Examining how high school NIL rule change has worked in Tennessee

GOODLETTSVILLE, Tennessee – Drive north of Nashville, get off Interstate 65 at Exit 98 and after passing a Dollar General on your right and then Uncle John’s American Diner on your left, you’ll find the gravel drive for Old Hickory Bat Company. Inside the first of two buildings that house the company’s production facilities, you’ll find a life-size cutout of Los Angeles Angels star outfielder Mike Trout plastered to the wall.

Twenty wooden baseball bats of various lengths and color combinations hang above the two-dimensional Trout. On the barrel of one, Trout’s No. 27 is painted red in front of the black silhouette of a goat. He’s a 10-time All-Star and three-time American League MVP.

Down the wall from Trout is a Fathead of Minnesota Twins outfielder Byron Buxton. Personalized bats hang above the depiction. In between the two All-Stars, there’s a U.S. map that’s indented by pushpins that identify the hometowns of customers who have made the trek to Goodlettsville, Tenn.

Polaroid photos, each marked by a Sharpie, do the same below.

Miami, FL. Fort Collins, CO. Sacramento, CA.

Across the room were the bats Trout ordered, each reading 33.5 PRO MAPLE MT27*. Houston Astros outfielder Kyle Tucker’s bats were lined up next to Trout’s.

Earlier this year and 27 days after the TSSAA’s rule change, Old Hickory Bat Company announced a name, image and likeness partnership with infielder Alex Junghans, who attends Nashville’s Lipscomb Academy. He is committed to Wake Forest. That begs the question: What motivates the executives of a wooden bat company, which already serves some of the best players in the sport, to sign an NIL deal with a high schooler?

“You know, we’ve done pretty good without the NILs and now trying to figure out, you know, ‘Hey, before this, we’ve been growing. We have plans for expansion. Now we’re going to add this on top of it. What’s that boost look like?’” Old Hickory vice president of sales and marketing Travis Copley told On3 inside his back office. “Trying to quantify that is tricky.”

26 high school athletic associations allow NIL deals

A bill in Arkansas – House Bill 1649 – was sent last week to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders‘ office, where, if signed, high school athletes who have been admitted to or signed a National Letter of Intent with a university in the state will be able to pursue name, image and likeness opportunities. It’s a notable development not only because it would allow some high school athletes who currently don’t have the ability to sign NIL deals to do so, but also because state lawmakers might protect the publicity rights of those athletes before the state’s governing high school athletic association acts.

Currently, high school athletic associations in 25 states, plus the District of Columbia, allow high school athletes to engage in some forms of NIL opportunities while maintaining their eligibility. However, just two of those states are generally considered to be part of the South, which includes some of the most talent-rich pockets of the country from an athletic recruiting perspective.

In Florida, Georgia and Texas, high school athletic association policies – or even the state law, in the case of Texas — prohibit high school athletes from signing NIL deals. Meanwhile, California, another state that frequently produces a significant number of Division I prospects, was the first to allow high school athletes to monetize their NIL rights.

On3 spoke with nine stakeholders in Tennessee, including three high school athletes, three parents, a business executive, the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association’s top administrator and an attorney who’s leading an NIL collective at the high school ranks.

What happens when high school athletes in a state have the ability to pursue marketing opportunities for the first time following a pivotal rule change? What do businesses hope to get out of a partnership with a 14- to 18-year-old? What about the high schoolers and their parents?

If there is a nascent market for NIL partnerships for high schoolers, then why do high school athletic associations in half the country still prohibit NIL deals, including those in every other state in the South other than Louisiana and Tennessee?

In Tennessee: ‘I would say I haven’t heard of any big money, big-time deals’

TSSAA executive director Mark Reeves, whose association oversees high school athletics in the state, was almost apologetic on the phone in February when answering a question about the scope of NIL activities in the state following the TSSAA’s December rule change.

“To give you kind of a sense of the scope of how much it’s happening out there, I’ll be honest with you: I probably can’t give you an informed answer,” Reeves said.

Verifiable, industry-wide NIL transaction data can be hard to come by at the college level, too.

The only perspective on the number of NIL deals in the state that Reeves could offer was anecdotal. He said there were only three or four compliance-related questions raised to the TSSAA about NIL activities. For example, if a high school athlete’s profile picture on social media features the athlete wearing his or her school athletic uniform, can the athlete post a paid advertisement on the platform?

Reeves laughed when asked if he could provide any insight into whether the high schoolers who have signed NIL deals have been big-time recruits or more anonymous, everyday-type athletes.

“I would say I haven’t heard of any big money, big-time deals,” Reeves said. “The three or four that have kind of come across our desk have been probably things that are very minor, you know, with kids who are not high-profile recruits.”

Reeves relayed the story of a wrestler who’s “not getting recruited at any level” who signed with a local orthodontist’s office to provide custom mouth guards for him.

‘We don’t do cash compensation for amateurs’

Old Hickory Bat Company has partnered with just three high school or college athletes nationally for NIL deals. Junghans is one. Ole Miss starting shortstop and 2022 Collegiate National Team member Jacob Gonzalez, who has a .351 batting average this season, and Orange Lutheran (Calif.) High School outfielder Derek Curiel are the others.

“As of today, we don’t do cash compensation for amateurs,” Copley said in January.

The product is the compensation, which could also take the form of merchandise credits or social media exposure.

“This is not about money,” Chris Junghans, Alex’s father, said in a Zoom interview. “This is not about fame. This is really about a teaching moment and a really good brand fit because he’s been swinging that bat for the last two years.”

Copley played at Tennessee from 1995-98, then he was in the minors for five years. With the Vols, he played alongside Todd Helton and R.A. Dickey. Helton was a five-time All-Star with the Colorado Rockies, while Dickey won the Cy Young Award with the New York Mets.

Copley has worked for Old Hickory for more than two decades. During a tour of the company’s facilities, which are spread out across multiple buildings, Copley noted the wooden barn that was the original structure on the property.

Times have changed.

Copley brought up the O’Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit, which represented a crucial Supreme Court decision in athletes and their advocates’ decades-long pursuit of greater economic freedoms.

“From an athlete standpoint, yeah, it makes sense. I’m all for it,” Copley said of granting athletes their NIL rights. “Again, I’m a Tennessee guy, so there are 100,000 people (at Neyland Stadium) on a Saturday. They show up and watch people play. There’s something that needs to be done there.”

What exactly “something” is, though, can differ.

Last August and September, Old Hickory employees attended Perfect Game Area Code Games, where they had the opportunity to talk to top prospects about what they wanted from NIL opportunities.

“We were on-site with these guys, and so a lot of guys we could talk (to) and be like, ‘Well, what do you want? What does this mean to you?’” Copley said. “Some of them were way out there. It’s like, ‘Oh, for ten grand –’ and I’m like, ‘All right. Hang on a second. Let me explain to you how our world works.’ It was actually kind of cool in building some of these relationships with these younger players.”

A limited number of athletes have deals: ‘It’s so new’

On the day of the TSSAA’s rule change, Shajai Jackson tweeted, “Thank you Lakeway Auto for offering me the first NIL deal in Tennessee high school history!”

Jackson is a two-sport athlete at Lakeway Christian Academy in small-town White Pine, about 40 miles east of Knoxville. Since Jackson, who’s a Division II-A All-State defensive back, announced his first NIL agreement, he visited Eastern Kentucky and Marshall. “My Twitter got more college coaches looking at it and followed me on there,” he said in a phone interview.

“Our biggest goals are to get him to college, and so getting his name out there was our biggest goal,” Aimee Jackson, Shajai’s mom, told On3. “It’s not necessarily about the money or anything like that for us. It’s more about getting him to his ultimate goal, which is to play ball on a higher level.”

She said Lakeway Auto wanted her son to promote the business on TikTok. A Lakeway Auto employee who works in public relations has discussed branding with Shajai, too.

A cursory and imperfect scan of Twitter – for reference, most NIL deals for college athletes involve posting on social media – shows evidence of a handful of deals since the TSSAA’s NIL era began Dec. 8, 2022.

A freshman girl’s basketball player in Knoxville with fewer than 500 Twitter followers announced a deal with Turnkey Sales, which provides industrial supplies, construction material and rental equipment. A junior girl’s basketball player in Gatlinburg with just less than 900 Twitter followers announced a partnership with Saf-T Enterprises.

Jaloni Cambridge, the Gatorade Player of the Year in Tennessee and a point guard who ESPN has ranked as the No. 1 girl’s basketball player nationally in the 2024 recruiting class, attends Ensworth School in Nashville. In February, she promoted a pair of Under Armour’s Flow FUTR X 2 shoes on her Instagram account, where she has more than 16,000 followers. It’s unclear if the package from Under Armour was part of an NIL deal but Cambridge has the athletic profile to receive interest from regional or national brands while in high school.

“From my school and really the surrounding areas, there’s not that many, just again, because it’s so new and the market is still changing all the time,” Brinley Murphy, who’s a standout soccer player at Knoxville’s Bearden High School who’s committed to South Carolina, said in a phone interview. “It hasn’t really been a huge thing. … I think it will get bigger, but right now it’s only a few people around the area.”

So, what’s it like for a high school athlete after he or she announces an NIL deal on social media?

“It’s pretty cool. I mean, I won’t lie,” Alex Junghans said in a Zoom interview. “It’s when my friends come into school and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s awesome, man. That’s awesome.’ I mean, it’s a good feeling. Again, it’s not about that, though. Obviously, that’s not the main priority.”

How to judge ROI?

Copley complimented Junghans’ social media following and activity, but how will the company judge its ROI in the partnership?

“That’s a really good question, and I don’t know that there’s an answer for anyone right now on how that’s going to look,” Copley said. “I mean, everybody’s very caught up in the social media and impressions and clicks and click-throughs. You can measure that, but what does that mean for a kid in the state of Tennessee, where football’s king in high school, versus a kid in California, where baseball’s just as popular out there, if not more popular than every other sport?

“So, does that skew the numbers if you’re taking – and I don’t have the numbers in front of me – an Alex Junghans that has 10,000 followers or a Max Clark in Indiana that has a million followers? How do you prorate those numbers to where they make sense with it? The whole tracking orders, stuff like that, that’s always been really tough to do, regardless of the level with it, and so for right now what we’re doing is kind of basing it on how we would track our advertising.”

At a rudimentary level, Copley said the company will track the social media metrics of how posts featuring Junghans perform compared to, say, posts that only include a photo of a baseball bat.

On the other hand, when Mercedes-Benz of Knoxville brought in then-Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker through an NIL partnership, Copley said the dealership likely quickly learned how the activation performed.

“Talking to some other (companies), even outside the bat space, that’s something everybody’s kind of trying to figure out,” Copley said.

Junghans said he first remembered his father telling him and his baseball teammates about the importance of social media etiquette when he was 11, when the latter coached the former.

“We started explaining to him, like, ‘You know, this is why professional athletes a lot of times have people that manage their social media for them,'” Chris Junghans said. “Another teachable moment, right? There’s no way that if he had five NIL deals he’d be able or we’d be able to manage that.

“That’s just not something that he’s into. And so he told me the other day, he goes, ‘I don’t know, man. I kinda just want to get back to playing baseball.'”

Varsity Sports Group launches as high school collective

In February, the Varsity Sports Group launched. The self-described NIL business and collective will help “create and provide” NIL opportunities to high schoolers in Tennessee, according to a news release. A second entity, The Varsity Fund, will focus on creating NIL opportunities for athletes from underserved communities.

“What we want to teach people is that ‘collectives’ is actually a good word,” Varsity Sports Group co-owner E. Michael Brezina III told On3 in a phone interview. Brezina is the founder and principal attorney of the Knoxville-based law firm Brezina Law, PLLC, and an adjunct professor of law at the University of Tennessee.

The Varsity Sports Group initially signed three athletes – Murphy, Maryville High volleyball player Amanda Mack and Knoxville Webb School basketball player Lukas Walls – to its marketing division. Brezina said he thinks Murphy will someday play for the U.S. Women’s National Team.

“It was important for us to make sure that we connected with a good NIL group,” said Brendan Murphy, Brinley’s father, before adding, “We trust those guys and we believe that they’re going to lead us in the right direction.”

Brezina said most of the business interest is local to each athlete. He also said Varsity Sports Group has had conversations with multiple regional brands that are “very interested in dipping their toe into the high school space.”

Murphy said she’s working with D1 Training-Knoxville and Brezina’s law firm.

“I think that’s honestly the best way to do NIL sometimes, with an athletic facility like them because a lot of the marketing is through my workouts and I get free workouts and money for publicizing them,” she said. “For me, the money is great but also just getting those extra workouts in. Like, getting paid to work out – that’s just the best part, honestly.”

Murphy also said, “I know high school recruiting is illegal, to some point, but it hasn’t really affected that yet. But I think at some point it might do that.”

What’s the value proposition or appetite for a collective at the high school level?

Collectives at the college level often have a stated goal of player retention or to show prospective recruits that enrolled athletes can benefit financially at a given school. While there’s not a universally accepted definition of collective, almost every collective in college athletics only works with athletes from a single school. Many collectives have announced the launch or completion of seven-figure fundraising campaigns.

“This is something that actually has been over-complicated,” Brezina said. “I think at its root, what we’re talking about is communities getting together and wanting to create name, image and likeness opportunities for their kids and their kids’ teammates.”

Southern states slow to adopt NIL rules

Louisiana was the first state in the South where a high school athletic association granted athletes their NIL rights. Tennessee was second.

Chris Junghans said his family was surprised to learn the TSSAA’s rule change had passed in December. He didn’t know it was on the ballot. Copley said prior to the vote, a high school coach in the state told him there was no way the proposal would pass. The coach later followed up with a text that said, “Damn, I missed that one.”

“What people usually think of when you use that (NIL) acronym is (it’s) one that is generally not seen as a positive thing,” Reeves said. “In the world of amateur athletics, the stereotype of NIL is kids signing for big money and making decisions on whether or not they’re playing, or who they’re playing for, based on money. Nothing about that sounds good or feels good to people who are in the world of amateur athletics, particularly in the high school space.”

Reeves said there were two situations last spring that prompted the TSSAA to modify its rules. A baseball player had the opportunity to earn money from providing lessons and a volleyball player, whose profile picture featured her in a non-school athletic uniform, had shared a link to a merchandise platform where she received a percent of the sales through an affiliate program.

“These other states who haven’t crossed that bridge yet probably just haven’t because they haven’t been hit with those situations,” he said. “I think they’re starting to get hit with them now.”

Like many elements of the NIL landscape at the college and now high school level, it’s important to distinguish perceptions, fears and rumors from reality.

“The unknown is what scares everybody,” Copley said.

As state lawmakers and high school athletic associations in additional states consider amending their laws or policies, states such as Tennessee that have granted high school athletes their NIL rights could help educate stakeholders on what might happen next.

“I think that’s been the general consensus with other directors I’ve talked to,” Reeves said, “that it’s certainly a much smaller scale and smaller deals and not as big of an issue as maybe people might have feared when it was first being discussed.”