Ohio high school principals reject name, image and likeness proposal

A name, image and likeness (NIL) proposal for high school athletes across the state was voted down 538-254 by the Ohio High School Athletic Association member principals, the OHSAA announced Tuesday.

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The proposal would have permitted student-athletes to sign endorsement agreements “so long as their teams, schools and/or the OHSAA were not being represented within those endorsements and provided there were no endorsements with companies that do not support the mission of education-based athletics,” according to the OHSAA.

There were 21 high school principals who abstained from the vote on the issue.

If it would have been approved, the NIL rule would have been effective Monday afternoon for approximately 400,000 Ohio student-athletes in grades 7-12, according to our news partners at WCPO in Cincinnati.

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The vote came less than a year after the NCAA adopted their own NIL policy.

News Center 7′s James Rider spoke with OHSAA executive director Doug Ute after the vote was announced. He said he wasn’t surprised that the proposal was rejected.

“I knew it’d be close, or I thought it would be close. I didn’t know it’d be voted down by this margin,” Ute said.

There were 817 OHSAA principals eligible to on NIL during the annual referendum voting period. OHSAA reported that 813 casted their ballots.

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