Leading off today: Here's a warning for high school athletes and their parents: That saying about how it's easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission doesn't hold true in an increasingly important matter.
You see, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association has already granted permission for athletes to benefit financially from their Name, Image, and Likeness rights. What they don't have, however, is forgiveness if they do not go about it in the proper fashion.
To that end, NYSPHSAA Executive Director Robert Zayas wrote a memo on Monday to the 11 sectional executive directors across the state to bring to their attention an approach to NIL that could cost athletes their scholastic eligibility.
Zayas' intent is to head off eligibility problems, since section EDs are the men and women that athletic directors often contact with NIL questions. In turn, no athlete should be making NIL commitments before looping in their school's AD to ensure that everything is done by the book.
What has Zayas concerned is a letter that some students have been receiving from an outfit called NIL Club, which touts its strategy for helping high school athletes make money. Here's a potentially troublesome paragraph on the NIL Club website:
"The NIL Club platform empowers creators to monetize by creating paywalled digital content for their community of supporters. High school students may create an NIL Club page for themselves or with other students from any school or activity. In alignment with the original principles of NIL, creators can earn money based on the quality of the content they deliver to subscribers."
The subtle red flag is the phrase "with other students from any school." When the NYSPHSAA approved NIL opportunities in October 2021, it came with a stipulation under the Amateur rule that an athlete's NIL venture cannot involve "the student's school team, school, Section or NYSPHSAA."
Thus, athletes need to be very careful lest they put their eligibility to continue playing at risk. Zayas' memo to the EDs calls it "imperative students do not accept money via the NIL Club or any other platform that is based on the student's affiliation with a member school, or an NIL club that references a member school or a member school's interscholastic team."
Weekend football leftover
I stumbled across this
prolific battle from the weekend: Indian River and Carthage combined for 825 rushing yards in Friday's game, which ended with a 41-38 Carthage victory. Carthage senior Geremiah Ademola-Sadipe posted 298 yards and four touchdowns. IR counterpart Trevor Shawcross finished ith 307 yards and two scores.
Industry news
After close to a decade in a local government communications position, former Times Herald-Record scribe Justin Rodriguez is back in the media biz, managing the new sports section for
MidHudsonNews.com.
Rodriguez joined the online publication in March as the editorial development director, drawing upon nearly two decades of experience at the Middletown newspaper.
In the announcement, publisher Mike Martucci said another veteran writer, Sal Interdonato, will be a featured writer.
