Tim Prukop understands the concerns. More than that, he sympathizes with them.
“Generally speaking, high school coaches think that (NIL) is a really bad thing,” Prukop said. “I think that’s consistent across the board, and I don’t disagree.
“I think if what happened in the NCAA happened at the high school level, it would ruin the high school sport.”
On the face of it, it’s an interesting statement from the chief commercial officer and co-founder of Eccker Sports, a sports information company founded in August 2021 to provide name, image and likeness education. But assuming Eccker Sports is in favor of NIL at the high school level would be a misinterpretation of what the company hopes to offer.
According to Prukop, there is a way to avoid the doomsday scenario.
“Education, a set of rules that everyone agrees on, and supervision,” Prukop told the USA Today Network. “When we do those three things, all the benefits of NIL become available to everyone.”
The first part is where Eccker Sports comes in. The company is working with the Alabama Football Coaches Association and Tennessee Football Coaches Association — whose states currently do not allow high school athletes to profit financially from their name, image or likeness — to educate directors, sports directors and coaches about the complexities of NIL.
When the Louisiana High School Athletic Association approved NIL for high school students in April, it enlisted Eccker Sports to provide NIL certification courses that are mandatory for administrators and also available to coaches, athletes, and families.
“We are following this with a whiteboard approach with Eccker Sports so that as new rules are enacted and things change from state to state, our members will always have the most current information available to properly guide our children and their families,” LHSAA executive CEO Eddie Bonine said in a statement: “We want everyone to be prepared because even if you don’t have anyone facing these challenges right now, you never know when you could be, and we want everyone to be prepared when that time will come.”
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In addition to courses, Eccker Sports — which pays the ALFCA and TNFCA a small sponsorship fee — offers an information center on its website, which lists various college policies, state laws, and news articles about NIL. The website includes a tracker of states that allow NIL for high school students, which states are considering it, and guides to help coaches educate their players and families about NIL.
“We certainly hope (NIL) never becomes legal (in Alabama),” said Jack Wood, the ALFCA’s executive director. “But in the sense that there are so many questions and so little knowledge, we just want to be a resource that can help schools.”
Matthew Bates, the president of the TNFCA and an assistant football player at Hardin Valley Academy, took a more receptive tone. But he described most Tennessee coaches as “afraid” and thinks that if his organization took any straw, the majority would be against NIL.
“We’re blessed that it hasn’t reached Tennessee yet,” Bates said. “ … It grows. So you have to talk about it and take care of it. At the end of the day, we hope parents will come and talk to us about what we think is going to happen. We want to be ready to answer those questions.”
For now, Bates plans to devote much of his summer to researching NIL and its effects at the college and high school levels. He’s heard players talk about college athletes signing deals, but no questions have been asked directly.
“The average high school coach in Alabama, I don’t think it’s something they think about on a daily basis right now,” Wood said. ‘Where will it be in six months? … We want to be able to send things to coaches who train them in these matters however they want.”
Whether in six months or six years, Prukop’s goal is to have a plan in place.
For players, this means understanding the NIL procedures of the universities that recruit them, the terms of their contracts, and making sure their companies they deal with are representative of their ‘brand’.
While Prukop wants to ensure athletes can build their brands without fear of exploitation, coaches and administrators have other concerns. What happens to the bonds that are built among teammates when money is thrown into the game? What happens if a neighboring state approves NIL and a player wants to switch to take advantage?
“You don’t have a national governing body like the NCAA that enforces rules,” Prukop said. “Some kid leaves Texas to go to Louisiana. The OWL doesn’t have to get to the LHSAA and find out what’s going on. There’s nothing that makes these guys work together.”
Any application of NIL at the high school level, according to Prukop, must operate within existing statutes — in states like Alabama, for example, eligibility for transfers depends on whether the player makes a “legitimate move.” Moves made purely for NIL purposes may then result in a mandatory exclusion period.
In Louisiana, Eccker is developing a clearinghouse that the LHSAA oversees every NIL deal signed in the state.
Those last two parts of Eccker Sports’ three-pronged approach — regulation and monitoring — already apply in Louisiana. For now, Eccker’s operations in Alabama and Tennessee are limited to education, but it may only be a matter of time before their operations grow.
“The coaches who want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend they’re about to leave,” said Prukop, “will have their heads in the sand for a long time to come.”
Jacob Shames covers high school sports for the Montgomery Advertiser and the USA Today Network. Shames can be reached by email at jshames@gannett.com, by phone at 334-201-9117, and on Twitter @Jacob_Shames.
