BAY COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) — High school athletics in Florida may soon change forever, with talks of allowing athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness.
“High school football or high school athletics in general here in the next five to ten years is going to drastically change and look like probably something that we’ve never seen before,” Mosley head football coach Tommy Joe Whiddon said.
An FHSAA committee is in the process of drafting a proposal for the board of directors to review at a meeting in November.
“I know for me personally as a coach, my hang up with the FHSAA are they have all these rules and all these policies, but how are you going to regulate it,” Bay head football coach Jeremy Brown said.
With school of choice in Florida, students move around frequently and athletics play a huge impact on many of those decisions. Pair that with NIL, and the expectation is that it will only get worse.
“Right now, you can play football at Bay High, basketball at Mosley, and baseball at Arnold if you want to,” Brown said. “They’re going to have to reconvene and address that before they even think about NIL.”
With money involved, it crosses over another line as well when discussing amateur athletes.
“The concept and idea of amateur sports is over and done with,” Brown said. “It’s not the same and it’ll never it’ll never be the same again.”
Some coaches have seen the evolution of collegiate sports, with the hope of avoiding the adverse effects at their level.
“It could honestly turn a lot of coaches away from the game because this is not what they signed up for,” Whiddon said.
