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LISTEN UP: Next on the Endangered Species' List? 5-Star Athletes
From the dinosaurs to Blockbuster video, things just become extinct.
Home telephones? Heck, cable television has virtually ran its course.
So, what is next on the endangered species' list?
The 5-Star Athlete will be extinct in a matter of months.
Football's Big-Ticket, Game-Breakers will be a thing of the past in 2022. No, not a meteor shower or the advent of new technology, but the ruling of Name, Imagine and Likeness, where college athletes can cash in on themselves where they see fit.
Great, cool, awesome. Long overdue for college athletes, but the NCAA has made the roll-out messier than an LA Freeway virtually any time of day.
The repercussions of NIL have seeped into high school sports as I've predicted.
This is basically Global Warming for high school athletics. There won't be a slow erosion of superstars leaving the locker rooms and weight rooms across Texas, but an avalanche of Blue Chip athletes falling into the abyss of NIL. SPLASH.
Southlake Carroll's Quin Ewers was first to test the waters, bringing this topic to the UIL, which deferred to the Texas Legislature. Ok, cool. Their hands are tied, I get it.
Ewers couldn't get paid in high school, so off to Ohio State and greener artificial turf pastures await him.
He was the No. 1 player in Texas. Poof… gone.
Hightower super-hooper and senior-to-be Bryce Griggs couldn't make money as a high school student… poof off to Overtime Elite where he will get paid… we think. No more Hurricane state title dreams as H-Town is in his rearview mirror.
FB Bush junior Tyler Smith gets a national-ranking and… bye, off to Overtime Elite. He will forego TWO years of making memories inside the Hopson Field House. He just would have been a junior.
While Klein Cain star Jaydon Blue's circumstance is a little different, highly-coveted athletes will follow his lead. Blue committed to the University of Texas and has chosen to by-pass his senior year to prepare for his future as a Longhorn. He should be an early-enrollee in January.
Those are the outliers right now, however, they are also the pioneers that so many will follow.
For now high school fans, enjoy the likes of Bridgeland's Conner Weigman -- an Elite 11 QB -- still weaving his magic at the high school level before he early enrolls with the Aggies in January.
If North Shore 5-Star Denver Harris (currently the No. 1 player in Texas) comes back from an ACL injury to play ball this year, he certainly be the last of his kind. Big-time stones if he does come back.
The Bishop Davenport's of Spring, Harold Perkins' of Cy Park and Kam Dewberry's of Atascocita – all extinct in the near future.
So, what stops this disappearance of future stars?
Open up the NIL floodgates in Texas. It will be messy at first, but order will follow.
It gives the optics of a level playing field to all athletes… not just football, basketball and baseball stars but also female student-athletes. They usually get left out of this conversation all together.
Do you think Lululemon wouldn't sponsor Ally Batenhorst of Seven Lakes, the National Gatorade Volleyball Player of the Year? What about former Barbers Hill star Charli Collier being an ambassador for who else… Charming Charlies?
This could be a slippery slope, but it can't be any worse than the alternative.
Coaching School: UIL still digesting new Name, Image or Likeness rules
SAN ANTONIO - The University Interscholastic League (UIL), which oversees the governance of public school athletics in Texas, is currently "very entrenched in the process" of understanding the new Name, Image and Likeness rules.
UIL Deputy Director Dr. Jamey Harrison spoke to the media on Sunday morning - the opening day of the 2021 Texas High School Coaches Association School - inside the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center and addressed NIL.
"We were aware of the conversations, so we were having internal discussions about that might look like," Harrison said. "That conversation was trying to follow two paths simultaneously. One is, with our existing rules is there a way for a student to benefit from their name, image and likeness without running afoul of their rules and how that might work. The other conversation was about future rule changes and how that might happen.
"We have had no changes to our amateur rule in the past couple of years."
The Texas Legislature, like many states, passed its own legislation surrounding Name, Image or Likeness with the passing of S.B. 1385, which went into affect for collegiate athletes on July 1.
In that bill though, Section J covered high school athletes and recruitment of athletes.
| No individual, corporate entity, or other organization | |
| may: | |
| (1)enter into any arrangement with a prospective | |
| student athlete relating to the prospective student athlete's name, | |
| image, or likeness prior to their enrollment in an institution of | |
| higher education; or | |
| (2)use inducements of future name, image, and | |
| likeness compensation arrangement to recruit a prospective student | |
| athlete to any institution of higher education. |
When the NCAA does pass new laws for collegiate athletes, that does not mean it is the same for high school athletes, Harrison said and there has been some confusion around NIL.
"[HS athletes] need to be very careful about reading too much of what they see on social media or even mainstream media about how they now have opportunities that they didn't previously have because I'm not sure they do.
"Our rules are readily available on our website and they aren't NCAA rules."
The UIL is currently working with state legislatures and legal council to fully understand the new NIL rules and how it may affect high school athletes and are expected to put something out this fall.
"We are hoping to have some of that final information in the next few days but we don't control that timeline," Harrison said. "We are in wait and see."
The UIL Legislative Council is slated to meet again in October.