Now that Georgia high school student athletes are eligible to enter into Name, Image, and Likeness deals following the passing of the rule by the Georgia High School Association earlier this week, many questions have risen on just how the move will impact the world of high school sports. Georgia is among the 30-plus states that allow high school student athletes to enter into NIL deals.
Now, while some initial assumptions are that deals for student athletes will be flooding, Rusty Mansell of On3 and 92-9 The Game’s The Steakhouse tells Steak Shapiro that ultimately there are only a handful of students that will be able to land lucrative NIL deals.
“Now, someone like Julian Lewis, (the) youngest high school player ever to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated, he has a marketing team, they’ve already said the HBO documentary is going on about him," Mansell said of the Carrollton Trojans quarterback. "So Julian Lewis will have big-time opportunities. He will have brand names approach him because of his social media."
As Rusty continued to share more insight on what the new NIL ruling will mean for student athletes, he explained that of all the concerns, the one that appears to have the most commonality is the policing of student athletes being influenced to transfer from one high school to another because of an NIL deal, which would be in violation of GHSA bylaws.
“How do you say, ‘hey if you come from this small school and come to this big school, we have people here that own businesses,’ so it’s not Delta, Verizon and all those,” Rusty said. He explained that local business could potentially pose the biggest threat to causing problems in the new NIL era in Georgia. “It’s the guy from Friday Night Lights,” Steak added.
