If a student were to ink an NIL deal, they’d be disqualified from participating in their scholastic sport, according to the bill. But anyone earning compensation in, say, basketball, could still participate in another school sport that is unrelated to their compensation.
The proposal, if enacted into state law, would override a November 2025 bylaw from the Ohio High School Athletic Association that, for the first time in Ohio, allowed scholastic athletes to receive NIL compensation.
Such a move threatens the very nature of K-12 sports, the bill sponsors have argued throughout February. They say school sports ought to be purely an extension of the classroom — what they call “co-curricular activities.”
“We believe that co-curricular activities should be about learning health and fitness. It should be about social connection,” said Rep. Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, in a press conference in early February. “It should be about discipline, work ethic, character development, leadership, and communication skills. These are the reasons why we, as a state and as a society, invest in the opportunity for young people to participate in (school) sports.”
Bird contended that taxpayer money isn’t spent on stadiums and sports complexes “in order for (students) to be able to earn employment and earn an income.”
He’s joined on the bill by Rep. Mike Odioso, R-Green Twp., a former teacher and high school football coach who said the OHSAA’s new NIL bylaw will “cause so much damage.”
Odioso cast doubt on the ability of students as young as seventh grade to manage sponsorship deals and argued that putting the primary enforcement burden on schools, as the OHSAA’s bylaw does, creates an unfunded mandate that will likely lead to an incomplete enforcement picture.
NIL opportunities, Odioso said, could shift the K-12 sports landscape in the same way its recent proliferation has turned college sports on their head, potentially leading to an “underground transfer portal” — despite bylaw language blocking NIL deals from being used as recruiting measures.
Ohio’s current setup mirrors many other states across the country. Bird conceded that 41 states allow NIL deals for K-12 students, but he noted that a vast majority of those states had their policy set by their governing athletics associations, not their state legislatures. At any rate, he said, they got it wrong.
The OHSAA testified on the bill earlier this month as an interested party, declining to take a hard stance but still backing its NIL regulations as responsible and reasonable.
Doug Ute, OHSAA’s executive director, provided the committee with some statistics. Since November, Ute said, only 32 NIL deals have been reported among 350,000 Ohio student athletes. Those deals revolve around promotional codes to be shared on social media and “combinations of products and limited compensation.”
“These opportunities allow students, who also happen to be athletes, to explore legitimate entrepreneurial opportunities within carefully established, education-based guardrails,” Ute said.
Back in November, before the OHSAA’s bylaw was approved by the state’s voting high schools, this outlet interviewed athletic directors across the region and found none who opposed allowing NIL deals for student athletes.
Middletown football coach Kali Jones told this outlet that he views NIL as an extension of capitalism, which he firmly believes in.
“There’s all of this hoopla because it’s based around sports,” Jones said. “To tell a teenager or a young person who is eligible to work, who can benefit off of their image in the entertainment world that they can’t benefit in the athletic world, to me, is un-American.”
H.B. 661 is still being vetted by the House Education Committee. It would need approval from the committee and the entire House before moving over to the Senate, where it faces the same process. Then, the bill would need to be signed by Gov. Mike DeWine to make it into law.
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
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