two pages. Every time I hear you speak, you spoke on the AD round table last week. I get my doors blown off. So I'm gonna ask you a question that is kind of weird and and and off outside the ordinary here. Is there a question that has not been asked to you by us or by anyone else to help us know everything we need to know about NIL? Is there something we're missing?

SPEAKER_01 42:32

Man, I think that I think the biggest misconception that ADs have is just in general of what you see on TV is not what you're most likely gonna see in your district, right? And you've got to get really clear on understanding school districts are unique, right? You've got school boards that are unique. Some districts, you're gonna have pressure coming out your ears to figure this out fast. Other ones, no one's gonna know what NIL is until you bring it up, right? So it's important to realize like it's very, very different. I'm still waiting, and and I I feel like every time I go to a uh conference, like the state doesn't have it yet, and then all of a sudden it goes into play. So people are probably gonna quit like having me come to their conference.

SPEAKER_03 43:21

Um well, there's only like 23 more that can happen. I know, right?

SPEAKER_01 43:25

I know. Um, but I I do think I do think there's gonna be a deeper discussion with high schools around collectives, around people starting to pool money, around, around people starting to to do some of those things that are that are on the the edge of being illegal that you're starting to see at the college level, because let's face it, a lot of people view high school sports in a way that athletic directors don't, right? It's it's 100% about winning, and we want the best team. You've got a lot of those people within a very close proximity to each other. And I do think the sooner you can get a plan and prepared, the better you're gonna be as this continues to move forward. That's that's just me, but I'm not sure if there's a lot missing. I just always tell people if you don't have it yet, you're in prime time to start the preparations because at some point you're probably gonna have it. And it's probably gonna be sooner rather than later.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Scott, thanks for the time today. As we look to get a better understanding about one of the hottest topics in high school athletics today, and we know you're the go-to source on this, and appreciate your work in this space and availability to speak to it. So thanks again.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I appreciate all that you guys do, and thanks for having me on. Um, I will do whatever I can to help to help the the unsung heroes of of school athletic departments. So I appreciate all that you guys do in every ADU.