CIAC OKs Student-Athletes to Profit from NIL Opportunities

Student-athletes participating in the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) will be able to profit from name, image, and likeness (NIL) opportunities.

The Constitution State and its high school athletics governing body have become the 11th state to allow high school student-athletes to profit from NIL opportunities, joining Minnesota and the MSHSL to make the change last week.

According to a recent article from CTInsider.com, while NIL opportunities are permitted to high school student-athletes, CIAC executive director Glenn Lungarini said last week that he has yet to hear of a student-athlete taking advantage.

Below is an excerpt from that CTInsider.com article.

“Any hypothetical scenario is difficult to comment on,” Lungarini said. “There’s no historical perspective to draw on. The first incident, the first opportunity we have to examine with this would be the first. I can’t answer a hypothetical situation.”

The CIAC’s language says players aren’t allowed to use school logos — Connecticut had similar rules for colleges, but that will change this summer — or references to CIAC events in their NIL activity.

Lungarini said the CIAC Board of Control unanimously approved the policy at a meeting around the start of the winter season, though he wasn’t sure of the date and was not in his office Monday; there was a Dec. 2 meeting on the CIAC’s calendar. He said it was communicated from there to the state’s athletic directors.

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“Once the NCAA introduced their policies, I think most state associations look at the NCAA as the standard when setting terms for amateur status,” Lungarini said. “Now that the NCAA has a policy that says that type of endorsement doesn’t violate amateur status, it makes state associations say, how does that impact our level?”

He said discussions at the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) section meetings helped shape the language; Connecticut’s starting point came from New Jersey’s language, and as colleges were having the same talks, Lungarini said, “there was a lot of collaboration.” The policy naturally got a look from the CIAC’s legal counsel.

To read the full story from CTInsider.com, click here.