NIL Library / NIL-008
The Free NIL Class That Comes Before the Contract
Almost everything you hear about high school NIL is about the money. How much, how fast, who got a check. I work with young athletes, so here is my honest take: the thing nobody talks about is the part that matters most. Before the money, there is supposed to be education. And it turns out there is a free class that delivers it, built by the same people who run high school sports, that most parents have never even heard of.
In May 2026, Athletic Business reported on how high school athletes, coaches, and administrators are actually navigating NIL now that it has reached the high school level. Buried in that reporting is a detail that flips the whole conversation.
What NIL is, in one paragraph
If the term is still fuzzy, NIL stands for name, image, and likeness. It is the right of an athlete to earn from their own brand: their name, their photos, their following. It became legal for college athletes in 2021, and it has flowed down to high school, where most states now allow it. The money gets all the attention. The education almost never does.
There is a free course, and it is real
The NFHS, the national governing body of high school athletics, offers a free Name, Image and Likeness online course through the NFHS Learning Center. Dan Schuster, the NFHS director of educational services, said it was built to give a high-level overview of what NIL actually is. According to the reporting, it has already been viewed by nearly 19,000 people, the vast majority of them students and coaches.
The course is not a sales pitch. It defines NIL at the high school level, gives examples of how NIL can be leveraged, names the misconceptions different people have about it, including local businesses, and walks through what a student-athlete and their family should consider before pursuing a deal. In plain language, it is the briefing most families never get before an offer lands.
The detail that stopped me
Here is the part that actually changes how I think about this. Some state associations now require a student-athlete to provide a certificate of NFHS course completion before they can enter into an NIL agreement. Read that again. In some states, a kid cannot sign the deal until they prove they took the class. The education has to come before the contract.
Think about how rare that is. We usually hand kids the deal first and the lesson later, after something already went wrong. This flips the order. The states that take it seriously are treating education as the thing that comes first, not the cleanup after a family gets burned.
Schuster compared the rollout to how schools handled concussions. Not every state passed a law in the same year, and the goal now is the same as it was then: make sure the adults in the building actually know what they are talking about and clear out the myths. The article also makes clear that the athletic director's job here is education, not negotiation. As Ohio's executive director Doug Ute framed it, the school's responsibility is making sure athletes understand the safeguards, not arranging deals for them.
Why this matters for your athlete
The CEO of the NFHS, Dr. Karissa Niehoff, said the thing I want every parent to hear: "The truth is, kids do own their name, their image and their likeness." That is not a slogan. It is the whole foundation. The reason your kid can be paid at all is that the name and the image already belong to them.
So the question that actually matters is not "how do I get a deal." It is "do I understand and control the thing I already own." A free course that teaches a family the rules is really teaching them how to protect an asset that has been theirs from day one. And the more a young athlete understands their own name, image, and brand, the harder it is for anyone to step in and make decisions about it for them.
A parent does not need to wait for their state to require the course. It is free and sitting there right now at the NFHS Learning Center. The families who learn the rules before an offer ever shows up are the ones who do not get talked into something they do not understand. You do not need an agent in tenth grade. You need a foundation: a clear understanding of what your athlete owns, clean photos, a real story, and an adult in the room who reads before anyone signs. The smartest move in NIL was never landing the deal. It is being the family that already knew the rules when the deal arrived.
Source: Athletic Business (May 22, 2026); NFHS Learning Center. This is education and observation, not legal or financial advice.
Source: Athletic Business