Is building a personal brand teaching New Jersey kids real-world skills, or teaching them to put themselves ahead of the team?
POINT: The brand mindset pulls kids away from the team
Basketball is the one sport where a single selfish possession is visible to everyone. My concern isn’t that kids earn money. It’s what chasing it trains them to do every day.
The NIL education now aimed at teenagers reads like a marketing curriculum. IMG Academy’s guidance tells athletes to think of a personal brand like marketing a business. Other guides push short-form reels and stories, advise a highlight reel at the top of your page, and suggest posting with teammates because it doubles your audience by tapping into your teammates’ followers. A teammate becomes a distribution channel.
The national federation of high school associations warned this would erode a locker room where kids are equal and it’s about the team and community. If the pass doesn’t make the reel, why make it?
And the payoff is a long shot. IMG’s own guide calls high school endorsements extremely rare. Only about 2% of high school athletes play Division 1. The one transaction dataset I found, for college athletes, showed a median of $53. We’re asking kids to spend their teenage years on content for a prize most won’t win.
COUNTERPOINT: A brand is a business education, and kids need those skills
Every adult in this conversation built a career on skills nobody taught us in a gym: communicating, negotiating, managing money. The brand-building critics worry about is also a practical education.
One source quoted by NerdWallet sees NIL as a boon to youth financial literacy, and the article notes it can draw kids to business and finance early. Kids who sign deals encounter contracts, fees (agents typically take 15-20% of a deal), and taxes. In one Maryland report, the athletes featured received considerable advice before signing.
The skills are concrete. New Jersey wrestler Jimmy Mullen’s deal runs on a personal code that notifies him each time someone uses it, a lesson in measurable results. IMG notes that a smaller, engaged audience can be worth more to a local business than a bigger one with little interaction, which rewards real relationships over vanity numbers. TeamSnap frames brand-building as personal and professional growth, and says a brand shouldn’t just be a highlight reel.
Some kids use it for good. A Florida volleyball player donates her earnings to the concussion center that treated her, and Nike highlighted Camden’s DJ Wagner’s school supply drives for Camden kids.
The same fears were raised about college NIL. Proponents note those arguments were made there too. In New Jersey, the rules ban references to the school and bar coach involvement, keeping paid activity separate from the team. Let kids learn to earn while a parent is in the room.
Where I land
Both sides are right about something. The skills are real, but so is the pull of individual incentives. A kid can learn to negotiate and still be a lousy teammate, or be a great teammate and never open an Instagram account. What matters is who’s setting the priorities at home and in the gym. If we teach kids that the team comes first and the brand is a side project, NIL can be a classroom. If the brand comes first, we’ll get exactly what the critics predict.
What I can’t tell you is which is happening in New Jersey. I found no public data on how many high schoolers have deals, what they earn, or whether the NJSIAA has tracked violations. Until someone publishes it, we’re arguing from fear and hope.
And lastly, in my experience thus far, I am seeing kids be kids on the court, but I haven’t seen a lot first hand at the High School level just yet. It will be interesting, and we may have to raise the conversation again.
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Sources
Name, Image, Likeness Money Tips for High School Athletes +3